Having the new gym on site is a great added tool for all the coaches. Sadly of course Paul Conway is no longer with us but he had worked on fitness tests for all the scholars and from those we drew up a free weights programme for them to work on. They started to do those on Monday evenings along with the team aspects of fitness work that we do.What Paul helped us to develop was an individual programme for each player. We now have free use of the new facilities and we are maximising that use so it definitely helps our job. Obviously I would love a grassed training pitch as well and know that if I did have that along with things like the gym I could more or less guarantee another success like Matty Hughes.

  

Out of season we organised a free weights programme for the scholars which Guy Proctor took and a homework session for them to follow up with. As a result the lads have all been taught the right techniques for the lifting of weights as well as the Health and Safety aspects. Obviously young boys full of testerone can get a little giddy at times so it is about making them understand the right way to go about improving their techniques. Once the techniques are embedded you can add more weights to the excercise and they can build strength and power. Now it is maintaining the increases that we put on over the summer and we are using the gym at every opportunity.

The facility will also be a boon in terms of the rehab of injured players. Fortunately in a great move for us we got John Lucas in this season as a full time physio for the Youth and Centre of Excellence players as well as for Reserve team games. He takes a lot of weight off Andy Thorpe and can work every day with the younger players. No disrespect to what went before but if you have a 16 year old with a calf strain and the clubs main striker with a hamstring though they both got treated it was always going to be case of prioritising. To be fair to the club they have backed what I wanted to do and John is now in place and working with my lads.

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