The match week
Fifty games a season at the top of football, and tennis and golf tours that barely stop: rarely five full days in between.
Sharp legs and a settled head for the game or race ahead. One session, timed to your start, whether that is kick-off, tee time or the gun: the night before an afternoon start, the morning of an evening one.
Energy into tired legs and a body that has just given everything, from the final whistle or the finish line through the night that follows.
Travel
Long-haul flights, new time zones, hotel beds, and a game at the end of it.
Given the day you land, to bring your body clock and your sleep into line with the new time zone, with energy for the game ahead.
Your health
A sore throat two days before a final. Legs that feel like lead.
For the day you wake up flat with a big game coming: a session to get your legs and your head back. If you feel unwell, your team doctor sees you first.
For anything else that gets in the way of training or everyday life, from a dead leg to a stomach that will not settle on tour, there is an extra session on the day, and First Sign of a Cold when you feel one coming on. Tell your doctor or physio first, then message Jonathan.
Injury
Coming back from injury is as much in the head as in the hamstring.
From the day you get injured to your first game back, Jonathan puts energy into the injury itself, at every stage of the rehab your physio leads and signs off. In his experience, injuries heal faster. And the weekly sessions work on the fear of breaking down again.
Each of the places athletes get hurt most has its own session: hamstring, calf, Achilles, knee, ankle, groin, back, shoulder, elbow, wrist and more.
Fewer days on the treatment table is the result Jonathan hears about most, and he would rather your club counted them than took his word for it.
Through the season
Pre-season builds the base. The months that follow wear it down.
Most of a season is training. The aim is simple: recover well enough from one training day to do the next one properly, and keep doing it. That is where a base is built rather than just kept, and where a good athlete becomes a better one.
Your body sessions, aimed where you choose each month: recovery between training days, explosive speed, or the joints and tendons that take the load.
Built for the last twenty minutes, the last set and the last mile. Members describe the burn arriving later, legs that still have power at the finish and joints that stay loose when the weights get heavy.
The off-season
For the first weeks after the last game: the whole body reset and recharged, so you can start next pre-season in better shape than you ended this one.
When you retire
For the year you retire and the one after, when the question is who you are without the sport: your weekly sessions turned towards the next thing you want to build, and the confidence to start it.
