Liam Manning sends Bristol City a pre-season warning as Bronco stalks him

Liam Manning has vowed to “boil on” Bristol City’s players as they return for pre-season after a six-week break with the prospect of a daunting Bronco Test.

City’s first-team squad, minus those who have been involved in international football, returned to the High Performance Center on Thursday for two days of testing to assess body fat, strength and general fitness levels before the actual start of activity next week.

Such are the physical demands of the modern game and the internal demands to meet a certain level of fitness before a ball is even kicked, players have been training for several weeks in the off-season, being fitted with individual programs.

That said, Manning has still promised them he will work hard in the run-up to the start of the 2024/25 campaign with a trip to Hull on August 10. Part of this will be incorporating the Bronco test into the summer schedule with the previous regimes. favoring the Yo-Yo as a development from the famous Bleep Test.

The Bronco was popularized in rugby union and works on similar principles to the Yo-Yo and bleep test, in that participants continuously run three shuttles over increasing distances (20m, 40m, 60m) and are timed. Some coaches also incorporate a ball into the exercise to mimic the demands of a game and have to sprint while in control over a variety of distances.

“I’m obsessed with planning, so I planned every session until the end of last season,” Manning said. “We’ll periodize it where, without getting too heavy, we’ll work tactically on different phases of the game each week and then align some of the physical running with it as well.

“The players are coming back in incredible form now, they’ve already been in some of them because we’re running optional sessions for two weeks. They all get an individual program, they know there are certain markers they have to hit if they want to do the whole training session. If I don’t hit them, then I can be extra.

“They are so fine tuned now. We have a lot of trust in them, which I think is important to the way I work – giving them responsibility to make sure they’re in the best possible shape. Thursday and Friday are testing, so sports science and medicine can have them for two days to find out where they are.

“There’s a few exercises in it – we do a run called the Bronco, it’s running as hard as you can until you can’t run anymore, basically. They will do this and more in terms of agility, long and range of motion as well as running bits.

“It’s all about getting to the first game with as many as possible in the best possible shape, but with as many available. Of course, there might be a few injuries along the way, which we want to try and prevent, so screening, testing is all about finding out where they are and what level of risk they are.

“And then we tear them down. We push them really hard. If you have a really solid pre-season, it sets you up for the year. If you have a bit of pre-season, sometimes you pay the price, you can have a hangover, so we’re going really hard.”

City’s pre-season gives Manning his first sustained block of days and weeks ‘on the grass’ to prepare the Robins for the upcoming Championship campaign.

Fitness is a big part of this, not just by tuning players’ bodies, but by making sure as many stay as fit as possible throughout the campaign, but also, and just as important, is tactical work and technique he was able to provide. in the team since he took over in November, but so tirelessly of the program there was little time for continuous work.

Much of City’s 2023/24 squad remains, plus new arrivals Josh Stokes and Max Bird, allowing continuity and consistency of message, while Manning is now familiar with the different personalities and learning capacities of individuals in the dressing room.

But with the potential for four new faces to follow Stokes and Bird in the HPC, the squad will need time to blend, with a training camp in Portugal early next month before the first friendly against Newport County on the 22nd July.

“Luckily, we’re going to Portugal for a week for a training camp,” Manning added. “We go very hard on the principles of the game and how we want to play.

“Hopefully we’ll have some new faces so you can accelerate the relationships, accelerate the culture. My wife thinks it’s a joy, but it sure isn’t, I can tell you that. We will have three to four sessions a day; we’ll train early in the morning, we’ll train in the afternoon, they’ll have gym in the afternoon and we do a lot of video work, so we’ll do presentations in the evening.

“There’s a huge amount of work involved in the planning, but also the execution of it. I’m also very interested in winning, so the whole week is competitive. Players will be divided into teams and specific activities will be targeted where there are points for the winning team. You practice to win every day.

“I know the boys, even when I was working with eight-year-olds, you make it competitive, you get a response. You do the same thing as the 30 year olds, you get the same answer.

“And I think sometimes we try so hard tactically that we forget to actually go and play to try and win – there’s an important element of that as well. That week will be super competitive and there will be a loss for the losing team at the end.”

SIGN UP: For our daily Robins newsletter, bringing you the latest news from Ashton Gate