I TRIED ERLING HAALAND’S FITNESS ROUTINE FOR A DAY. I’VE RARELY FELT SO SMUG
Manchester City’s Norwegian star striker, Erling Haaland, recently posted a video diary on YouTube, detailing his meticulous daily fitness and nutrition regimen. Rather than the pampered, dim-witted football star stereotype, Haaland comes across as funny, self-effacing and mature. He left home at 16 to play for his first professional club and had no choice but to learn how to take care of himself.
There are no personal chefs in Haaland’s house (as far as we can see on the video, anyway). He is passionate about eating freshly prepared natural food – “Nutrition is easy,” he says – and follows a strict regimen of impressive habits designed to keep him in peak physical shape. I wondered whether they could help an ordinary bloke like me achieve a few marginal health and fitness gains.
It wouldn’t be easy: he is 25 years old, 6ft 5in, weighs a lean 14st and earns a reported £520,000 a week. I am 50, 6ft 2in, weigh a not very lean 15st 10lb and earn considerably less in a year than he earns in a week. But I decided to give it a go.
6.30am: A morning stroll
“I like to start the day with fresh daylight and fresh air,” says Haaland. “Ideally, go out for a small walk. This is a logical thing to do.” There is plenty of science to support his logic: a 2024 study found that exposure to bright morning light was an effective treatment for depression. There is also evidence that breathing fresh morning air (which generally contains less CO2) increases concentration and focus throughout the working day. Morning walks have been linked to weight loss and better sleep too.
I usually walk my dog, Cookie, at around 9am. However, bringing it forward to a pre-breakfast stroll feels good: the soft light is calming, there are fewer people about, and I arrive home just as the rest of the family is waking up. I’ve rarely felt so smug.
7am: A cup of supercoffee
“Coffee is a superfood in my eyes, if you do it right,” says Haaland. He prepares his morning brew with raw, unpasteurised milk and a dash of maple syrup. This, he says, “protects the caffeine.” Advocates of unpasteurised milk say that it has numerous essential nutrients and that it is easier to absorb than the stuff you get in the supermarket. Adding a few glugs of raw milk plus a healthy splash of maple syrup rendered my morning brew a bit sickly, to be honest. And there is not much evidence to suggest it would do me any good.
“Coffee does have some health benefits, including cancer-protective polyphenols and gut-friendly fibre,” says Sam Rice, The Telegraph’s nutrition expert and the author of Supercharge Your Diet: Ten Easy Ways to Get Everything You Need from Your Food. “But I would strongly advise against consuming raw milk. Being unpasteurised, it can harbour harmful germs such as Salmonella, E.coli and listeria.
“Maple syrup is simply sugar; it has slightly more nutrients and a slightly lower glycaemic index (which measures how quickly it raises blood sugar) than white sugar, but in these quantities, the benefits are negligible.” I think I’ll stick to a flat white with semi-skimmed in future.
8am: Eggs, sunny side up
Haaland is said to consume 6,000 calories per day, which is pretty astonishing. Where’s he getting it all from? Certainly not from breakfast: he fries himself two eggs, with a vast amount of black pepper, and serves them on sourdough toast.
“This does seem a very light breakfast, as there’s a maximum of 400 calories here,” says Rice. “This is a pretty nutritious breakfast, especially if the eggs are fried in olive oil, with protein and complex carbs from the bread, but I would definitely want to see some fruit or vegetables on that plate too.” I am delighted to discover that eggs on toast is considered a healthy breakfast. It’s certainly a delicious one. Although I’m disappointed to learn that black pepper doesn’t count as a vegetable.
9am: A good old stretch
Mario Pafundi, City’s first-team sports therapist, arrives at Haaland’s home just after breakfast to manipulate and massage his body into peak condition. “I have naturally good flexibility in my groin and hips, which is important. You need to have good flexibility and mobility to score these crazy goals.” They are crazy: Haaland often flings himself into physics-defying contortions in order to finish chances. Meanwhile, I haven’t been able to touch my toes since I was 18.
But a 50-minute session with Maddison Campbell, a stretch therapist at Koyo Wellness in Richmond upon Thames, suggests there might still be hope for my creaking limbs. “It’s a slow process – even Haaland admits that it took him daily sessions for a couple of years to improve his hip flexors,” she says. “Your mobility is not too bad for a 50-year-old man, but you need to learn to relax and breathe into the stretches for you to get the maximum benefits.”
