As of yesterday, March 25, Major League Soccer has extended the team training moratorium through, and including, Friday, April 3. As a result, teams and players have had to find other ways to maintain form and fitness. For Inter Miami midfielder Wil Trapp, this project has also forced him to flex his creative muscles.
“It is an exercise in how to be creative,” said Trapp. “I think, for myself, using a lot of body weight, but also utilizing the availability of ordering things online and kind of building my own home gym has been something I've wanted to do for a while, but then this has kind of prompted it as a necessity to maintain fitness, strength and all of those things.”
With the help of the coaching staff, however, Trapp and the rest of the team have received clear direction on how to continue their work from home. They have provided the players with workout regimens personalized by position groups and given each player a GPS tracking pod to track the data from their sessions remotely.
“I think the Club has done an excellent job of providing us the resources necessary to not only keep up with what the training program should be from an aerobic capacity, but also from an anaerobic capacity with at home lifts and videos provided to keep guys accountable, but also give us a picture of what we should be doing every single day as the weeks unfold, because the physical aspect of this is so massively important.”
Still, despite the mental burden associated with the circumstances of the MLS suspension, Trapp has remained positive and thankful throughout the process.
“The mental aspect is also weighing on us in terms of how you're dealing with not being able to see your teammates, not being able to have the facilities that we're used to, but I think the Club has done an excellent job of allowing us to sidestep that in positive ways,” added Trapp. “It's a new experience for all of us. You just try every single day to put on a brave face and move forward and thank those that are on the front lines of this because they're doing amazing, amazing work.”
“We have to do our part as well, staying at home, and we'll get over this, and when that day comes that we have the home opener I know that the feeling in the stadium, that feeling of rejoice for us as players, as well as everyone that's been counting and looking forward to that day, will certainly be high.”
For Trapp, there has been at least one positive stemming from the negative situation and that is getting to spend time with his wife and young son. A busy lead-up to the season meant limited time to spend with the family, but this period has freed up plenty of it.
“It's been amazing. Honestly, it's interesting because preseason is such a difficult time when you have a family because you're away from them for six, seven weeks. And I know for us being traded in the midst of preseason was another wrinkle. And with my son now being five months old, that's a whole other beast.”
“Now, it is a little bit of Groundhog Day every day,” joked Trapp. “But it's been amazing to see and be with them and spend the family time that we usually don't get to have. And for us settling and getting used to life here in Florida, albeit a different type of life than we expected at the moment, it's been a blessing, so to speak, that we've had the family time. But that doesn't change the fact that we want to be back on the field doing what we love to do every single day.”
