PRE-SEASON as a Sunday league footballer is relatively simple.
Three friendly games are followed by some players attending one ‘fitness’ session, which involves a few stretches, a lap of the pitch and a crossbar challenge before going to the local pub for a few pints.
SunSport’s Lloyd Canfield trained with Cambridge United to test how tough their training sessions are
Lloyd joined in some strenuous activities and was left nearly FAINTING
Lloyd was put through his paces with some high-tech drills
As a professional for EFL side Cambridge United in League Two, however, things couldn’t be more different.
Intense workouts, demanding technical training sessions, and a constant tracking of your diet, sleep, water intake, and ability to recover mean that these players will be in tip-top condition when the season kicks off.
With Brooks as the club’s new front-of-shirt sponsor, Cambridge United players are taking their fitness more seriously than ever.
I had the opportunity to head to the club’s training ground and experience what it’s like to do pre-season as a professional.
Funnily enough, our session still began with a jog around the pitch and some stretching, but beyond that the session couldn’t have been more different from what I am used to.
Complex fitness drills were explained to me like the rules of a board game translated from Japanese to English by someone who’d only ever read the instructions upside down.
I tried to navigate my way up and down the pitch in various forms with my heart beating out of my chest and my blood pressure at levels it hasn’t been in years.
After about 30 minutes of fitness training at this level, I was kneeling on the floor, gasping for water and feeling faint.
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That was before watching the team train with a ball, a showcase of the elite technical skill required to make it pro.
Every session is monitored by every player’s personal WHOOP band, a fitness tracker that explains to the coaches at the club how much sleep the players are getting, how hard they’re working themselves, and how well recovered they are.
But players’ attitudes too have changed, long gone are the days of a summer break filled with fancy meals, drinking and coming back to pre-season overweight or unfit, in fact things have almost gone too far the other way.
The modern footballer loves to flood Instagram with personal training clips in the off-season, presenting a new challenge to clubs, as players can be overworked or get injured before their professional campaign has even begun.
Cambridge United monitor all of this, to ensure their players are ready for the new season.
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