Mat Sadler's Shrewsbury Town pre-season diary - July 5th
Mat Sadler is offering a diary from Shrewsbury Town's pre-season camp in Portugal - here's his second extract.
Our first full day of warm-weather camp training in Portugal was a tough, tough day.
Before we got out there we were already a little bit daunted by the heat, it is very, very hot out here.
Luckily a little breeze helped with the session in the morning. We did a run and then went into a tough training session.
It was a really good feeling to get out there on the pitch and shake the cobwebs off the legs from what had been a long two months of summer.
We’re not far off friendly time now, beginning with Ebbsfleet on Saturday.
In the afternoon we had a good session in the gym. It turned into a right sweat box in there but it was very enjoyable, there was some good hard work done.
It was the first day of proper work since we’ve been here and it was really, really tough so it’s good to get it under our belts and rest up for another big day. It’ll be more of the same I think, although the intensity is only going to go up as we get more used to the heat.
The quality will continue to go up too hopefully. It is a positive thing for us to experience conditions like this.
It is a bit of a shock to the system, of course, that’s why we’re here but all in all if you’re walking off that training pitch and you know you’ve had a good session, it’s helping you and all in the bank.
I can’t see there being any let-off to be honest, I think we’ll work harder and harder as the week goes on – if I’m honest that’s exactly how we want it!
