"After eleven years at the Lyon based ASVEL basketball club and with the French national team, the opportunity to return to football in optimal conditions presented itself, and I told myself it was time to return to the sport I've been playing since I was 8 years old." At the end of his season with the most successful club in French basketball, fitness coach Manuel Lacroix will join Franck Haise's staff at OGC Nice as head of strength training, activation, and prevention. "It will be a boost for me to discover a different environment, even though I'll mainly be working in the gym like here and I've always maintained contact with football." A challenge that will require the player, who worked at Dijon FCO between 2006 and 2014, to get used to certain specifics. "I'll have to adapt to a very large staff, a much larger group, and the pathologies of the players between the two sports are different. In basketball, we work more on cartilage wear, while in football, we prevent muscle injuries, pubalgia, or knee problems." Not enough to worry the Olympic vice-champion who, in recent years, notably accompanied Victor Wembanyama and who explained in a conference for Vcoaching how to physically and behaviourally distinguish a high-level athlete from a true champion.
Brief
OGC Nice has recruited Manuel Lacroix, the physical trainer of the ASVEL and the French basketball team to strengthen its performance division / ©Infinity Nine Média