Peter Shilton’s Pre-Season: England Tours & America Visits
Shilton – England’s most-capped player of all-time – played for his country at both youth and senior level and when the domestic campaign finished, he would head away on tour with his nation.
That would limit his summer breaks to around three weeks, when he would head to the United States of America to escape football before returning to England recharged and ready for the season ahead.
In a recent interview with LCFC.com, Shilton discussed the regimes he would undergo at the Foxes, the difference in manager methods and the importance of switching off from a high-pressure environment.
“From an early age, I always tended to be involved with England,” Shilton told LCFC.com. “When the season finished, I was either with England Under-23s or the England youth team. We went on tours and World Cups and of course then, England.
“You’d always have a three-match tour at the end of the season, so consequently, I’d come back and I’d be lucky if I had three weeks off. I remember when I went to World Cups, I’d come back and have extra-time off because you’d come back and you were fitter.
“I remember especially after the Mexico World Cup in 1970 when I was at Southampton, I only had about a week’s training before the first game. I had to get my rest, so it was different for international players.”
Shilton’s career as a professional footballer began in 1966 at Filbert Street, where he would spend eight seasons as a Fox before moving to Stoke City in 1974. While he would often be occupied during the summer, he explained that some of his team-mates spent their time working in various capacities.
The former Leicester ‘keeper continued: “When I was at Leicester, it was in the ‘60s and ‘70s when I started out and it was a totally different experience than to nowadays because there was more time off from the end of the season to the start of the season and a lot of the players would go and get other jobs.
“During that offseason, they would be bricklayers or whatever they wanted. One or two of them wanted to keep fit. Players used to come back in probably not as good condition as they do nowadays. Clubs tend to give them plans for the offseason, which isn’t very long at all, not as long as it used to be, so they keep themselves in far better condition.
“They’re expected to come back more or less in a fighting way, whereas sometimes, you’d get players come back a stone or a stone-and-a-half overweight. Of course, it used to be pretty hard work because a lot of the training used to be totally different.
“It was cross-country runs the first week in the mornings, and then later you’d do double sessions where you probably do a bit of ball work in the afternoon. It was quite intense. I remember when I was at Leicester, we’d go to Bradgate Park and end up running around there and build it up gradually.
“It ended with an actual race right around the edge of Bradgate Park, which I believe was something like five miles. It was hard work, but I think training has changed a lot now. They believe more now in interval running, which to be fair, is a better idea because it’s quite easy to pull calves and hamstrings when you’re doing a lot of running straight after a long lay-off.”
It was under Matt Gillies that Shilton first participated in specific training sessions for goalkeepers, having previously trained with the Club’s outfield players on a day-to-day basis.
“When I first started training, there was no goalkeeping coaches, and of course, most of the training was done with the squad,” said Shilton. “You’d have a lot of practice matches and you’d be running around a track. You’d probably get one shooting session a week for about half an hour.
“If you wanted to train more than that, you’d have to stay behind. Two or three players would come back, Gordon Banks used to come back on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and get players to go with him.
“When I was at Leicester, it was with Matt Gillies who I said we could do with a little bit more training on our own away from when the other players are doing outfield stuff. We used to start doing training on our own and breaking it down a little bit to footwork and quick reactions.”
In order to maintain his fitness and keep his training varied, the Leicester and England legend would once a week head to north Leicestershire for a very different kind of workout.
He said: “On a Monday, I went to an army camp up at Loughborough and I did some training with them. Day in, day out we did ball work and on Mondays, we needed some different type of training where we’re not using the ball. We needed to work on agility, strengthening and stretching.
“I used to go up there with Jock Scott, who used to give me exercises where I’d do 30 minutes’ exercise and then I’d have to sprint to both ends of the gym and back. I built it up to around about 12 or 14 exercises, and I was absolutely shattered.
“Then, he’d stretch my hamstrings on the bars on the wall – I thought I was going to rip my hamstrings, but I never did! I never really got hamstring injuries in my career, and that could be why. Then, I’d go and do trampoline work, and I was shattered. The lads used to rib me because it was Frank Worthington, the Birch and all the lads.
“They’d say ‘another day off, Shilts?’ I remember Blue Peter actually came up and did some filming of me doing the exercises. I said to the lads ‘why don’t you come up and have a session one day?’ They did, and I never heard from them after that because they were on their knees! It used to really sharpen my mind up, and it strengthened me up as well.”
Shilton’s choice of holiday destination would be Florida, more specifically St. Petersburg and Fort Lauderdale – with the late Gordon Banks, who worked closely with Shilton while at Leicester, playing for Fort Lauderdale Strikers in the late 1970s.
“I used to try and go away for three weeks,” said Shilton. “I started going to Florida. There was no real football over there and nobody knew you, so you could just walk around. It was always guaranteed to be hot in those days.
“It used to be the one break throughout the year that I got because otherwise you’d play two games a week sometimes. I used to do runs along the beach just to keep ticking over, maybe two or three 20-minute runs.
“It’s important to switch off mentally. Now, if you have six or seven weeks off, for the first two or three weeks, I wouldn’t do anything. I’d really chill out and take the pressure off my mind. You have to rest your mind as much as your body.
“There’s a lot of pressure on you in football. Obviously, if you have six weeks off, you don’t want to let yourself go too much. That’s what pre-season is about, to get yourself mentally and physically 100 per cent.
“You don’t want to go backwards too much because football is very competitive. You want to keep stretched because you don’t want your muscles to tighten up too much, so it’s a balance between the mind and the body.”