Editor’s Note: James Neal Robertson is credited as the author of this post, but he worked with Steffen, one of the newer Danish Lacrosse players, to create a journal style report on the recent Danish Lacrosse national team training camp experience. James translated the article, and Steffen did a great job of describing the training camp weekend. The writing is all his! Get an authentic look inside this revitalized national program from a member of the team!
Lacrosse in Denmark: Danish Training Camp
My name is Steffen, I am a 24 year old sports management student and a part of the current Danish Lacrosse squad for the 2016 European Championships in Hungary.
I have just finished off this month’s training camp in Copenhagen and I want to give you all an insight into what goes down when we train as a national squad in Denmark, and what it is like studying full time and traveling around the country to try out for the Danish national team.
FRIDAY (University, Travel, and Fitness Testing):
The start of the week goes as planned and then we reach Friday. Friday is a long day, it starts with lectures at university in communications and economics and ends with me making the four hour trip from Århus to Copenhagen for Friday night’s strength testing session. But before I leave, I need to apologize to my girlfriend, who has to spend another whole weekend in Århus alone due to lacrosse (she is a lacrosse widow).
Friday and Sunday are by far the hardest days. They are the days when you are stretched to the max. After a four hour trip, I finally make it to Copenhagen on Friday night. I just make it through the door of the gym in time, and I have to hurry to change clothes to get ready for the start of training camp and Friday night’s strength testing.
Coach Nick has no compassion for people who are late so the rush to get changed and ready is worth it – no one likes penalty running. An hour and a half after the initial mad rush to get ready, I have finished the max bench press, max chin ups and max squats under the thorough supervision of Nick and our strength and conditioning coach Linn (thankfully I showed some improvement since we first did the tests in September).
Tired and exhausted after a long day, I head to my accommodation for the night (Nicolai’s apartment) where myself and 6 other guys from the squad are staying. When we hold squad weekends, the club that hosts the training also houses the players who come from the other Danish cities for the weekend – and a sleeping bag on Nicolai’s floor is par for the course.
This time around I was lucky enough to win the rock-paper-scissors battle and get the spare bed. The other guys took their cement pills before brushing their teeth and slept on the floor in the lounge room.
SATURDAY (More Fitness Testing, Training, and Social):
Getting up early on a Saturday morning is hard at the best of times as a university student, but it is always made harder by a long trip and late night fitness testing on a Friday, but I managed to drag my butt out of the comfy spare bed and get in some grub before heading to Nørrebro for the day’s training session.
We start the Saturday by finishing our fitness testing with a Beep Test, 50m sprint and a T agility test. Luckily, we are training indoors for the first time this Danish winter and we avoid a pretty heavy bout of rain (apart from the 50m sprint which we did outdoors). The current Danish weather is ranging between -5*C and 3*C so we enjoyed the sweaty indoor conditions, even though doing the usual ground ball drills are a challenge on the floorboards.
We all get through the 9am – 6pm training day relatively unscathed except for my younger brother who pulled a muscle in his lower back – this camp has had the lowest amount of minor injuries yet, and we attribute that to the improved strength and conditioning.
One of the high points of every national squad training weekend is Saturday night. We make team dinner at one of the players’ houses and it is always a good social time together, and of course we don’t drink any beers. This is the time for us to let our hair down, compare war stories and hang some smack talk on each other for the day’s missed ground balls and other small things. This time around it was our goalie James who hosted the team dinner, even though he recently became a father.
The time we have together after training is extremely important and valuable for our team. Since we only have three clubs in Denmark we know each other really well and the social activities give us a quick chance to catch up with each-other and what has been happening in life outside lacrosse since we last hung out. The unity of the squad is really strong and it can easily be seen during a training weekend when the guys who have finished the end of day running find players who haven’t quite finished yet and run with them until they are done or when the more experienced players pull the younger guys aside and give some small tips or feedback on how to do things more efficiently and develop skill.
SUNDAY (Agility, Team Meeting, New Fitness Programs and Travel):
Sunday is the last day of our monthly training camp. Luckily, we are indoors again but at a totally different sports centre in Valby. Since it is Sunday, the players who don’t live in Copenhagen (I am one of those guys) have to pack up their sleeping bags and mats and dirty clothes early in the morning before training and drag it around with them all day. In my case I got some pretty strange looks traveling from Nicolai’s apartment to the sports hall with my lacrosse gear, sleeping bag and clothes bag. Thankfully it was only a short walk, then a train, and then another short walk.
Sunday starts off pretty hard considering how tired our legs are in advance – agility ladder work for an hour. Then we move onto four hours of ground balls, pressure situations and finally some game play situations. After all the drills are done we have a team sit down to hold a meeting to discuss a few things such as the team budget and how some guys have dropped out of the squad due to money problems.
We come up with some plans on how to get source funds and gear for the team. We finally get to chill out after the lunch break with coach Linn who takes our measurements and measures our body fat percentage. She then takes us through the fitness testing results, our eating plans, and shiny new fitness programs.
When the training camp is finally finished, it is time for me to set my snout towards home again. We finish up in Copenhagen at 5pm and I arrive at home in Århus at 11pm – the trip took two hours longer than normal due to an accident on the highway.
Before I totally sign off on another fantastic training camp, I need to get some other things in order – that pesky homework that I was given on Friday hasn’t been done yet and it is due for class on Monday. I also have a bunch of reading and other lecture work that I haven’t managed to get through during the trip home and I want to start the new week off on the right foot. It is a new week with a new fitness program, some wall-ball when my apartment caretaker isn’t snooping around to tell me off and of course the obligatory school work.
It is hard to be a part of the squad. But it is worth it and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
