Strength and Conditioning Coach Olayinka Balogun, popularly known as “Toptrainer,” has called for a more performance-focused approach to physical preparation in football, arguing that the gym should be viewed as a tool for improving what players do on the pitch rather than an end in itself. Drawing on more than 15 years of experience in fitness and performance coaching, Balogun outlined his philosophy in a practitioner article examining lessons from Nigerian football and international competition, Trybal News reports.
Balogun’s football journey includes experience with MFM Football Club, Ladegbuwa Football Club and Lekki United Football Club, as well as preparing players for the 2023 Viareggio international tournament in Italy. His experience at MFM came during the club’s promotion-winning 2015 Nigeria National League campaign, an environment he says helped shape his understanding that physical preparation must complement, rather than compete with, technical and tactical work.
At the heart of Balogun’s framework are six interconnected areas: assessment, movement quality, strength development, speed and power, football-specific conditioning, and recovery and load management. He argues that programmes should begin by understanding an athlete’s individual needs, training history, position and competition demands before exercises and workloads are prescribed.
According to the performance coach, strength training should provide a foundation for football rather than become a bodybuilding exercise. He stresses that players must be able to transfer physical qualities developed in the gym into explosive football actions such as acceleration, jumping, changes of direction and repeated high-intensity movements. “The gym is not the destination,” is a central theme of his philosophy, with the ultimate objective being improved performance on the pitch.
Balogun also highlighted his experience preparing Ladegbuwa Football Club for the Viareggio tournament in Italy as an important lesson in adapting physical preparation to international competition. Travel, unfamiliar environments, recovery demands and fixture congestion require programmes to be flexible, he noted. During the 2023/24 NLO campaign, Ladegbuwa finished second in the league, an achievement Balogun described as the product of collective effort while stressing the importance of consistent physical preparation throughout the season.
His subsequent work with Lekki United during the 2025–26 period further reinforced his belief in individualisation. Balogun noted that players within the same squad can have significantly different physical requirements, with younger or less experienced athletes potentially requiring different progressions from established players. He advocates a continuous cycle of understanding the athlete, building a foundation, developing capacity, expressing performance and reassessing progress.
Reflecting on his work in Nigerian football, Balogun believes limited access to technology and facilities should not prevent clubs from maintaining high professional standards. He argues that disciplined coaching, communication, collaboration with technical staff and consistent implementation of fundamental principles can have a major impact. His professional philosophy is summed up in three principles: “Train with purpose. Prepare for performance. Develop the athlete behind the footballer.”
