Melbourne defender James Frawley ticks all the boxes required to be described as such.
Shaken off a nagging injury? Check.
Gained extra muscle mass? Check.
Ready to take the next step? Double check.
Frawley laughs at the description and argues it should apply not just to him, but the majority of his teammates who are currently doing the hard yards on the pre-season track.
"It's good to be training well, but everyone is at the minute," Frawley says.
"All the skills seem to have lifted from last year, everyone seems to be a lot fitter and everyone's just really keen to get stuck in. Most of the guys are flying.
"I went back to Ballarat in the off-season for a couple of weeks to just get my mind right so I could come back in the right frame of mind as well as in good physical shape.
"I've had a clear run at a pre-season for the first time which has been a real help. There's no more stress fractures and my feet are holding up well."
The 20-year-old's right foot has been a near-constant source of frustration since a stress fracture was first detected in his first year at the club. But something as simple as finding the correct footwear has finally solved the problem.
Frawley has added a just over two kilograms of muscle since the end of the season which he hopes will allow him to spend more time in a key defensive post next year as he looks to add to his 20 career games.
He admits it has been a steep learning curve for him over the first two years of his AFL career and points to a particularly torrid afternoon in Adelaide as a tough, but valuable lesson.
"When we played the Crows over there I played on Brett Burton and he just kept turning me around, but during the week we sort of sat down and went through the tape to help work out what I should have done," he says.
"He kept getting me on the lead, so I've just got to stand in front and give myself more room to stop the lead and then give myself the chance to spoil the high ball coming in.
"There's lots of different things like that that you've just got to learn as you go along and next time something like that happens you should be able to adapt a bit more quickly.
"I've learned a lot from Sean Wellman just in terms of positioning, footwork, cutting off leads and all that sort of stuff. There's lots of different stuff you need to get your head around."
It's not an easy job being a defender in a team that's on the way to finishing last, but Frawley maintains the kind of pressure the side was regularly subjected to last season will ultimately turn out to be a positive.
"We saw it as a challenge. The ball was coming down a lot, but that also means you've got more opportunities to learn and develop which hopefully will mean that we'll get better quicker as a unit," he says.
"The more exposed to it you are the more you should be able to learn.
"It's just about all of us doing a job all over the field. The guys up forward will work to keep the ball up there, then the midfield will be working on putting pressure on so the ball isn't coming into defence so well which gives us a better chance to spoil and then run the ball out.
"It's all about team defence; when we all defend together that's when we'll play our best footy."
