FourFourTwo Performance and Lucozade Sport have taken two amateur teams under their wing to try and transform their fortunes. Laleham have been selected to take part in a five month programme following these Average Joes as they try to get their bodies into Premier League shape

First stop, pre-season training. Click here but for the faint hearted, look away now…

On a hot and humid July day. Britain basked in a 33 degree heatwave, all the way from Land’s End to John O’Groats but 25 amateur footballers were scared. They’ve been dreading this day all summer. They’re about to start pre-season.

Instead of spending an afternoon re-arranging the furniture of their underpants and reminiscing about a summer’s debauchery, the charges of Surrey amateur clubs Laleham FC and Holmbury St Mary were put through their paces by Jon Goodman, former Republic of Ireland international and director of Think Fitness.

Over the next five months, FourFourTwo Performance will be following their progress and to help them achieve their goals, FFT and Lucozade Sport will provide the players with expert advice on training, diet and nutrition. Each team will also be assigned a mentor to push them to their limits, and we’re not talking clipboard coaches from Sunday league football, either.

What’s more, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gareth Bale will be taking time out of their busy top-flight schedules to give the team drills and encouragement.

But, first things first, it’s the hellish spectre of pre-season training. Goodman is expecting to see beads of sweat and tears of despair.

“We’re looking at all the vital aspects of footballing performance, from risk of injury through to the ability to maintain a certain level of intensity during a match,” he tells FFT.

“The endurance test will break a few of them and they won’t enjoy the body fat testing.”

Shuffling into a state-of-the-art performance hall at St Mary’s University in south west London, the test subjects look worried. “We’ve all been drinking and doing the usual things amateur players do during the summer. We’re going to struggle,” admits Steve Grace, captain of Laleham FC.

Goodman shows no mercy. The players are put through a series of tests to measure power, mobility and inches around the waste. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to measure – apart from muffin tops and moobs.

There’s no respite as the players are marched out on to the field to face three challenges, designed to test speed, agility and endurance.

Gasping for breath and desperate to rehydrate their fatigued muscles, the players guzzle a supply of Lucozade Sport drinks and there’s a marked improvement in their performance.

Goodman admits some of the players even “compare well to professional athletes” in the speed tests.

However, their weary legs are about to go through hell with the dreaded Yo-yo test.

This energy-sapper requires the players to run from one end of a 20-metre deep grid to the other.

They increase their speed according to the pace set by the beeps. Each shuttle run is followed by 10 seconds of recovery.

As they get more tired the beeps get closer together. The buzzer sounds. It’s a massacre. Bodies are everywhere. Tongues hang out of panting mouths. Lungs rapidly inflate and deflate.

What did their efforts amount to? “A reasonable benchmark for a professional footballer is level 25,” reveals Goodman. “The best on the day was 18 and the majority were around 11, but the good thing is this is very trainable.”

For the Laleham captain and his dog-tired troops this has been a dry slap around the chops. “We started last season like a steam train, but we tired and lost the league title on the final day,” wheezes Laleham defender Grace.

“We need to make the most of this opportunity and embrace sports science because it could make all the difference to our season.”

Will they do it? To find out, keep your eyes on performance.fourfourtwo.com.

Laleham F.C.

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