Pre-season training - FA- Norwich City

During their visit to St. George’s Park last week, Norwich City invited our cameras to two of their training sessions to gain an exclusive insight into the design of their early pre-season training programme.

With it being the first time the team had been together since the end of the previous campaign, the national football centre’s first-class sports performance facilities provided the perfect backdrop for the Canaries to begin the necessary physiological and aerobic groundwork needed for a busy Championship season ahead.

The club’s Head of Sports Science Nick Davies is the man tasked with getting Norwich’s players ready for their opening fixture on August 9 and stressed the importance of football specific training as a cornerstone of their preparations.

“The beauty of what we are trying to achieve is not just to [treat] fitness and football as two separate entities but actually [provide] a football conditioning specific [programme],” he said.

“We feel that is the best way to maximise what these players are capable of, and I think they buy in to that. It is not just about getting fit but it is a long term athletic plan for them which we are trying to move these guys on from what they were last year.”

Davies, who joined the Canaries in 2013 from Birmingham City, took the squad through an afternoon of intense physical practices that, as he explained, served to incorporate ball-work and specific football movement patterns to condition not only the players’ aerobic capabilities but their muscles as well.

“With us being in the first week of our pre-season it is that aerobic base and that aerobic power that we are really looking to maximise at this stage, but it is not just about physiological systems,” he said.

“We are also getting all the movement patterns back for what these players have to do come match day.

“So it is all very well the heart and lungs working but we have to make sure the muscles are conditioned also.

“It has been really specific movement patterns…that also put a demand on their aerobic system."