The off-season provides players with a chance to relax and recuperate after a long, tough season but that doesn’t mean they aren’t working hard ahead of 2017/18 campaign.
To ensure they report back in tip-top condition, each player was given a specific training programme to stick to during their seven-week break – a programme which gives them guidelines on what to eat and what to do.
“The players have a job to do which they need to do to the best of their ability and in order to do that they need to be in the best shape possible, so they can’t really let themselves go in the off-season,” Head of Sports Science John Hill told iFollow MK Dons.
“The boys are given a booklet with some nutritional guidelines – foods to avoid, foods to eat more of and substitutions for the foods we’d encourage them to eat during the season.
“They also have a three-day-a-week gym programme which focuses on lower-body strength, upper-body strength and power. This will put good weight on them which hopefully means, when they get to pre-season, they are not as sore, so we can do a lot more with them.
“Further to that we’ve also given them guidelines on activities to do, from road cycling and walking to on-pitch conditioning drills and high-intensity work.”
He continued: “There’s a bit of freedom to pick and choose what they want to do but the goals the same – to make sure they are ready to hit the ground running when they get back.”
The Dons squad is set to report back for testing on Tuesday 20th June, with pre-season training commencing the following Friday (23rd).
