 As the Premier League enters its fifth week since a ball was last kicked due to the coronavirus outbreak, like many of us, the players have been showing just how they're keeping themselves fit at home via social media. There may not be much football being played at the moment, but that doesn't mean all club operations have stopped. Our very own Paul Belverston sat down digitally with Bournemouth's head of sports science Dan Hodges to reveal just how his role has changed during the hiatus. Cheers for doing this on a what I'm sure is a busy day. Tell us about your role and responsibilities on any normal day in a standard season. So yeah, overall responsibility for the fitness of the players. Obviously planning training with the manager, overseeing the training prescription, looking after the gym side of things and the nutrition for the day to day of the players and monitoring everything and really feeding that back and making sure that everyone's where they need to be. And so how different are things in this current situation? Yeah, very different. Obviously very new, very new to everyone. So you know, a different challenge. Obviously, you know, it's not the be one end all the most important thing is the health side of things and football definitely comes second, but it's certainly a challenging position at the minute. What are the biggest challenges? The biggest challenge is staying in touch with the players and making sure that they're on board with what we're trying to give them, you know, to do and making sure they know how important it is to tick over and make sure that they're good for when we are eventually training again that they're ready to go. It seems to me it's like a sort of a mid-season pre-season for them. Is that the sort of thing that they're, you know, because it is just fitness, no bold work, that sort of thing? Yeah, it is. It won't be as tough as our pre-season, that's for sure. We're just trying to make sure that they maintain a level of fitness and when they come back, you know, we're not having to do too much to get them to where they need to be. Being in touch with all the players as you are, are you doing that as they're doing some of their fitness work? Are you watching them train? How much involvement are you having on that sort of things? Yeah, quite well. It's difficult. We've given each an individualized program, obviously based around what they would normally do in a training week, either in their position or as an individual. They're then asked to kind of, everything they do, they're asked to fill out on an app for us. And we use Kidman Labs, that's an app that we obviously get hold of straight away. Other than that, I'm in touch with all of them every week. I think I'm annoying them. Setting them out different challenges, you know, bike challenges or running or gym stuff and then sending that out to all the staff and having leaderboards go in. So, it's been pretty good to be fair. The guys have been very good. They're a good group. They're buying very well. How difficult is it finding variety to give them to help that sort of motivation and engagement and things? Yeah, it is difficult and trying to make sure they're all engaged. They're all motivated to do it. Had a few moans and groans from a couple of the guys that are, you know, now getting to the point where they're a little bit bored with having to exercise every day or doing what we ask them to do, but, you know, just change their schedules around a little bit and they were satisfied. You know, you have plenty on your plate. As I said, rather than start on a normal day in a standard season, are you working harder now than you would be normally? It's certainly working differently. You know, the challenge at the minute is trying to plan for all of eventualities, you know, there's so much uncertainty as to when we're going to start training or when the game is going to start. You're reading different stories every day. I mean, close contact with the manager and trying to come up with new ideas, different things that we can do to the people that we can do with the players and make ourselves better. So it's really a good period for reflection and trying to make sure that we're better when we do return. Fantastic. So as far as the health of the squad and the first team, I presume you're looking after all ages as well. How pleased are you? Give us a score out of 10. How are they all doing now at this stage after what's it been a month, something like that? Yeah, score out of 10. On the whole, I probably go eight out of 10. There's certainly room for improvement, but the guys are in a good place at the minute for what I know of. Oh, fantastic. Well, Dan, thanks so much for talking to us today. I'm going to get back to your two young daughters and all of the emails and the face times and everything else you've got to do with the players. But yeah, cheers for talking to us today. No problem. Thank you for having me.