JD leaving no stone unturned
He said: “I have a better understanding of my body now. Everyone wants to feel fresh in the game, there’s no better feeling. So I’m just making sure I’m doing the right things – cryotherapy, massage, eating the right things ... trying to turn vegan.
“That’s a funny one because when I go to my mum’s she’s got every kind of meat you can imagine out on the table.
“It was my girlfriend’s idea. She said to me, ‘You’ve got to do it’ and she’s always showing me documentaries.
“It’s always nice to have someone around you to who helps you and drives you on and wants you to do well.”
Defoe has barely missed a game since arriving on Wearside in January 2015, proving to be a remarkably consistent presence and notching over 30 Premier League goals.
He is one of the top English scorers in the division and attributes his freshness to following a successful postmatch recovery schedule. It is gruelling but Defoe has no qualms understaking it.
He said: “I don’t find anything hard because I know the feeling of scoring goals. So getting in an ice bath and all that isn’t nice, but I just think, ‘You know what? I’m going to do this and be rewarded’. It’s hard, but in another way it’s easy because all I want to do is play well and score goals.
“The key thing for me is recovery, giving yourself the best opportunity to performinthenextgame,andI seem to have got that to a tee. There’s a lot of things I do away from training and away from matchday that help me perform, so I’ll just keep doing that.”
Defoe’s international recall laid to rest the disappointment of missing out on Euro 2016.
He said: “I didn’t get a call. I found out on the telly. It was heartbreaking. Only because in my heart I felt like I’d done enough to be involved.”
“My mum always said: ‘It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish’, and years later I’m back in the squad and scoring goals for my country,” he said.
“I never give up. I was trying to be realistic and with the previous manager (Hodgson) I didn’t feel like I was getting an opportunity. I was scoring goals, especially last season, and I wasn’t selected for the Euros. I felt like I finished the season strong, but I was realistic and felt like maybe I wasn’t going to get an opportunity.”