The Young Feller

The Next Chapter - Present & Future Following on from the last post discussing my future and my aspirations for the next few years, I will delve further into the details of what I plan on doing and how I plan on going about it.  Since around January I have been putting small pieces of my future plan into action, doing research into what is required and sending emails to people who are in a position to help me along the path I would like to take. Since my intense amount of physio treatment following my knee injury in October 2010, I have become increasingly interested in the physical side of the human body and how it works, develops and repairs itself when damaged/injured.  Although at the moment my knowledge is pretty basic, I feel I have the foundations to build on and more than enough interest to progress myself in the Physiotherapy field.  Something I have discovered about myself during my education over the years is that I must be interested in ...

Moving On & Progressing Some of you may be wondering what made me actually begin writing my blog, it's not something I've done before online and it was pretty much out of the blue.  After a deep discussion with somebody very close to me about how I felt while I was injured, it made me realise that it would be a good idea to write about it.  This would allow me to release the remains of my ill feelings and depression while allowing others, who are in the same or similar situation, a relation point, something they could refer to and discuss, as it is something that deeply affects you psychologically, as well as obviously physically. Personally I'm a strong minded individual, not many things get to me and I am very difficult to annoy and frustrate, it takes a lot for my mind to be effected by something unless I have the desire to let it, which in most cases I don't.  But this was something I'd never experienced and it got to me badly, but as well as being ...

Back To The Serious Business After a long summer & pre-season, the competitive games were coming up thick and fast.  Although my playing time was less than I wanted, it was realistic and I was managed well to avoid injury.  I felt like I had achieved a lot in the past 21 months and was well aware of the work still to do before I felt anywhere near my old self, in both footballing & fitness terms.  In my head I gave myself the full season, from August/September 2012 up until April 2013, to get some kind of form & fitness back.  I would have preferred to set myself a much shorter target but general fitness and the fitness to play 90 minutes of football are totally different, for those of you unaware. It may sound as simple as being able to run on a treadmill for 90 minutes or the equivalent of 90 minutes cardio workout but it puts much more pressure on your body playing football as opposed to just running for the same amount of time, as I found out...

Friendlies? What Friendlies? Pre-season training was basically done, in terms of actual practice.  I felt a massive improvement in that aspect and I felt as if I'd got rid of the so called rusty touch and my movement was feeling more natural as time went by.  But, as anybody who plays football or even sport will know, there is a huge difference between feeling good in training and taking an active part in a match, even if it was a friendly. Although I felt good in training, I knew playing games would be a massive task.  I had no idea how my muscles would react and how quickly I would get tired, I wasn't really aware of some of the new players in the squad either so my usual position of centre forward was in question too.  Saying that, my first game back involved me playing right midfield.  I was up for the task mentally, it would really be the ultimate fitness test playing on the wing and I knew realistically I wouldn't last anywhere near 90 minutes, I'...

Pre-Season Begins After a grueling and long summer, pre-season was upon me and even more hard work was about to begin.  Being absent from the team for basically 2 full seasons (10/11 and 11/12) meant there were plenty of new faces in training, but the majority consisted of the original lads who started off there. The first training session back was a typical British summer day.  Pre-season training is always on a Saturday and usually lasts 2 to 3 hours depending how many people are available and what we're working on.  Sometimes we just did fitness training and then had a small sided match, other times we'd practice set pieces, passing, shooting etc, it was always varied to keep everyone's attention. We were quite light for the first 3 or 4 training sessions as most of the lads are on holiday in July and August but we still managed to put together a mixture of everything, the typical fitness, which felt 10 times more difficult than usual and I was lot l...

Time For A Comeback June 12th was a good day, I couldn't have been happier to finally have been given the news that I was allowed to return to playing football.  Obviously it would be another slow and steady process, just like my whole rehab period, but by now I was used to taking things slowly and my patience overall had grown and I seem to have developed a personality of being incredibly laid back and patient with everything in life since this experience, something people comment on quite a lot. I remember the day very vividly, it was one of those moments where you remember every detail, something that you will always remember for the rest of your life.  It was a really nice Summer's day, the sun was shining and a few of the lads had already arranged for a game of football that afternoon, I was only a maybe as I wasn't sure what the physio appointment would result in, although I was hopeful at this point.  I remember getting there and Mike (my physio)...

On The Verge After starting my outdoor work outs, I was feeling progress, it felt good to just be back on grass working out, rather than the same old sight in the gym, although I was still working in the gym, but not every day now, it was usually 3/4 days a week rather than 6/7.  My iPod became my new best friend, I was forever searching for songs that get me "pumped" up, making and updating a playlist daily to keep me going for a good 45 minutes to an hour.  Don't get me wrong, I was highly motivated and I was well aware that plenty of hard work was still to be done but sometimes even the highly motivated need help from elsewhere and need something to keep them going.... I had a few different things in mind when I started the outdoor training.  Firstly I wanted to sweat, I wanted to get my weight down as this was part of the reason I felt so slow and secondly I wanted to get back my balance and agility.  I knew both of these would take a considerable amount...