West Ham United’s players slept soundly after three training sessions in Switzerland on Thursday, with the same intensive workout planned for Friday.
The Hammers were put through their paces morning, noon and evening at their pre-season camp in the Alpine spa town of Bad Ragaz.
Manuel Pellegrini and his staff assembled the squad at the Sportplatz Ri-Au home of Swiss 3. Liga club FC Bad Ragaz at 8am for the first session of the day – interval training – before heading back to the team hotel for breakfast.
The group were back on the coach to Ri-Au for a pre-lunch strength and conditioning session before dodging the lunchtime rain and spending the afternoon resting and recovering.
The third session of the day saw the footballs come out before dinner, and Head of Medical Richard Collinge explained the variety of training would prepare the players for the demands of the Premier League season ahead.
At this stage of the season, you want a variety of stimulus, as the body works and responds in many different ways
Head of Medical Richard Collinge
“At this stage of the season, you want a variety of stimulus, as the body works and responds in many different ways,” said Collinge.
“The morning session was interval-based running and also installing the mentality of getting up early and having a work ethic. We were looking at cardiovascular fitness in that session.
“The second session focused on injury-prevention. There is a strength and conditioning culture we want to use with the mobile gym we have set up down at the training facility to encourage resilience and robustness.
“We want the players to have confidence in their bodies, which means they have to do some gym work, but we have got to be really clever in way we do that gym work to make sure it complements what we do on the pitch.
“What we don’t want to do is some gym work which is slightly random, ad hoc and doesn’t carry onto the field. That’s completely inappropriate, so the gym work the players have done will help them on the pitch and recovery-wise in the periods between games.
“The third session was more of a football session. The manager and the coaching staff are keen that the players have the ball at their feet very quickly and training with a good tempo and intensity.
“We will then set up our clinic before, between and after each session to try to prevent injuries and keep the players at the optimal level.
“We’re ramping up training loads very quickly in pre-season, so to do three football sessions on the pitch on the same day in week one could be quite injurious to the players and we might be setting ourselves up for problems.
“We will also hone in on the individual player’s needs over the next few weeks as, in any one group, goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders or attackers might have slightly different demands on them.”
The players will train three times again on Friday ahead of their opening pre-season fixture at Challenge League club FC Winterthur on Sunday afternoon.
West Ham will also face Wycombe Wanderers, Preston North End, Aston Villa and Ipswich Town before kicking-off the 2018/19 Premier League campaign at Liverpool on Saturday 11 August.