By Andrew Tidswell
Elite Sports Academy MD and Holbeach Utd player/coach
Being on the management team for Holbeach United this coming season has meant a busy few weeks planning the pre-season schedule and how we will approach the coming campaign.
Over the next few weeks, teams across England will embark on their own pre-season plans. Having said that, some teams – I have noticed – have already started.
Last season, I wrote an article regarding how coaches and managers really prove their worth in pre-season.
I still stand by this and always will. I have embarked on many pre-seasons now – and haven’t enjoyed a single one.
I play football because I love the game, but I do totally understand the physical side and attributes needed to compete.
However, for me they need to be realistic to the game we play. If I wanted to run around at the same pace for a long period of time, I would go to an athletics track.
For Holbeach, the lads can look forward to lots of game related and specific training with an element of enjoyment within conditioning training.
Tom Roberts, Darren Jarvis and I have spoken about creating an environment where players want to come to training.
There is nothing worse than knowing that you will be doing the same thing time and time again – because mentally you have already lost half of the squad.
At Step Five, a lot of players have manual physical jobs in which they get up early and graft.
They work hard, so hammering players later that evening for not working hard is not on.
The players will already know and do know they will need to work hard to be in this team – so working hard is what they will do because of the level of competition we have at the club.
