Fit For Purpose

United fitness coach Tony Strudwick gives ManUtd.com an exclusive insight into the players' pre-season work...

The difference between this pre-season tour and the previous two I’ve been on is that we’ve got blocks of time where we can really concentrate on training.

This is definitely the most enjoyable part of the year for a coach like me, because the primary focus is on fitness. Here in Chicago there aren’t too many media or commercial commitments so the players can really concentrate on pre-season conditioning.

The way that the tour has panned out for the first two weeks – in Chicago for most of the first week and then in Philadelphia for the second week - is very training intensive. From a fitness coach’s point of view it’s great.

The players on tour returned to Carrington last week when they were tested and checked out after the summer break. Everyone looked in pretty good shape and the main purpose then was just to get them back into training and back into the groove. This week we’re stepping it up and aiming to get them ready for games.

The players still do a lot of running during pre-season but we combine that with the football side. The running that we do is something we feel is more specific to the demands of the game. Rather than getting the players to do a 30-minute run, we train at a higher intensity where we get high, match-realistic speeds.

I don’t think the running part is any easier than it used to be, but I think we’re smarter with the way we train nowadays and I’m really pleased with the players' work so far.

There are three of us fitness coaches on the tour – Richard Hawkins, Gary Walker and myself. A couple of years ago some people might have raised their eyebrows about that, but when you look at the technology we have at our disposal nowadays there’s a lot of work for us to do.

For example, we have GPS technology which allows us to track every run, sprint and movement the players make and we can download that on to a computer and examine all the information. Richard spends time analysing all the facts and figures, while Gary looks after the sessions in the gym. The warm-up stuff I do with the players at training and before games is actually a very small part of the job.

The planning and organisation that has gone into this trip has been top class, as you’d expect from a club of our magnitude. At the moment things are going very well.