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.
As reported here at the start of the month, the lads are keeping to an off-season training schedule of weights and running and they are training with Seattle Sounders, where United major shareholders and directors Paul Barry and Adrian Hanauer are also involved.
But the main focus of their visit is a development program of innovative methods of cognitive processing development and skill building for athletic mental power performance.
Here is the next of our updates direct from the lads themselves, from Robbie Willmott.
We are now coming to the end of our month long trip that we have really enjoyed. Last week we started another development program and have found out information about ourselves that we didn't really know. Paul has told us that this part of the program is one that high-flying senior executives get, but we love football first.
On physical training, we did some hard work with the Seattle Sounders on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, which was rather challenging due to it being our off-season while it's the middle of their season.
On Friday we went to watch the Sounders' league game against Miami, during which we saw a few similarities to back home (the elbows and physical presence). It ended 0-0, and one Miami bloke's shirt went from white to red in an instant after a elbow from our mate Hugo (central midfielder), for which somehow he only got booked!
On Sunday we had more cognitive training in the morning and then we were invited to Adrian Hanauer's house for a BBQ and to socialise with all the players. We didn't realise a French geezer could say so little and be that funny - that being Youssouf Kante. We would also like to mention our new found friend from America, Jason Cascio, who has helped us out on our trip with lots of laughs and helping us with the American banter.
Now we have been here for three weeks you would have thought that we would be able to get from A to B without getting lost, but nooooo we still do! To be fair, me and Josh (aka Dino) instead of getting annoyed about getting lost, we now go out and get lost on purpose to find some new sights.
The Sounders have a senior player, Craig Tomlinson, who is very fast (and kinda old!). We have a challenge upcoming between myself and Craig for a 50-yard race, and Craig will give me a 5-yard start. Adrian has $100 on Craig and Paul Barry $100 on me. Craig has been telling us that you can only run as fast as your arms will move (part of his track and field training), which sounds strange, but we shall see.
Stay tuned.
Robbie Willmott
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