Canaries bring in fitness expert


©Eastern Daily Press, Saturday, July 5, 2008

Norwich City players have been given full marks for not over-indulging during their summer holidays.

Manager Glenn Roeder said the players were in “fantastic” shape after returning to pre-season training on Tuesday.

Roeder has recruited world renowned fitness and conditioning expert Alan Pearson who has worked with some of the biggest names in sport including, last season Bayern Munich.

Former West Ham and Manchester City player Steve Lomas is also helping with training at Colney as the players prepare for the Opening Championship game of the season at Coventry on 9th August.

“The work they have done so far has been very good,” said Roeder. “I think the players have been very impressed with what Alan Pearson has put on. He is certainly putting them through the hoop but they have responded in the way I want them to.”    Alan Pearson in Action

It was Pearson’s SAQ® INTERNATIONAL company who worked with Bayern last season, but it’s the man himself who worked with Roeder at West Ham and came in for one session at the end of last season – who has been taken on by City to head the fitness and strengthening programme.

“When I worked with him at West Ham he made a big impression on me and the players and he has got world wide experience, Not just in soccer as he calls it, but in rugby as well,” Roeder added.

“He spent a lot of time in Australia with several different rugby teams and has been involved with quite a few football teams.

“His company, the people who work for his company, worked with Bayern last year.”

City players will have more chance in the coming week to do ball work, but the days of cross country runs are long gone.

“They have had the balls out a little bit already, so we will probably use them more and more as they days go by, but of course you can get some terrific fitness work in using the balls,” he said.

“At the moment it is probably 80pc of the time they are running without the ball, but no more of the old fashioned cross country and long distance running which we now realise from the sports science side of things wasn’t doing us any good whatsoever, although at the time we thought it was”.

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