Raiders players have been touring supermarket aisles, eating lunch as a pack and even sending photos of their nightly meals to the club's new full-time nutritional expert, ensuring they are fuelled up and shredded down for the NRL season beginning Sunday.

The latest weigh-in proves Raiders players are becoming what they eat, most hitting their targets as the club aims to build a lean, mean Green Machine.

X-ray bodyscans of the entire Raiders squad last month reveal the average Raiders player now weighs 101.1 kilograms, consisting of 14.95 per cent body fat. The squad started pre-season, in November last year, weighing an average 98kg and 16.8 per cent body fat.

So across the squad of about 40, players have dropped 2 per cent body fat but gained 2kg - all lean muscle.

To put it in perspective, and show how body shapes of elite rugby league players have transformed over 40 years, the 1975 premiership-winning Sydney Roosters forward pack averaged about 93kg per player, while Immortal Arthur Beetson, at 105kg, was considered an on-field giant.

Now winger Jeremy Hawkins represents the Raiders' average prototype almost perfectly at 100kg, while Canberra's biggest player, 22-year-old prop Shannon Boyd, is 122kg.

The Raiders have built on their high-performance coaching staff under Nigel Ashley-Jones this pre-season, bringing in full-time doctor Steve Whiting and and a specialised strength and power coach, former Raiders player Jeremy Robinson.

It has enabled strength and conditioning coach Leigh Woodbridge to focus on rehabilitation and nutrition this season.

Woodbridge's role with rehabilitation has paid off, the entire Raiders squad fit and available for selection for the NRL season-opener.

Until this year, the Raiders had only brought in a nutritionist on a consultancy basis when needed.

"In pre-season these guys are getting pushed three to four hours a day, five or six days a week," Woodbridge said. "It doesn't matter how hard you drive your car, if you don't put fuel in it it's not going to work. That's what I've been trying to emphasise all pre-season, diet is 60-70 per cent of the battle as an elite athlete. If they can get that right, they can train harder, it gives them better results, they improve ... it's a cycle."

The Raiders have been eating lunch as a squad at the neighbouring AIS up to four times a week. Some players have become so conscious of their diets, they've even started sending Woodbridge nightly photos of their meals.

"It's just a way to make them think about what they're putting in their mouths," Woodbridge said. "They text it to me and I'll give them some feedback. I'll keep those photos too and use them as a bit of education for the younger players in U16s, 18s and 20s, they seem to learn better by seeing things visually."

Woodbridge has even gone to the extreme of taking younger players on supermarket tours.

"Especially some of the younger guys just living out of home for the first time," Woodbridge said. "I might find a recipe and go to the supermarket with them. You often forget these guys are not long out of home, they've had their parents cooking for them, they don't know what to do.

"When I sat down with some of the younger guys who were a bit light on, some weren't eating enough for the amount of training they were doing. We want them to increase their muscle mass, they've got to meet their energy requirements but then go above and beyond that to build some muscle tissue."

The Raiders weigh-in before and after every training session, more as a measure of hydration. They also perform skinfold tests every month.

But the best measure of body composition is when the Raiders use the University of Canberra's dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scan - known as a DXA scan - four times a year.

The full body scan enables an accurate measure of lean muscle, fat and bone.

The scan in this story is of a Raiders player, so we can't show you his face.

But results show the player's physical progression over the past 12 months. He now weighs 112.1kg, consisting of 14.7 per cent fat. At the same time last year he was more than five kilograms lighter, at 106.9kg, but also had a higher fat level (16 per cent).

"I'm very happy with the boys' body composition at the moment. As a squad we're a bit heavier this year, but our body fat has dropped," Woodbridge said.

"I'm pushing to try and get those [body fat readings] a bit lower, about another 1 per cent as a squad. The majority of players, 90 per cent, are hitting targets."