Playing Until 40 Comes at a COST: Ashley Young on the Brutal Reality of Football (432)

**Ashley Young** (0:03)
You talk to any player that's played under him.
As soon as I had met the boss, I was like, I know where I'm going. I said, son, when you walk in this building, you're going to feel what it's like to play for Man United. Young has to go, break over, oh, sensational. You're either going to be a winner or you're going to be a loser. You either sink or swim, that's it. We had to win. I'm like a mentality monster.

**Jake Humphrey** (0:28)
Well, I remember seeing a quote from Sir Alex years ago where he said, the next Sunday, the players were fighting. And at that moment, I knew we were going to win the league.

**Ashley Young** (0:41)
Never fear a storm. Be ready to adapt.

**Jake Humphrey** (0:44)
The skill is staying true to ourselves. Ashley, welcome to High Performance.

**Ashley Young** (0:52)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

**Jake Humphrey** (0:53)
Nice to have you in the chair. I want to start with a quote of yours, actually, where you said, age is just a number. If you can get up and down the pitch, you can lead those around you. So this is about longevity, right? And longevity is a question that I know so many of our high performance audience are either struggling with at the moment or asking questions about, or they will in the future.
So I think this is probably less about football and more about life. And I'd love to find out whether you think that you were as fit at 37 as you were at 27 And if you were, how on earth you managed to get yourself to that point?

**Ashley Young** (1:28)
Was I at 27? I think I got fitter.
And the reason being, when I went to Inter Milan, and as crazy as it sounds, a lot of people have got stories about Antonio Conte and his weird and wonderful training sessions. I'd say the running that we did, literally, we could play on a Sunday, and you knew on a Tuesday or a Thursday, you were going to do some sort of crazy running. And that could be anywhere. To take you as a specific of the running we did, it was, imagine a fall in for the pitch. We'd do a seven minutes where it was 30 seconds on, 30 seconds rest. You literally went up and down for the seven minutes.
That was our first block.

**Jake Humphrey** (2:13)
30 seconds at what kind of pace?

**Ashley Young** (2:15)
30 seconds, it's like, I'd say more than half, three quarter pace, basically. So it's a long, fair stride, 100 yards. We'd do that as a block and then for two minutes, you'd have a rest and you'd then do a 75 yard block, which you'd do, it was 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. And you'd do that for seven minutes. You'd then have two minutes off and you'd do another block of 50 yards, which was like 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off. That was for seven minutes.
You'd then do a last block of 25 yards, which was 10 seconds on, 10 seconds off. And then you'd think, I'm finished now.

**Jake Humphrey** (3:03)
Yeah, literally I'm finished.

**Ashley Young** (3:04)
Absolutely finished. There'd be people on the floor. I mean, you're looking at other people trying to help each other.
Knowing that I've now got a block of six shuttles to do.
And that could have been just in the morning. So we knew on a Tuesday, we're doing a double session. You'd come out in the afternoon to then do a second part in the afternoon. Whereas everyone's knackered. Everyone's finished after that first block of running in the morning to then come out in the afternoon to go and do that running as well. It was, for me, it was crazy. But I think that's what's given me that longevity to continue to the age of 40, where I got to before I decided to retire.

**Jake Humphrey** (3:47)
Because it was so much, the load was so much that for your cardiovascular abilities just went through the roof or?

**Ashley Young** (3:53)
Yeah, they did. You know, there was times where we used to go into games. And especially out in Italy, there was a lot of teams that played Man v Man.
So you imagine the physical demands on playing Man v Man are a lot. You got to stay with the same person throughout the whole game. He used to say, just watch at 60 minutes what happens. And there were so many teams that used to come there, come to the San Siro and used to get to 60 minutes. And it used to be like we used to fly that way. They used to go down. And no teams could stay with us in terms of fitness. And it was one of the things that he always, he was a person that wanted to test you mentally.