Erling Haaland is not short of physical gifts. He’s 6ft 5in, frighteningly fast and one of football’s most imposing athletes. Social media is currently going nuts over this ‘massive viking raider’ bullying international defenders at the world cup.

But what does his training actually look like – and, more importantly, what can the rest of us learn from it?

That’s the question Dr Mike Israetel, exercise scientist, content-creator and the straight-talking face of RP Strength, set out to answer in a recent video analysing Haaland’s routine, recovery habits and nutrition. And, as ever, Dr Mike’s verdict is a useful mix of admiration, scepticism and sport science reality check.

First up: Haaland’s outrageous goals. The flying finishes, awkward angles and instinctive strikes – these aren’t built in the weight room alone, sorry. According to Dr Mike, the best way to get better at football is, unsurprisingly, playing football. Or, at the very least, drilling the specific skills, techniques and movement patterns that make up the sport.

‘Sport training is what gets you good at sports,’ Dr Mike says emphastically.

Strength and conditioning can absolutely support this, but probably isn’t going to be the primary driver of performance improvements. You can almost certainly get better at football by simply getting bigger, stronger and more jacked in the gym, but there’s a limit. Dr Mike says you have to sharpen and direct that new found strength and stamina by spending time with a ball at your feet.

That being said, the gym still has an important role to play. It can help you sprint faster, jump higher, kick harder and, crucially, become more robust. For a player like Haaland, who combines brute force with coordination, that physical base creates a strong foundation that specific practice can build on.

When it comes to useful gym work for footballers, Dr Mike highlights three key physical qualities: anterior chain strength, vertical force production and posterior chain power.

In plain English, the anterior chain means the muscles on the front of your body – especially your abs, hip flexors and quads. These are critical for sprinting mechanics and kicking power. As Dr Mike explains, a powerful strike doesn’t just come from the lower leg. The abs contract first, then the hip flexors drive the thigh forward, before the quads finish the job and whip the foot through the ball.

The second priority is vertical force production. This is your ability to push hard into the ground – the quality that helps you accelerate, jump and change speed. Squats, leg presses, hack squats and other heavy lower-body pushing movements can all have a place here, particularly when performed for lower rep ranges and progressive strength gains.

‘Deep squats for sets of five or so… all of a sudden you’re going to be just faster and you’re going to be able to jump higher,’ says the Doctor.

Finally, there’s the posterior chain: hamstrings, glutes, calves and lower back. These muscles are vital for sprinting, decelerating, changing direction and reducing the risk of hamstring injuries. In other words, if you want to move fast and stay in one piece, you can’t afford to neglect the muscles you can’t see in the mirror.

Dr Mike is also a fan of Haaland’s mobility work. And watching the Norwegian score in a style that looks closer to martial arts than football, we’re in agreement.

For footballers, flexibility isn’t just about looking good in the warm-up. Your legs are going to be forced into strange positions at high speed, often while being shoved, clipped or pulled off balance. The more range you can safely access, the more options you have – and the less likely you are to get injured when the game pulls you into those ranges unexpectedly.

‘If you’re more flexible and more mobile, you’re going to have lower injury rate and more capability.’

Dr Mike’s prescription is simple: mobility work needs to be regular and it needs to be taken seriously. A few casual toe touches once a week probably won’t cut it. Most days, fairly intense holds of around 20-30 seconds are more likely to move the needle.

Where Dr Mike is less convinced is with some of the more ‘wellness-adjacent’ extras. Haaland’s balance-board work and talk of ‘glute activation’ get short shrift.

His point isn’t that balance is useless, or that glutes don’t matter. It’s that standing on an unstable surface mostly makes you better at standing on an unstable surface. Whether that transfers meaningfully to sprinting, tackling and finishing under pressure is far less clear.

‘Specific balance, you can get better at this task, but does that transfer to soccer play? The answer is probably not.’

Likewise, simply feeling a muscle working doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making it stronger. Your glutes might be ‘active’, but unless they’re being challenged against meaningful resistance, or asked to produce serious force or speed, you probably aren’t building much that will show up on the pitch.

As Dr Mike says: ‘Just because a muscle’s active doesn’t mean it’s being pushed to its limits.’

The most interesting part of Dr Mike’s analysis may be his take on Haaland’s hypoxic heat chamber work. Haaland trains in a room set to around 40°C and simulating altitude, with the idea being that if training feels harder in there, running on the pitch will feel easier.

Psychologically, Dr Mike says, this makes sense. Train in unpleasant conditions and normal conditions can feel like a gift. You build confidence. You feel battle-hardened. You know you can cope.

Physiologically, though, he’s less convinced.

‘Training at altitude and in high heat conditions… both depress your performance.’

If heat and low oxygen reduce your output, you may not be training the relevant systems as effectively. In other words, making something feel harder isn’t the same as making it better. Sometimes it just means you’re doing lower-quality work under more stressful conditions.

There is an exception: if you’re preparing to play in extreme heat, heat acclimation makes sense. But for general performance, Dr Mike’s preference is clear – train hard in good conditions, hit higher outputs, then recover properly.

The big takeaway? Don’t copy elite athletes blindly.

Haaland is world-class because of an entire lifetime of football, genetics, consistency, strength, skill and freakish physical tools. Some of his methods are worth stealing: regular mobility work, smart strength training, year-round exposure to the sport and a focus on robustness. Some of it is probably harmless ritual. And some of it may be best left in the sauna.

As Dr Mike sums up nicely:

‘When good athletes do things, some fraction of what they do you can learn from… But some fraction of what they do just doesn’t make them any better at sport, and could actually be making them worse.’

If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.

Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.

With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.    

As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.   

Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.   

 You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.