Hayden Bird pens his first column in what will be a weekly series from the Carshalton boss:

GOING THROUGH THE PAIN BARRIER

July doesn’t tend to be the most popular month for a footballer! Across training grounds up and down the country, players will be going through their paces in the Bleep, Cooper, Yo-Yo and SAQ tests, in order to prepare for the forthcoming season.

At Carshalton Athletic, we place real emphasis on the conditioning of the squad. In looking at the clubs who have been successful in the Ryman League, all of them have one common denominator. The teams very organised and very fit!

Dover Athletic, AFC Wimbledon and Chelmsford City are all good examples. Despite all of three clubs boasting an embarrassment of riches in terms of talent, Andy, Terry and Jeff King did not rely on talent alone to achieve their target. All three clubs were highly organised, very professional and above all, the fittest team’s in the entire league.

It would be an interesting statistic to discover how many games were won in the last fifteen minutes during their promotion winning season. Equally, all three clubs had the most important quality of all; to have the ability to win even when they didn’t play well. That only comes with being organised and being fit.

With this in mind, myself and the staff at Carshalton Athletic are putting our lads through the pain barrier in pre-season. Before any of the players are considered for selection next Saturday in our pre-season friendly with Bromley, they must all achieve a certain level of fitness. This will be assessed by their results in the bleep, cooper and yo yo tests.

Having done so, we will look to get the lads match fit, by playing a number of pre-season friendlies and working on sharper training techniques such as SAQ and various ball work sessions.

Players may hate pre-season, it’s very hard, it hurts and at times, it’s boring. In order to be successful though, I believe it is a vital month in the football calendar.