Chelsea: What can we learn about the players’ shutdown fitness training?
By George Perry
Chelsea players have to keep in shape while football is shutdown and life is mostly shut out. Just because you watch them from your couch doesn’t mean you have to spend the shutdown on your seat!
Chelsea players are keeping busy during the shutdown period, playing silly social media challenges, making ill-conceived TikTok videos (Christian, wyd bro) and otherwise staying as busy, sane and fit as anyone can under the circumstances. Fitness and conditioning coaches from Crystal Palace, Bristol City and Grimsby Town offered a glimpse into what their players are doing for at-home training routines during the time away from the club, so what can we learn from them?
For starters, football players have to run a lot, and when they can’t run on the pitch they have to run on roads, especially hilly ones.
Crystal Palace’s head of sport science Scott Guyett told Training Ground Guru that players normally cover 28-32 kilometers a week. It’s nearly impossible to replicate the volumes and intensities – let alone the sharp angles and changes of direction – at home by yourself. He advises “you have to be realistic about what you can do” outside of “a football context.”
Fitness and performance coaches – at least those interviewed, and Chelsea did not respond to an interview request – use the Strava app to track the players distance, paces and elevation change while doing hill runs.
Guyett and Bristol City’s Patrick Orme both talked about their players taking home various forms of weights. This is not surprising, as nearly every fitness coach in the game has a role for weight training in their programmes, unlike Maurizio Sarri (who is not a fitness coach and does not have any sport science background), who famously proscribed weight training.
Grimsby Town’s professional development phase coach, Callum Lester, spoke of bodyweight exercises to complement the running sessions. Since he works with younger athletes, it would be understandable if he did not want them doing any weight work without a coach to monitor their performance. Some coaches, in general, counsel minimal weight training for young athletes, instead preferring resistance bands to minimize the compressive stresses on the players’ still-developing bones (with the growth plates being the main area of concern).
The multimillion dollar question is when football will return. These coaches have to keep the players ready to return to training after an indefinite break. When the players come back, they will have a few weeks to ramp up their intensity to reach what they need to play competitive football.
Lester estimates the players will need one week of training at the training ground to make up for every week they are at home for the shutdown. However, he said if the shutdown extends beyond four weeks, then they will probably not need any more than four weeks to be match fit. This mirrors all three coaches’ perspective that the shutdown is similar to an unplanned off-season, which will turn into a quasi-preseason whenever the doors reopen.
Next. Chelsea's most under-appreciated Blues: Four players, two managers and the good doctor. dark