The pre-season struggle - how hard is it?

Professional footballers all over the world dread the return from their short lived summer holiday. After weeks of sitting by a pool in the Caribbean or sipping Sangria in Spain, the dreaded return to action awaits.

How do the players stay in shape, or don’t they?

Sir Trevor Brooking looks back to his days as a footballer and gives TheFA.com an insight into pre-season.

"Present day pre-season football is a lot less daunting than it used to be," said The FA’s Director of Football Development.

With a close eye being kept on players, nutrition and advances in medical sports science, it’s a lot easier than it used to be.

"Match fitness was a different demand and different to what you were doing in training," he added.

Nowadays, with the greater number of matches, there is an even higher demand upon players. Advances in medical science have allowed better and more efficient training schemes to be put in place for pre-season training.

"Everything is focused towards gradual progression, the body is understood far more than it used to be," he said. "Clubs have widened their base knowledge of how they prepare their players."

Sir Trevor recalled that his summers as a player were "not as professionalised as it is nowadays".

The former West Ham star, who won two FA Cups, was not alone in dreading the first two weeks of training and for most players it was not a week eagerly anticipated.

"It was a case of getting your body back into shape from where it had deteriorated."

He has memories of horror stories – "some players had put on a couple of stones" - something that would be unheard of these days. Sir Trevor remembers a gradual progression of building fitness thanks to a "ten day period of cross-country runs and other forms of heavy stamina work which gave dormant muscles a hard work out".

Since retiring as a player, Sir Trevor has seen a rapid progression in technicalities of training and sports science, including the body mass index.

He recalled a meeting from the early 90s when Bryan Robson had signed a young Brazilian, Emerson, and when Sir Trevor asked what he was like as a player, the then Boro boss simply replied that the Riverside newboy had an extremely low body fat measurement.

Sir Trevor, who admitted he was not naturally fit, had a few tips for grassroots footballers wanting to stay trim over the summer.

"A bit of jogging in the summer months actually eased the pain of the first few training sessions and the older I got the more I realised you couldn’t let your fitness deteriorate. A regular bit of training however small it may seem maintains your fitness levels and prevents little niggling injuries."