The Walsall-born boss, who took his side through seven unbeaten league games before they fell to Doncaster, admitted that he and Strength and Conditioning Coach Nick Barnett have been working limit the amount of training the players have to do as they hope to avoid any burnouts.
Speaking via the Express & Star, Dean said; "It’s been quite intense and it’s something we have to manage. It’s something I look at with Nick, in the sports science, he has a massive input and it has kind of been about bringing the training loads down and not pushing them too much."
Keates, who saw his side play nine games in 29 days in a busy start to the campaign, admitted that playing Saturday-Tuesday was not ideal but makes sense as not to build up any sort of fixture backlog, with an unpredictable winter arriving in a few short months.
He continued; "It makes sense. It’s not ideal but it makes sense, because you never know what the winter is going to be like. It’s not just that we went Saturday to Saturday, we’ve still had to manage the week to make sure we don’t push them too much.
"Then this week we’ll raise them back up as they’ve had a bit of a tapered week. As a player you’d rather play, that’s my experience.
"But when it’s Saturday-Tuesday there’s a lot of recovery time in there, it affects what you can do on the training pitch. It was tapered but it was an opportunity to work more on the tactical side."