As part of Cambridge United's commitment to developing players, Josh Coulson, Jordan Collins and Robbie Willmott are spending the month of June in Seattle.

They arrived last Friday and have been enjoying the Seattle sights over the weekend, including a baseball game and a Brazil vs Canada friendly football game (picture top right).

The lads are keeping to an off-season training schedule of weights and running, but they have commented that the meals served to them in restaurants are quite sizeable. They are acutely aware that being overweight on the return to pre-season will cost them £50 per pound of excess baggage!

The main focus of the visit for the young sportsmen will be a development program that involves participation in unique and innovative methods of cognitive processing development and skill building for athletic mental power performance.

The programs are cognitive-building and sports psychology methods that have emerged from senior-level executive cognition development. These programs place specific focus on five key areas of cognitive development and cognition advancement for sports performance:

• degree of alertness
• use of attention
• accuracy of perception
• span of concentration, and
• quality of awareness.

This all adds up to advanced skills at playing in the "zone" state where the highest levels of performance occur.

The lads have also been invited to train with the Seattle Sounders at their training facilities at Starfire complex. The Sounders are a third of the way through their regular soccer season that runs from April to October.

The cognitive development program starts on Tuesday and there will be updates on their progress throughout the month.

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