Opinion: Derik's Injury - Was His Summer Training Routine To Blame?

Around about a month ago Derik posted a video to his Instagram of him doing some pre-preseason weight training, and initially that might sound like a good thing... Well this wasn't.

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. - Newt Gingrich

A video posted by Derik Osede (@derikosede4) on Jun 12, 2016 at 8:54am PDT

If you watch the video you might know what I'm talking about, it included clips of Derik doing some high-rep leg press exercises and some one legged weighted squats which is all great for muscle endurance.

Or it would be if he wasn't using the most painfully horrible technique.

Every single rep he was doing was far too fast and straight into locking his knees, it was a recipe for a catastrophic knee injury.

Not only was the speed of what he was doing reducing the actual effect it was having on his muscles but by then locking his knees on every rep he was taking all the stress of the exercise off the muscle and into his knees.

So, not only was the exercise effectively pointless in terms of effectiveness it was also increasing the risk of instant injury or future injury, which brings me unfortunately to the point of this post. Derik was withdrawn from our very first pre-season game after less than half an hour for an as yet unspecified injury and I wasn't even a little bit surprised.

I hope upon hope that it isn't a serious knee injury or a related muscle injury to his weight lifting technique but it is a huge possibility and that is incredibly frustrating for a professional athlete at this level to be so uneducated and practically inviting injury.

I want to be clear as well that I am not at all blaming the current backroom staff and assume fully that if they witnessed him doing anything like this in training they would put a stop to it immediately.

It does though beg the question of what our players have been taught over recent years and whether this has been acceptable technique allowed during weight sessions.

If so the mystery of our numerous knee and leg muscle injuries has been solved and it's yet another damning indictment of our recent managerial deficiencies.

It's certainly something that Bolton Wanderers staff should be closely watching.