You have to suffer to be good
The Montreal Impact players followed their fitness coach’s orders today in Orlando: on the menu of this fourth day of preseason training camp, chef Yannick Girard had as the main course the VAMEVAL test to gauge the velocity at maximal oxygen uptake or, in other words, the running speed at which a player reaches his maximal oxygen consumption (vVO
2
Max). It is quite obvious that this test is very demanding and tiring physically as well as mentally: along with bringing the body to maximum effort, players need to reach suffering levels they have rarely met since the end of last season.
“We use this test to evaluate a player’s ability to run at a pretty high speed, for as long as possible,” explains Yannick Girard. “The result will give us a velocity at maximal oxygen uptake, which is the highest speed in a threshold, the aerobic threshold. After that, we go to another threshold, the speed and muscular constraint threshold. Starting from the velocity at maximal oxygen uptake threshold we get as a final result, we will undergo our six weeks of physical preparation. Each player will run according to his level, but everyone will run at the same percentage every day. We want everyone to run at the same percentage according to their result. In the end, the progression will be collective and identical for everyone.”
Of course, as always in these types of activities, the players’ competitive spirit kicks in. However, other than the honor of winning, there is no other advantage to finishing first in this test.
“Whatever the results today, whether a guy finished first or last, what I want to know is their initial condition so that all together, we reach our final condition and are ready for our first game”, continues Girard.
