Das Trainingslager

The departure for training camp was a little bizarre for me since I was so new to this place and just getting adjusted to my surroundings in Monchengladbach. I knew that on a daily basis I would be back at the Hockeypark but other than that didn’t really know where I was going to be. I had no idea where this hostel was and what direction we were heading. Realistically that’s not a big deal but generally these are things I am used to knowing; at least having an idea where I was going to be so I had to completely let go of control and go along for the ride.

The hostel was located in area not far from Monchengladbach called Bruggen. Here is a link to the hostel so you can check it out; unfortunately I forgot to take many pictures but I did manage one picture of my room.




The next four days were spent completely immersed in football.

Every day we would wake-up at 7am for a team stretch outside, go inside for a special teams meeting, get maybe 30 minutes of extra time to do whatever (sleep usually), then breakfast and then another 45 minutes to relax (pre-practice power nap) and then board the bus for the 30 minute ride to the Hockeypark. Once at the field, we had a two-hour practice and then time for a shower and boarded the bus to go back to the hostel for lunch. After lunch we had unit meetings and time for a nap or physiotherapy for about an hour or so. We would then board the bus again and return to the field for our second practice of the day. After practice, we travelled back to the hostel and ate dinner followed by meetings and practice film analysis. We were in meetings until about 10:30pm. At this point, you had time for more physiotherapy, hanging out or what most of the guys did… back to bed before the cycle started over again.

This was our schedule for three days and then on the final night, we had a team barbecue, with steaks, salads and beer. Yeah that’s right beer! This was a surprise to me as well since I would have expected the barbecue to be after the offense versus defense team scrimmage the following day. This is not to say that the team got really drunk but it was just a casual beer or two but this was something new I had never experienced during a training camp. I had a coach back in Canada that once told the team I was playing on that “one or two beers are ok, but after that you are abusing your temple!” I guess they take that statement seriously in Germany. It was a new experience to have a beer during training camp and it may have been one of the best tasting beers I had in a long time; may have had something to do with the context. The last day of camp we were allowed to sleep for a couple extra hours and then we cleared out of the hostel and headed to the field to have our scrimmage; the culmination of training camp.