Annoyingly, an ankle injury I picked up (I sometimes think the phrase 'glass ankles' were made for me, I'm always twisting them) didn't allow me to partake in the next training session, but it healed quite quickly and I was almost back to normal by the Thursday evening. We started off with a light jog around the premises. Even to ease into the session, the pace
wasn’t particularly challenging and I found myself firmly at the front of the
group, whilst some others lagged behind. I have always found the insistence on doing these things together interesting, and would like to find out the reasons behind it. The man taking the run (perhaps an
assistant manager, he hadn’t been at my first session…), instead of telling the
others to catch up, told the pack at the front to slow down. I did find it puzzling that we were asked to run at a less productive pace so that those having a chat with their mates at the
back don’t get left behind, but it's just a warm-up I guess. Where the truly cringeworthy side of football revealed itself was in the stretching exercises conducted following
the run. It’s unlikely to escape anyone that the England encountered some very hot weather in July and those doing physical exercise would have wanted
to keep their body temperature down. That evening, a handful of team members turned
up wearing vests, pretty sensible attire for such weather I would have thought.
The bloke leading this decided to make a joke of it, declaring:
“right, anyone whose sleeves are missing from their t-shirts, 20 press-ups for
looking like a fanny.” This kind of joke based on what players wear isn’t
uncommon in football and falls under the term ‘banter’, and such ribbing
is fine. However, as a means to attempt to make jokes about masculinity and such bullshit, which is what the joke contains undertones of, I find this idea odd. From my experience in English football, the idea of pure masculinity seems very central among players, managers and fans alike. Funnily enough, idiots call players fairies and other unintelligent insults for
wearing gloves in winter, yet the opposite of that – which would better fit the
‘real man’ criteria – is also unacceptable. Maybe someone is only a real man if
he plays in gear which isn’t suitable to the weather. So I look forward to the praise I'll get when I turn up to training in 30° heat wearing a sweatshirt, overcoat, woolly hat, scarf and gloves. The next bit was also a bit questionable. Clearly unaware that "Kingfisher" is an Indian beer, the guy asked a players in a vest displaying this logo where he’d
acquired it. After giving the appropriate answer, the assistant manager bloke looked momentarily confused before an eventual highly amusing quip of “what happened then? Could they not afford to put the sleeves on it?” Hmm.
Even though improvements are gradually being made, shouty managers and coaches who motivate in this way are still all too common, even at this level. From my experience, these types are
generally known as P.E. teachers. OK, clearly for some raising their voice works better than speaking in a softer tone, and some players rise to being shouted at more than others. The problem is, there often isn't much sense in what's being shouted. In my first session, having heard the
first-team manager yell a few random things, I wasn’t surprised when I later
discovered he was a P.E. teacher. I'm probably generalising, but I’ve experienced dickheads of P.E. teachers
from a very young age throughout my school life and Sunday League managers who
shout the same thing – back then I was pretty sensitive and let that kind of
shit get to me much more than I should have, but now I just learn to block it
out. I would say players would be well advised to learn this, but that they are
exposed to it as impressionable children makes things a bit more problematic. On
the Thursday evening we were doing various exercises using ladders. I haven't actually used them all that often, and I also hadn’t encountered one in a very long time, so it was
bound to confuse the hell out of me and made it a pretty nervous experience. I almost
managed to get through it unscathed but there was one blip. A fair few players
were struggling on the first run of ‘two jumps forward, one jump back’ through
the ladder, myself included. This happened to be noticed by the same guy leading the session: “come
on this is the basics, if you can’t even do this then you might as well go home.” It's just important to remember not to take these things at face value, but my history tells me this is easier said than done. The fitness work was very beneficial on
the whole, though. The best (or worst) exercise involved 3 separate cones,
consisting first of a sprint to one followed by 5 reps of something, also
involving a ball, the second cone then ten reps and the third cone then 15. The
most tiring was getting down into a press-up position before getting up again
and having to jump up and head the ball back. The first five are OK, then when
doing the set of ten you start to feel it approaching halfway through, and on
the last you feel like giving up after about 2 or 3. But you have to keep going
– the coaches shout, personally I find that it doesn’t motivate me, but if it doesn't I guess you just have to ignore it. There's no way of enjoying an exercise like this, I suppose.
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