Match winning recovery
As important as the ball drills carried out in training are the therapies applied to the players to help them prepare their bodies for the European Championships. The training sessions are intense and the matches are real battles, such are the demands on a modern footballer. For this reason, everything that happens following matches is absolutely fundamental, invisible work that helps the athlete to recover as well as possible and as quickly as possible to take on their next challenge. With Nico Williams, MOTM with his colossal performance against Italy that secured the national team a place in the Last 16, we checked out this fundamental work done by the RFEF's medical team.
To begin with, a 45-minute session in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. "It's oxygen therapy where the body is hyper-oxygenated," explains Claudio Vázquez, the head of the RFEF's medical services. "This increase in oxygen at tissue level favours the recovery from fatigue and muscle inflammation that occurs after everyday use or after intense exercise such as a match. We always use it as a recovery strategy.
Next up for Nico Williams is cryotherapy, a very restorative cold therapy. "In this case," says Dr. Vázquez, "we use the method of drastically lowering the temperature and producing peripheral vasoconstriction. This causes a minimisation of inflammation, an increase in thermal shock with this drop in temperature and an increase in heart rate which helps the swelling to gradually decrease and facilitates the player's recovery after training or a match". Nico is holding up well, although he snorts jokingly. "It's hard, I'm hot-blooded...".
Finally, it's time for phototherapy. "It's a therapy that we use as part of a player's recovery strategy," adds Claudio Vázquez. "It produces vasodilation and we usually use it after oxygen therapy (hyperbaric chamber). This hyper-oxygenation, when this vasodilation occurs, makes the oxygen diffuse more easily and helps the player's recovery".
After following all these steps, Nico Williams, as he himself says, feels as good as new. "This is great for us in matches as intense as the ones coming up now, it's a European Championship finals. We're going to use everything that can help us, and we'll be ready for the next game!