The squad has been back at the Carrington training ground since last Monday, and the emphasis has been on getting the best out of them rather than overrworking them before they are ready.
“It’s one thing to train hard, but it is completely different to try to train properly and we want to do proper training at the moment,” says Juan.
“We are pushing them as far as every one of them allowed us to, but I have to praise the players because they have come back in better shape than they did last year.”
Juan, who is also Assistant Coach, is helped by the latest technology in the pursuit of preparing the squad.
“We are helped by the backing of the Polar Team system, where we analyse every day each player’s performance on a graph. It means we are not guessing, we know exactly at what level the players are and we can get everyone working correctly in training.
“It also prevents overrunning them, because too much pounding of joints especially in the knees and lower back can hinder them. We can train the players in the right way, rather than just as hard as we can.”
Juan recently attained his UEFA “A” coaching license from the English FA, and he is pleased with the way the players have looked after themselves during the close season.
“Every player went into the break with a programme tailored to his needs, but to find out where they were when they came back we did the vVO2 Max test. Based on that test on the first day we tailored the week to the needs of the groups we put the players into.
“It shows that they have followed the work that we gave them to do during the break, and it has allowed us to start training more anaerobically from day one. That is as opposed to just doing aerobic training because they might not be fit enough, that has not happened because their fitness before training even started was already very good.”
