Ally McCoist has swooped to snap up Jim Henry as Head of Sports Science at Sevco.
Henry, affectionately known as Buzz Lightyear, moved into football when Martin O’Neill was at Celtic and also worked with the Irishman at Aston Villa and Sunderland as well as a short stint with Hibs.
O’Neill’s departure from Sunderland was quickly led to Henry being shown the door with Paolo di Canio scathing about the conditioning of the players he inherited when he took charge at the Stadium of Light.
“People said, how can you improve at this stage of the season?” the Italian explained. “There were many ex-professionals saying, why is Di Canio talking about fitness? And of course you can’t change things straight away.
“But what you can do is, instead of two very light training sessions, is have five very heavy sessions. That doesn’t mean you can see a difference in the first, or even second week.
“But by the third week, you can see and measure the changes in physical condition. Against Stoke – 10 versus 11 – you saw that.
“We monitor every training session with the GPS system and the statistics we got showed a big change. Every player covers approximately nine kilometres during a game, with 1.6km of that at a high intensity over 25 yards.
“The GPS system shows trends. During the training session, individually, they used to cover 2.6km, or 2.6km including the warm-up. Now we cover 7.5km – even in the light sessions.”
Welcoming the new signing McCoist said: “Jim has joined the coaching staff and I have no doubt he will be a huge success. His expertise will undoubtedly help the players prepare for the challenges ahead.
“He has enjoyed his time with the players in the last few days and will get the squad in peak condition for the campaign ahead.”
Henry is a former Scotland judo internationalist.
Jim Henry was better known as ‘X’ in East Kilbride. Was a postman and also bouncer in a really poor ‘nightclub’ called Gemini.
He got the job at Celtic just prior to Fergus saving our club because he was Wullie Haughies wifes personal trainer. Also well known for punting jewelery in the dressing room. Joos Valgaeren might still have the rolex!! He has found his perfect home.
sounds like di canio is simply moving with the times by employing state of the art fitness technology while mccoist has hired a fitness coach from the 80’s – long may it continue.
Wow!, is this the second “Premiership class” coach, Fat Sally has acquired? I wonder if Jim comes with a PS3 console, and is available for weddings and funerals?…think he should look out the black tie, sometime soon! H x 2
“Right lads, touch your toes, twice round the pitch, Greigs for lunch, then a couple of beers on the way home. Sorted”.
Not on our radar nor should stories about them be populating the timterweb
Aye well McCoist could be doing with one.
While I can’t wish him all the best, given his new position, I would like to say Jim is a perfect gentleman from a really nice family. We were friends and neighbours all through our schooldays. After a chance meeting he was kind enough to get tickets for my daughter and me for a game, including access to the players lounge: that was a great day.