Robust, Resilient, and Ready – Physical Preparation in High-Performance Football

About this webinar

Nick Grantham leads first-team strength and conditioning in the Premier League. He spent five seasons at West Bromwich Albion, worked with England age-group teams and has a background in Olympic sports and professional and international basketball. He shows Premier League match data from 2021 to 2024, positional demands, training effect across a typical week, strength attendance tracking, a 10-week off-feet rehab plan and countermovement jump trends through a season. His framework is attend, adhere, adapt: get players into the gym, get them following a plan, then measure the change. The Q&A covers sprint exposure, where hip, groin and calf work fits, training effect against training impulse (TRIMP), and jump metrics. The session runs 59 minutes and was recorded on 3 July 2024.

What you will learn

• How Premier League high-speed running rose 4.4% in three seasons, and 13% for Grantham’s team
• Why he aims for 51–72 strength or power sessions a season, and what happened when congestion cut it to 33
• Why he wants players to lift at 80–90% of a working rep at least every 10 days
• How training effect from Wattbike sessions (3.2–3.3) matched the training week better than gym circuits (2.2–2.3) in rehab
• Which five of more than 200 force plate variables his staff use for jump testing

Practical examples from the recording

1. The game has changed, so the plan must. From 2021 to 2024, Premier League total distance rose 3.1%, high-speed running above 20 km/h rose 4.4% and sprinting above 25 km/h rose 7%. For Grantham’s team the increases were 5.2%, 13% and almost 10%. Last season the target was a squad able to play 38 league matches, up to 17 European matches and two domestic cups: up to 67 fixtures in 43 weeks, in practice a match about every four days. His conclusion: you can’t train the way you did three seasons ago.

2. Training effect across the week. With a four-day build, Monday is recovery. Tuesday averages a total training effect of 6.1 (3.2 aerobic, 2.9 anaerobic), Wednesday 5.6 with more extensive work and 2.6 anaerobic, the tactical day almost none, and match day minus 1 3.4 split evenly. The staff also track minutes at 85–95% and above 95% of maximum heart rate. These values set the internal load targets for injured players’ off-feet conditioning.

3. Rehab that keeps the engine running. Grantham uses a hierarchy of off-feet modalities so an injured player never does nothing: running when possible, then Wattbike, assault bike and more. One 10-week rehab moved from gym conditioning circuits to Wattbike sessions, including heat and hypoxic sessions, and then to pitch running. Only the acute first week had no conditioning. Upper-body circuits gave a training effect of 2.3 and 2.2; Wattbike sessions reached 3.3 and 3.2. Matching the training week this way means the return to pitch work isn’t a shock.

4. Attendance first. At West Bromwich Albion, only 17% of the squad trained strength at least once a week in Grantham’s first season. By the fourth season it averaged about 80%. One sceptical player went from 5 sessions in a season to 47, and his average power output rose from 60 to 74 W/kg. Another did only 8 sessions, fell below the minimum dose and detrained during the season. He uses the attendance register as his first tool at every club.

Questions answered in the Q&A

How much sprint work should players do in the week compared with the match?
Grantham aims for regular exposure at 90–95% of maximum velocity, depending on days between matches. He points to recent published work and suggests maybe 60–63% of the match volume at those speeds, and says 95% is becoming the new 90%.

Where do hip, groin and calf exercises go: activation or the strength session?
All three places. Low-level isometrics for groin, calf and hamstring go into activation, individual work comes after sessions, and accessories sit in the main lift. When congestion cut strength sessions from two a week to one, more of this moved into activation, pitch work or post-match.

Training effect or TRIMP for planning the week?
Both. Grantham’s staff started with training effect and are moving to a combination with TRIMP, because heart rate can vary with a player’s fitness and other factors, and TRIMP adds another layer.

Which countermovement jump metrics should you track?
Peak power in W/kg and jump height from impulse-momentum are the primary metrics. Secondary metrics include eccentric duration, concentric duration, force at zero velocity and countermovement depth, chosen because they correlated most with the primary metrics.

Who this webinar is for

Strength and conditioning coaches, heads of performance and sports scientists in professional football, plus physiotherapists and return-to-play coaches who need to keep injured players conditioned and build strength work into congested schedules.