Club Adapting to Altitude and Workloads in “Unique” Preseason

As OL Reign completes the second week of full-team training ahead of the 2020 NWSL Challenge Cup, the club is working hard to balance the need for getting players match-fit while making sure it doesn’t overtax them after a long time away from the pitch. Director of High Performance Nick Leman, back with the club for his fourth season, explained the delicate process.

“I would say it’s a unique situation,” Leman said. “When we normally start preseason every year, we’re coming from a period where the players are not training as a team, which is not too dissimilar to where we are now. Normally, though, the players train with a small group or play pickup or train with male players. They normally have some sort of live football under their belt before they join up with us.

“This time around, some of them were completely alone, not being able to pass a ball to another person. We have to emphasize exposure to football-specific actions a little bit more. Not only in a physical sense, but in regards to their decision-making, coordination, their reactions to players and the ball—which they haven’t had for quite a while. They’ve been doing a lot of running and conditioning, but not the real football-specific stuff: the awareness, the reactions, the scanning, the tackling. They haven’t had that, so it is a very unique situation.”

Leman is also tailoring the program to reflect the realities of Missoula’s altitude of 3,209 feet. The new training environment and thinner air can exact a toll, even from professional athletes. With the first week over, though, Leman says the worst is behind the players.

“Typically, with the altitude, they’ll feel okay for the first two to three days,” Leman said. “In the three to five window, the acute effects of the altitude will kind of kick in and they’ll start to feel more fatigued. Typically, for a one-off game, you try and fly in as late as possible and spend as little time as possible in altitude before the game, play, and then get out. When you’re staying at altitude for a long period of time, you can’t avoid the acute changes, which would typically kick in at three to seven day. After that you’ll have the chronic adaptation. It’s really the back end of the first week, you just have to be aware that the player is going to be more fatigued than normal.”

Leman expects a similar adjustment when the club makes the jump in altitude to Salt Lake City at the end of the month, but anticipates less drastic fatigue and a smoother adjustment than if the club had gone straight from near sea-level Tacoma’s elevation to Salt Lake City’s 4,226 feet.

The other major adjustment is in preparing players for the Challenge Cup’s accelerated schedule. The normal NWSL season spans 24 matches across nearly seven months, while the Challenge Cup will see the finalists play seven matches in 26 days.

“The time frame (of our preparations) isn’t dissimilar to a normal preseason,” Leman said. “We’re just preparing for a different game rhythm once we start, where we’ll play a game every four days as opposed to every seven days. However, with a large squad, we might not be asking players to be backing up multiple games in a row. Really, we’re preparing everyone to be able to play 90 minutes at the starting stage of the preliminary round and then we’ll go from there. Everyone is coming from a different spot. Some have been very isolated. Some have been training with someone else. Some have been able to train a little bit with other players. Every player is different, but we’re all trying to get them to the same spot, which is trying to be able to play a full 90 in the first game.”

Challenges aside, Leman noted that players and staff alike were thrilled to have an objective after a long period of uncertainty.

“I think it’s been freeing,” Leman said. “Not just the physical stress but the mental and emotional boost of being with the group again. When you’re isolated, you’re not really interacting with a lot of people every day. Coming here, it’s been a physical change, but a mental and emotional one as well. Going from isolation to being around 30-odd people, interacting and not being by yourself all the time, I think that’s been exciting for the players, but it’s been a bit of a change in that sense. Everyone is very excited now that we have a schedule, a goal and an aim. It feels like we’re back to normal. We’re back to what we normally do. Everyone’s excited.”