Hansi Flick’s plan to prevent injuries at Barça revealed

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The new Barça boss is expected to use a more scientific approach to keep his squad healthier

One of Hansi Flick’s biggest challenges as new Barcelona manager is to solve the team’s injury crisis. Barça’s first team went through a scary number of injuries last season, and almost every key player spent a signficant period of time on the sidelines due to a variety of physical issues.

Some were more traumatic and accidental, such as Frenkie de Jong and Gavi who suffered through serious ligament injuries, while Marc-André ter Stegen and Marcos Alonso missed several months because of back problems who are hard to predict and treat. But the rest of the injuries were mostly muscular, and those are usually associated with subpar training methods and overuse.

And according to a report from Relevo, Hansi Flick and his new staff have a very detailed plan to prepare the squad physically in preseason and maintain their fitness levels throughout the campaign to avoid those dreaded muscle issues.

The first few weeks of preseason, according to the report, will feature double training sessions at maximum intensity to at the same time introduce the new tactical ideas but also prepare the players’ bodies during the portion of the season that will have the most free time without games to get the squad ready for a demanding campaign.

Then once we get into the normal rhythm of weeks with games every three or four days, Flick plans to feature more hours of gym sessions to work on the squad’s muscular structure to keep them as strong as possible, and his staff will use the scientific data available to them to create a “traffic light” system for the players’ fitness levels: those in the green will be trained under a normal workload, those in the yellow will be more closely monitored until they are green again and those in red, who are on the cusp of injuries, will be very carefully handled so they can remain available to play as they work to return to the yellow and green levels.

Hansi Flick’s Bayern Munich was known for how physically fit and strong it was as a team throughout the coach’s 18 months in charge, so things could get very interesting if his methods work in a Barça squad that has more often than not looked tired and unable to compete physically with their opponents in big games.

Source: barcablaugranes.com