INTERVIEW: Swans Stars Taylor Adams & Brodie Grundy on Resilience, Renewal, and Training Like an Athlete

One year after premiership heartache, Sydney Swans stars Taylor Adams and Brodie Grundy are learning to find beauty in the monotony. Here, the two veterans reveal their evolving approach to longevity and how mateship has kept them motivated.

For Sydney Swans stars Taylor Adams and Brodie Grundy, the end of the 2025 season is bittersweet. Just one year ago, the two veterans stood on the cusp of sporting glory, one game away from securing their place in AFL Premiership history, but it wasn’t meant to be. Adams was dealt a heartbreaking blow, left out of the 23-man team for the big day, and Grundy, while selected, could do little as a rampaging Brisbane Lions tore the heavily-backed Swans to shreds in front of a sold-out audience.

Truly, sport has a cruel way of humbling even its greatest servants, and the anguish of falling short of September glory has lingered far longer than expected. The Swans, under the direction of new head coach Dean Cox, failed to fire early in the season, leaving the team with an uphill battle to reach the finals.

“It can be a good thing when things are going well, but when it’s not, it can be quite crippling at times,” Brodie admits, reflecting on the challenges of the past few seasons.

“As we’ve gotten older, speaking for myself, we’ve tried to develop broader views of who we are and what makes us up as athletes, so that during periods where things are going well it’s like we can relish that and enjoy it and lean into it, but then when things aren’t going as well, we also have little antidotes for different parts of our life. That perspective can help us through those challenging periods.”

The two veterans, now in their 13th and 14th seasons, respectively, are coming to terms with sporting mortality. Taylor, in particular, has had to rethink his approach to success, focusing less on the results and more on the process. As he reveals, it’s been as much an emotional challenge as it has been a physical one.

“My whole thing is process and purpose,” he tells me. “So have a plan, go out and execute your best, and that’s going to be different every day.”

The 2025 campaign, under new coach Dean Cox, began shakily. Injuries, inconsistency, and the pressure of expectation weighed heavily, but with five wins in their last seven games, the Swans have rediscovered their rhythm, setting the stage for a redemptive 2026.

Tandem Stories

It’s remarkable, in many ways, just how intertwined Taylor and Brodie’s careers have been. Both have been star midfielders, both fell out of favour at their respective clubs, and both landed in Sydney from Collingwood (Brodie via Melbourne first). Across more than a decade of shared playing time, they’ve become each other’s steadying force. And despite growing up in the football sphere together, they couldn’t be more different.

“That’s been one of the real positives for me: being able to reconnect with Brodie,” Taylor explains. “We’re very different personalities. Brodie is a lot more measured, whereas I’m more reactive… It’s changed me; not just as a footballer but as a person.”

Grundy echoes that sentiment: “Because he (Taylor) throws the kitchen sink at everything that he does, just by osmosis, I subconsciously do too. I joke, but it’s true. If I know I’m training with Taylor, I need to show up. That keeps me honest.”

Training with Purpose

Brodie’s words aren’t chosen carelessly. If the scars of 2024 taught them anything, it’s that preparation requires both honest discipline and novelty. As they have gotten older,  recovery has become a far more integral piece of the premiership puzzle.

“The word that springs to mind for me is balance,” Taylor explains. “When I first got the system, I could do everything, and I could back it up day in, day out… but as you get older, it just takes a little bit longer. I’ve got to be smarter about what I am prioritising in my training.”

“For me, I’ve to tried to incorporate a lot of power in my movements in the gym. I’ve got a pretty good foundation of strength, so now it’s about managing that, being able to stay explosive. As you get older, obviously, everything slows down a bit, so trying to delay that as much as possible is always the focus area.”

For Brodie, the focus is mobility. “As a tall ruckman, a lot of that simply means being able to still be active at ground level. So I need mobility, I need to be able to hold positions that are sometimes uncomfortable, whether it’s grappling in the ruck or whatever it might be.” Pilates and physio, once supplementary, are now central pillars.

It’s a shift that has mirrored the evolution of AFL itself: from raw endurance and repetition to a holistic focus on movement, flexibility, and sustainability. It’s part of the reason the two stars have teamed up with Nike.

Nike Metcon 10

Lightweight, stable, and versatile, the latest Nike Metcon 10 cross-training shoe has found a home in the Swans’ gym. With a flat base for stability, sticky rubber for traction, and a breathable mesh upper, the Metcon 10 is engineered to meet the demands of professionals and weekend warriors alike.

“Our training is varied, particularly in the gym,” Taylor tells me. “We do a lot of strength work, but then we also do a lot of explosive power movements… I have found that this shoe (Nike Metcon 10) gives you the opportunity to put a barbell on your back and squat, but also get on the field and move on the weekend.”

As Nike EKIN Michael Osten explains to me, the secret to this enhanced versatility is the weight reduction. The latest Metcon 10 shoes shed a whopping 70 grams of weight from the previous model, allowing professionals like Taylor and Brodie to achieve optimum performance, while also improving the capabilities of everyday athletes. 

“To go 70 grams lighter from Metcon 9 to Metcon 10, that is a significant update,” Osten tells me. “The biggest change is the midsole material… that we’ve added to the Metcon 10. It’s really light, really responsive and really soft cushioning for athletes, which can help with mobility.”

With a flat base for stability, sticky rubber for traction, and a breathable mesh upper, the Metcon 10 is engineered to meet the demands of professionals and weekend warriors alike.

“From heavy squats to sled pushes, it just gives confidence that you’ve got the right platform beneath you,” Osten says.

Training Like an Athlete

For Adams and Grundy, the shoe is emblematic of a broader philosophy: training with intent, purpose, and adaptability.

“To me, training like an athlete is about having a growth mindset, showing up and being purposeful around continual improvement,” Grundy reflects. “Sometimes that might mean that you get the outcomes and the results that you want, and sometimes it won’t, but your process and your commitment to improvement have to be there.”

“We will always have the trophies and the LeBrons and the legacy piece, which is great and everyone will strive for that, but I’m just an everyday person as well, and sometimes winning is just showing up. I think it’s important that we change that narrative around success being pinned to performance every single time we’re training to how we perform. As a club, we’re having those discussions around how we win the way in which we win. We’re not always going to get the result every time we go out in the field, so what else are we hanging our hat on?”

“I can be a bit esoteric, so if I show up with intent, purpose, that’s the beauty of a team sport and having different personalities. You can come at it from different philosophies, but ultimately, you want the same thing.”

Ahead of the Swans’ final regular-season match of the year, the two veterans and teammates are walking the fine line between discipline and joy. When it comes time for the off-season break, Grundy reveals, it will be far more of the latter.

“It’s important that we just have fun with it because the season is just such a grind,” he says. “You’re always going to be in the monotony of it, and there is a sort of beauty in that, and we enjoy that, but then if you’re doing it for 12 months of the year, it can be challenging. Not to say it can’t be done, but I think the offseason and preseason give you the opportunity to break up that routine.”

So, as the two Swans veterans look toward 2026, the lesson is clear: success won’t be measured only in premierships, but in the ability to keep showing up, keep adapting, and keep training like an athlete.

The Nike Metcon 10 training shoes were officially revealed on 21 July 2025. Designed for functional and mixed-environment workouts, the shoes represent Nike’s most advanced purpose-built training footwear to date. Complete with an ultra-strong Hyperlift plate and responsive ReactX foam, the Metcon 10 is built for the everyday athlete and professional alike. You can buy a pair of the new Nike Metcon 10s online or at select retailers, with prices starting from AUD$200.