Sometimes as a free agent you have to do everything possible to ensure you can get a new club and for Dennis Praet, that meant €80 training sessions after leaving Leicester City.
Gazet van Antwerpen cover the player today and how he went about keeping himself fit after being released by Leicester this summer.
The midfielder’s five-year spell with the Foxes came to an end in the summer but it took until the beginning of September before he eventually signed for Royal Antwerp.
He had been linked with various moves around Europe, including a return to Italy, where he’d enjoyed spells with Sampdoria and Torino earlier in his career.
He had found himself out of the picture at Leicester and that meant he went almost five months without ‘match intensity’ between his last game and his debut for the Belgian side.
It seems he wasn’t sitting on his hands, though, instead he spent the time in the off-season ensuring he was fit and ready to go.
That led to him joining in a group practice of personal coaches at Ludus Magnus in Knokke, a place named after a famous Roman gladiator school.
The former Leicester man had learned about the place via word of mouth from other footballers who had used it to keep fit too. They, like Praet, all paid the same €80 price according to manager Diego Poppe.
“While in the past we have seen many footballers with a dramatic condition pass by, Dennis looked very fit when he came to us in June,” he said.
“Dennis walked in and said: ‘I can sign with a club at any time. Try to prepare myself as best as possible.’
“The price for Dennis Praet or Jantje van achter de Hoek is exactly the same. For each athlete we write out a plan, literally with pen and paper. How many kilometres per training, how many high intensity runs, and so on. With Dennis, the focus was on improving his Vo2-max, the maximum oxygen absorption capacity.”
