Marc Roca reveals extraordinary lengths taken in preparation for Leeds United transfer - YEP 25/9/22
Leeds United midfielder Marc Roca admits he enlists the help of a private fitness coach to keep on top of his game
By Joe Donnohue
Leeds midfielder Marc Roca reveals he took his personal
fitness coach on holiday to Ibiza with his partner earlier this summer, whilst
preparing for a first pre-season at United.
At the beginning of June, the finishing touches were being
applied to Roca’s Leeds move, swapping Bavaria and Bayern Munich for West
Yorkshire.
The former Spain Under-21 international visited the Balaeric
island with his girlfriend and private fitness coach with whom he says he has
been working for ‘six or seven years’.
"My girlfriend is not happy with this,” Roca told the
Official Leeds United Podcast. “Because she wants to spend a lot of time with
me, but I think in summer you have a lot of time you can be with your family,
with your girlfriend, with your friends you can enjoy – but I think it's a good
moment as well for training because you can train hard, you can improve
yourself, you can keep on going because it's a lot of time that you're that you
don't have any match, you can’t put your body on the limit.”
Roca’s start to life at Leeds has seen the Spaniard attempt
to reach the match fitness of his teammates who have played more regularly in
recent seasons.
In Germany, the former Espanyol man was restricted to
substitute appearances and subsequently had been out of weekly 90-minute
practice for some time.
"I think it's very important,” Roca says of his
fitness. “I have my personal coach. I trained with him since maybe I started
six, seven years ago. And for me it's very important because I think here we
have a lot of work [in training] but maybe we'll have a lot of afternoons that
we are free and we have to invest in ourselves.”
"I always want to keep on growing to be better than
yesterday. What I mean is like an investment for you in the future because the
training sometimes is very hard, but you have to keep on working at home.
“You have to do your stretching, you have to do everything
that you can that helps you,” Roca added.
