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1. Players have fundamentally different starting points, different fitness levels and different talents. In your opinion, what is the foundation for athletic success that every player must have?

Ewens: In a complex skills sport such as Football, there is a wide variety of athletic talents. When players join West Ham it could be anything from a young player with a young training age and huge athletic potential, to a senior professional with a 10 year career behind them and years of athletic development, and everything in between!

For this reason, the foundation for each player is to objectively measure their physical qualities (ability to sprint, stop, jump, change direction etc.), and to qualitatively find out how they’ve been training, what they’ve been doing, and what their physical goals have been. Once we have a good idea of what each player’s strengths & weaknesses are, this must be reconciled with the physical demands of the Premier League. Aside from this, the foundation for each player must be a mentality, an attitude to work hard consistently in order to realise their physical potential.

2. With such a large team, how do you deal with each players individual needs and control their physical sensitivities?

Ewens: Given the number of players that we have, all needing detailed individual focus to their athletic development programs, it’s essential that as a department we work together to make sure we take every possible window of opportunity to either develop a physical quality, or maximise recovery. With the number of games we have in all competitions, and how different the demands have been on each player in the squad, looking at every individual’s program & monitoring where they’re at physically on a daily basis is critical.

3. How important is the topic of recovery for the team and how do you currently foster it?

Ewens: With the schedule this season, we frequently have 3 – week periods with only 2 days between games. With the intensity of the EPL, the Europa League, and the quality of teams that we’ve played in the Carabao cup, the emphasis on recovery has been huge. We look to use every recovery modality at our disposal that has a good base of empirical evidence behind it, from hydrotherapy and cryotherapy to soft tissue therapy, compression garments and nutritional interventions. One of our aims has been to individualise the modality used to the player, with the understanding that everyone responds differently, and has their own preferences and beliefs in what aids the recovery process most for them. Therefore careful records, both objective & subjective, are kept of who used which recovery strategy and what the result was. Probably the most important two things for global recovery are sleep and diet (nutrition). And here at West Ham we have individualised nutrition programs tailored to each player by our performance nutritionist, as well as monitoring sleep where necessary.

4. How do you prepare the players to ensure that they can perform at their very best during a game?

Ewens: In terms of preparation of the players for the game, there are obviously many facets to this. The technical coaching staff work hard to make sure that the players are well prepared technically and tactically for the game, and we have a performance and medical department working to make sure that is the same physically. The key for this is making sure that no opportunity to enhance conditioning or physical qualities is missed, whether that be strength, speed and power gains, development of energy systems, or specific injury prevention/robustness gains. With a 24-man squad full of players all with their own physical development aims, and with different training and match loads, the department has their work cut out to ensure that every player gets what they need to maximise their physical potential week in, week out.  After that, it’s about making sure that enough emphasis is put on recovery at the right times to allow for the body to adapt and become stronger, fitter, faster in response to the hard work done.

5. Looking at a player's week, what is the balance between a players active training and recovery?

Ewens: Usually, the balance is an important one to strike. With one game per week there is plenty of time for the players to recover from the previous game, work hard to condition and improve mid-week, and then recover and adapt ready to play the next game. Therefore, the timing and type of recovery strategies becomes all important, as using some modalities directly after hard training can dampen the body’s adaptation response. However, with near enough every week this season containing 2-3 games, recovery is important to emphasise on almost every day between the matches. It’s also probably important to mention that active recovery strategies are important in this situation also.

6. How do you enable the players to recover at home when they’re not at the training ground with you and your team?

Ewens: There are a few recovery strategies that are available to players to use at home and these are particularly useful when the schedule is as congested as it is, to optimise the use of the short time between games.  We are lucky that some of the players have access to pools at home, and we have the Reboots compression equipment, something the lads seem to really respond to, which allows the players to aid the recovery process whilst getting their feet up at home and switching off mentally to aid the psychological recovery process as well as physical. Alongside this, as previously mentioned, sleep and good nutrition are essential for players to optimise when away from the training ground.

7. Personal stress can play a major role in recovery. Is mental stress during busy parts of the season physically noticeable to the players? How do you address this in your daily work?

Ewens: Personal mental stress plays a major role in recovery and general health for the players and staff alike! More frequently than you might imagine this is a significant contributing factor to a player not being at their physical prime. Whether it’s a new baby, a sick loved one or any other stressful situation, the knock-on effect on physical performance is complex and multi-factorial, yet indisputable! In an attempt to better understand this we have turned to regular saliva testing to analyse stress-related hormone levels at different times in the week. By doing this you can build up a profile of what each players ‘normal’ is, and look for trends and changes in various stress-related hormones to help connect the dots when a player is struggling with sleep, mood, fatigue, illness or general well-being. This has proved very useful, however, I still think that the importance of the relationships between the staff and players, and knowing individuals well enough is invaluable with regards to being able to support/ help or intervene in physical problems stemming in part from personal stress.

8. What are your expectations towards the suppliership with Reboots and how do you expect Reboots to support your work with the players?

Ewens: Reboots have proved very useful as a recovery modality that is portable, easy to use, and user-friendly. Particularly given the frequency of travelling around Europe this season. For this reason it has become a go-to recovery strategy for a lot of the players that they can use when abroad, at the training ground, or at home on their own! Without recovery, adaptation cannot occur, and strength and conditioning cannot be improved, so in this respect Reboots have been valuable to us.