With all the buzz surrounding Orlando City’s two Designated Player signings this week, you’d be forgiven for looking past the hard work being done at the Orlando Health Training Ground at Osceola Heritage Park.
But this is perhaps the most important time of the year for a soccer team. The Lions, returning from their offseason holidays, are two weeks into a six-week boot camp readying them for the steady grind of a Major League Soccer season. We spoke to Orlando City Strength and Conditioning Coach Fabian Bazan to get the inside scoop on how he prepares the Lions for the marathon to come.
The first step, says Bazan, starts right at the end of the previous season, when the players head home for the winter armed with individualized fitness plans. Rather than keep them in peak shape, these plans are designed to actually ramp down the players’ bodies from the harsh environment of the season, allowing them to recover and prepare to build back up for the following campaign.
Upon arrival at training camp, Bazan puts the players through 7-10 sessions of assimilation back into the daily routine of professional soccer. This is especially important for new players, who need to adjust to Orlando City’s methodology and fitness techniques. Bazan says he focuses a lot on building up lower body strength during this period, with an emphasis on the quads and hamstrings, muscles which need reinforcement to prevent injury.
After these initial sessions, it’s time to start building towards game fitness. Bazan runs a series of stress tests on the players, including the infamous “beep test,” a non-stop back and forth sprint between two sets of cones designed to test the players’ maximal oxygen consumption. That was the focus of this past week, with the beep test taking place during Friday morning’s session.