As I slowly relax, it starts to feel less uncomfortable and, eventually, I leave the session feeling slightly looser – and the permanent pain in my lower back has lessened somewhat. “For you to make long-term progress, you’d need to build these stretches into your everyday life,” Campbell tells me.
Unlike Haaland, I can’t afford to pay someone to come to my house and yank my limbs around every morning. Instead, I spend the week using some incredibly useful YouTube tutorials.
1pm: Training
Haaland trains with his Manchester City teammates in the pounding rain, which he describes as “horrific” but actually looks pretty enjoyable. I miss playing regular football with friends, which I abandoned in my 30s in favour of running and lifting weights in the gym. Research indicates that participating in group exercise activities enhances both physical and mental health outcomes.
Jordan Griffith, of Ignite Fitness in south-west London, is a personal trainer who emphasises community and connection, as well as physical fitness. “If it’s a fun environment, then you’re more likely to keep coming back to train,” he says. “Exercise is about mental health too, so having a community feel to a gym really helps.”
For me, an hour’s session with Griffith doubles as a therapy session: he spots me on the bench press while I moan to him about work. I leave the gym feeling stronger and less stressed.
5pm: Sauna and ice baths
I’ve never had the desire (or maybe the courage) to immerse myself in an ice bath, despite a widespread enthusiasm for the practice among my peers. But Haaland swears by it. “It’s good for blood flow… It’s also good for the mind, you feel as if you’re achieving something you don’t want to do.” He’s right, I don’t want to do it, but I plunge myself into the ice bath at Koyo Wellness anyway, and climb out again after just 30 seconds. I get straight into a sauna with in-built red light therapy, another treatment Haaland enjoys.
Studies have suggested that regular exposure to red light reduces inflammation, improves skin health, aids recovery from injury, and even boosts mood. Meanwhile, “contrast therapy” (alternating between sauna and ice baths) helps encourage blood flow and aids in muscle healing. I spend an hour jumping in and out of the pool and the sauna. It feels like a form of exercise in itself. But I manage to last longer in the bath each time, building up to a whole two minutes immersed up to my chest by the end. I feel truly heroic.
“In Norway, this is a natural part of everyday life from an early age,” says Koyo’s wellness therapist Vilde Bjoerk, who happens to be from the same Vestlandet region of Norway as Haaland. “It’s very rural and we live outdoor lives. Swimming outdoors in the cold and taking saunas is normal from primary-school age.”
Evening: Steak and sauce
Haaland picks up some colossal tomahawk steaks from a local farm, then takes them home to barbecue in his garden. He eats this with potato wedges, a colourful salad drenched in olive oil, and a sauce made by his partner, Isabel Haugseng Johansen, from egg yolk, vinegar and melted butter. Great for someone trying to cram in 6,000 calories, but not for a 50-year-old bloke trying to shed a few pounds.
“Meat cuts that are high in saturated fat are not the healthiest, as many studies have linked a high intake of saturated fat to higher risks of cardiovascular disease,” says Rice. “As for the sauce, this seems to me a great way to hit his calorie target, but not something to eat regularly if you are watching your weight. It’s highly calorific.”
As a vegetarian, steaks are off the menu for me, so I replace them with a couple of Juicy Marbles plant-based steaks from Waitrose, which carry 20g of protein each. To match the 200g of protein in a large tomahawk steak, I’d have to eat 10 of them. I’m greedy, but not that greedy.
“It would be challenging to eat that amount of protein in a day without meat in your diet,” says Rice. However, NHS guidelines suggest a man of my size and age needs only about 75g of protein a day, so I should be fine.
Can I really live like Haaland?
Do I feel like a superhuman goal machine? No. Do I feel more flexible and energised after a day on the Haaland plan? A bit. Will I be committing to it full time? I’d love to. But who has the time (or the money)?
The problem with superstar wellness regimens is that they are impractical for mere mortals, and so we often feel like failures by comparison. I prefer to pick and choose the elements that I can easily integrate into my existing lifestyle. I’ll definitely go back for more ice baths. And the dog will be walked before breakfast from now on. But even if I win the lottery, I will never put raw milk and syrup into my morning coffee.
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