Day One in The Books
It’s nearly two months until Chivas USA kick off the 2012 season, but the Red-and-White are already hard at work. The team assembled at The Home Depot Center Monday to begin preseason with two training sessions.
“It feels like we never left- it’s great,” said goalkeeper Dan Kennedy. “I’m excited to be back with the group. It seems like everybody is positive and upbeat and optimistic about the season. It’s exciting to get some work underway… There’s a lot to gain out here. We can do a lot of physical and tactical preparation [now] that will gear us up and make us a better team.”
Strength and conditioning coach Jim Liston was effervescent as usual, speaking about the excitement of the new season. But he was also quick to point out patience, labeling it the ‘number one goal’ as camp begins.
“Everybody says ‘we have to get fit!’, but I say we have to make sure we’re healthy,” said Liston. “We all need to be patient. It’s an eight week process. We’ll make sure we start slowly and by the time March 11th rolls around we’ll be flying.”
Part of that patience is displayed in the two-a-day sessions, which the team will run intermittently for the first few weeks of camp. Training twice a day isn’t just to get more work in, says Liston, it’s about the quality of that work.
“What we want to do is keep the sessions short,” Liston said. “It’s fitness in the morning and then we’ll do a technical [session] in the afternoon. If you do all that in one practice, it ends up being two or two and half hours long. Then either the fitness isn’t good enough or the soccer isn’t good enough. So we break it up so [both are] sharp.”
It’s a long way to the first game, but March 11th seems much closer now that preseason has begun. There will be plenty of work to do in the next few weeks, but for now, everyone was just happy to be back out on Field 6 again.