‘Ramping it up’

Liam Hayes is the founder and CEO of TrainMyAthlete, a performance and well-being analytics platform, which works with a number of professional clubs and has been using anonymised data to look at training trends and potential risks during the period of lockdown.

“We have noted a lot of players are doing long-distance running to keep fit because that’s what they have access to,” he tells Goal. “Not every player has a home gym. 

“So we are seeing that they are now about 60 per cent on sprinting, accelerating and decelerating, from what they do in a training session or match. They can’t replicate that in [home] training. 

“That’s where the data is incredibly valuable. It isn’t just about preventing Covid-19 spreading through the squad – the sports science is about building match fitness to reduce the risk of injury. 

“Normally you would have a pre-season over six weeks and be able to spread the minutes out across the players. Now you have got such a short window to get ready, this is where sports scientists and physios come into their own. You need to ramp up the intensity, but any ramp up in intensity is going to risk injury. 

I think that the clubs who manage that the best will be the most successful.”

Flaminia Ronca, an exercise physiologist at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health, part of University College London, agrees.

She told BBC Sport: “It’s possible that the players may have lost up to 15% of their fitness, which they now need to regain in a very short time.

“And I think this is really where the science of training becomes so crucial. Coaches will have to be very creative and combine the most effective methods of training with the safest injury prevention methods, all condensed into this very tight timeframe.”