Marc Roca reveals extraordinary lengths taken in preparation for Leeds United transfer

Leeds midfielder Marc Roca reveals he took his personal fitness coach on holiday to Ibiza with his partner earlier this summer, whilst preparing for a first pre-season at United.

At the beginning of June, the finishing touches were being applied to Roca’s Leeds move, swapping Bavaria and Bayern Munich for West Yorkshire.

The former Spain Under-21 international visited the Balaeric island with his girlfriend and private fitness coach with whom he says he has been working for ‘six or seven years’.

"My girlfriend is not happy with this,” Roca told the Official Leeds United Podcast. “Because she wants to spend a lot of time with me, but I think in summer you have a lot of time you can be with your family, with your girlfriend, with your friends you can enjoy – but I think it's a good moment as well for training because you can train hard, you can improve yourself, you can keep on going because it's a lot of time that you're that you don't have any match, you can’t put your body on the limit.”

Roca’s start to life at Leeds has seen the Spaniard attempt to reach the match fitness of his teammates who have played more regularly in recent seasons.

In Germany, the former Espanyol man was restricted to substitute appearances and subsequently had been out of weekly 90-minute practice for some time.

"I think it's very important,” Roca says of his fitness. “I have my personal coach. I trained with him since maybe I started six, seven years ago. And for me it's very important because I think here we have a lot of work [in training] but maybe we'll have a lot of afternoons that we are free and we have to invest in ourselves.”

"I always want to keep on growing to be better than yesterday. What I mean is like an investment for you in the future because the training sometimes is very hard, but you have to keep on working at home.

“You have to do your stretching, you have to do everything that you can that helps you,” Roca added.