More than any other team at the World Cup, the Welsh have paid a huge physical price for getting to the quarter-finals.
They have lost several players to injury, replacements have been called up and the survivors are battered and bruised.
Blindside flanker Dan Lydiate is one of the lucky ones. He damaged his eye socket playing against Fiji two weeks ago and missed last week's match against Australia but has been cleared to play South Africa on Saturday.
"He just had a little plate inserted into his eye socket," Gatland told reporters on Thursday.
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After surveying the wounded, Gatland allowed his players some relief this week, giving them a rare break from the training pitch to rest their weary bodies.
“At this stage you have to back yourself. We are a bit thin on numbers in the backline. But we have coped with that well. We have freshened up this week," he said.
"It was a tough pool we have come through. We haven’t done a lot of training (this week). We had yesterday (Wednesday) off and didn’t train on Tuesday afternoon and had recovery on Monday, We haven’t done a lot. But mentally and physically we must make sure we are right."
A hard taskmaster, Gatland does not have much time for sympathy, knowing that although reaching the last eight was hard enough, the road ahead is even tougher.
As his injured players took a break from training, the New Zealander went to work on their minds and read them the riot act.
Gatland was unimpressed by his team's loss to Australia last week, particularly after the Wallabies were reduced to 13 men and his team failed to capitalise.
To beat the Springboks, Gatland told his players, they also need to use their brains.
"We've been really hard on the players in terms of making the right decisions at this level," he said.
"You must be able to make decisions under pressure and we didn't do that on Saturday.
"The players' reaction was fantastic. We keep saying to them that being critical is about making them better players. We don't want to make excuses."
Gatland knows what to expect from South Africa and is confident his side can beat the twice world champions.
The Boks suffered a stunning loss to Japan in their opening match but have reverted to type, thumping Samoa, Scotland and the United States to top their group.
"They have got over the shock of losing to Japan and that has galvanised them as a team and a squad. They are going to be a tough proposition," Gatland said.
“The last couple of times we have played them we have come away feeling positive. Where we have come on is that, when we have played southern hemisphere teams in the past, we would have been hanging on by our fingernails and just trying to stay in the match.
"We don’t feel like that anymore. We feel we want to impose ourselves and, if we are good enough on the day, hopefully we can win.”
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
