Pedri's remedy that Barça wants to apply to Dani Olmo

BarcelonaAt the halfway point of this campaign, Pedri has already surpassed (35) the number of games he played in the entire eventful last season (34). The canary shines with its own light And finally, after three courses that were a real nightmare due to muscle injuries and relapses, he has managed not only to show his great talent in small parts, but to do so on a regular basis. Hansi Flick entrusted him with being the team leader, a task that the ARA already announced months ago, and to which the footballer has responded with credentials on the pitch. Correcting habits beyond the practice of football, taking care of his diet and working on physical prevention – both with muscle strength exercises and with the practice of disciplines such as Pilates – have allowed him to achieve a regularity desired by the 22-year-old footballer, by his coach and, also, by Barça, with whom at the end of January he sealed the renewal until 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 Pedri suffered up to eight muscle injuries was one of the biggest headaches for the Barça medical services and the player's closest environment. Finally, the club chose to order an exhaustive muscle analysis to know the footballer's muscle fibers in detail and, thus, be able to adapt a personalized routine that would help him prevent injuries and improve his physical performance. As advanced Sports WorldAt the end of last season, the club contacted Julio Tous, a leading international trainer – who has been the head of physical preparation for Barça's first team since the summer – to start a specific physical plan for Pedri. The procedure was coordinated with the Barça medical services and with the collaboration and approval of the player.

To analyse the muscles of the Canarian midfielder, a biopsy was performed at the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona, in which samples of his fibres were taken and then sent to a reference laboratory for genetic muscular myopathies in Baltimore (United States). Among the different remedies to treat myopathies is a muscle biopsy and a muscle and nerve biopsy. This is an invasive but simple procedure, which is carried out in a period of approximately 20 to 30 minutes. It is a test used to confirm the diagnosis of some diseases or to guide it and confirm it later with a genetic study. In short, they wanted to know what Pedri's muscles were like, how they would evolve and how they could be treated in detail in order to know how to improve them and, above all, put an end to the damned injuries.

One of the main conclusions was that it was better for the footballer to do strength exercises every day and also not to accumulate long breaks. That is, to play the matches in a chain. He himself explained this in a recent interview with the Efe agency: "I prefer to play continuously, since my body finds it harder to get going when it stops for one or two weeks," said Pedri, who also emphasized that the way of training proposed by Flick and his own works for him. staff, as well as the personalized strength work that he does with Tous himself and the recovery coach Raúl Martínez. The plan for the midfielder was activated at the end of last season, although it was interrupted by the trauma injury he suffered at the Euro Cup. In the match against Germany, the Canary Islander suffered a second degree sprain in his left knee after a hard tackle by Toni Kroos.

Play the 'Pedri formula' with Dani Olmo

Although the injury affected his pre-season, Pedri was able to start the season with the rest of his teammates. He did so by coming off the bench in the first league matchday win at Mestalla. Since then, he has taken part in 35 of the 36 games played, starting in 33 and playing more than 80 minutes in 23. Apart from preventing injuries, one of Barça's main objectives was to get their star midfielder to play full games.

This is the same milestone that Barça's medical services want to reach with Dani Olmo, the big signing of the season. According to ARA, the Blaugrana club is considering repeating with the Terrassa midfielder - who has seen Gavi pass him by - the tests that were carried out with Pedri. Nobody questions Olmo's talent, but his history of injuries, which already hampered his continuity at Leipzig - last season he missed more than twenty games - are a cause for concern. "He's very good, but he's also a machine for causing damage," they lament at the Ciudad Deportiva.

Mentally, the repetition of the cider at Christmas in order to be able to register him, which had already happened in the summer, did not help either. Unlike Pedri, who suffered muscularly in the quadriceps, Olmo suffers from the hamstring and soleus. All of this means that this season Olmo has only been able to exceed 80 minutes in three of the twenty games in which he has participated as a Barça player.