(Image credit: Hytro/ Man City WSL/ Keep Comms)
Ahead of the World Cup 2026 kicking off, I recently sat down with Emma Deakin, Performance Director at Manchester City Women's Football Club, to discuss how the women's team trains and recovers after just winning the Women's Super League (WSL) this season.As a personal trainer, I'm not only fascinated by how elite soccer players recover, but also how they train to stay fit, powerful, strong and injury-resistant despite demanding schedules across all competitions. And yes, despite the amount of running players do, that does involve strength training, a decent amount of time spent in the gym, and a focus on recovery.Below, I've shared some fascinating insights into my time with Deakin, plus four strength and recovery methods inspired by the women's team and how I'm trying them for myself."How do you incorporate the gym into training, and what type of equipment is crucial?""Everything's tailored to the individual," Deakin shares. "We can be really specific in terms of understanding what individual needs are, related to what their requirements are on the pitch and whatever the game requires of them.""We have our diagnostic assessments to say where someone might need a little bit more work. Is it increasing force production around their knee extensors? Is it the metabolic side? Everything is bespoke," she adds."It's not that one exercise or one bit of equipment is utilized more....There are general trends, and we recognize the nature of the female athlete and the injury risk; there are certain things we look to gravitate toward."Deakin tells me: "We are a running-based sport, where people need to have the capacity to run for 90 minutes, but they also need to be able to create the concentric and the eccentric forces to sprint and to repetitively sprint, and change direction, and change direction quickly."You need good hamstrings and good calves. Unless you've got those, your ability to produce force in the right manner, repetitively, is really difficult."
