THEO Walcott admitted he is “intrigued” to see where his future takes him, after already starting pre-season work for Saints. The 33-year-old forward has begun individual preparations to keep himself fit ahead of a return to Staplewood Campus later this month.
Theo Walcott joked: “I can share with you that it’s a nice peaceful home at the moment with the kids at school! I’ve started my pre-season work, Saints give us a lot of work to keep fit and I need to do a lot because I didn’t really play much last season and I need to keep up with these young lads. I’m intrigued to see what happens next and I’m looking forward to pre-season. I think it’s probably my 20th pre-season, I don’t know, can’t even count. And they’ve brought back the yo-yo, which isn’t nice. There’s no need for the yo-yo!”
The yo-yo test Walcott mentions is a maximal aerobic endurance fitness test, involving running between markers placed 20 meters apart, at increasing speeds, until exhaustion.
Theo Walcott added: “I remember doing it with (Danny) Ingsy because it was only me and him who came back a bit earlier. You run the distance to the cone, and then have a distance you walk back to and then you’ve got to make it on the beep and run again. We had a bit of a competition and I did not want to drop out first, and the 32-year-old didn’t drop out of first so I was happy with that. It’s better in a big group because you can sort of get away with not getting to one cone but now they wear the trackers.”
After Saints return to training this month, they will head to Austria for a week-long training camp on Wednesday, July 13. If still at the club, Walcott will likely be included in the group that travel and could face Bundesliga side Klagenfurt in a friendly on Monday, July 18.
