Gary Lewin, West Ham United’s new Head of Medical Services, looks ahead to the pre-season schedule, which will take in training camps in Austria and Germany before a trip to Iceland to face Manchester City a week before the start of the 2017/18 Premier League campaign…
Austria is the choice for a lot of Premier League clubs now, mainly because it’s a great environment – the facilities and hotels are always very good, the hotels and pitches are a good standard but, more importantly, you can isolate the team, so that you can purely focus on pre-season and football.
It is a chance for the squad and the staff to enjoy some team bonding and work together in preparation for the start of the season.
Over the last few years it has become common for teams to travel around the world for pre-season tours and matches that have a commercial element to them and so, from my point of view, it was fantastic to come here and see that we are going to Austria and Germany for purely fitness and football.
It means that I will have time to really get to know the players, and we can have that real consistency of training. We’re based in one place on each trip, there isn’t much travelling, and everything is organised for the benefit of the players.
This year we can set in stone what we are doing, and have a pre-conceived plan all the way through to August 12. We can all be on the same page, with the same levels of fitness and, hopefully, have everyone relatively injury-free and ready to go
Gary Lewin
It also means that we can take our injured players with us – we are not isolating them from the main squad and, although they will be integrated back into training at different times, they will essentially have been a part of the same programme.
For the last two summers, the Club have had early competitive football in the Europa League, and that can be tough. It’s not so much the early start, but more the unknown aspect of it when you are planning – who are we playing, where are we travelling. That can make it difficult to plan individual programmes for players who may be at different levels of fitness and conditioning.
This year we can set in stone what we are doing, and have a pre-conceived plan all the way through to August 12. We can all be on the same page, with the same levels of fitness and, hopefully, have everyone relatively injury-free and ready to go.
I’m really looking forward to getting started now. We are away for a period of nearly three weeks, which will give me a great opportunity for me to get to know everyone, and for them to get to know me.