During his brief tenure as D.C. United head coach, Hernan Losada was widely known to be a stickler for fitness.
Losada asked his DCU team to press almost constantly, aiming to put opponents under pressure all over the field and win possession quickly after losing it.
In order to play such an uptempo style, Losada ran his teams hard in training and also monitored every element of his players’ diet, conducting regular weigh-ins at the team’s training facility.
Some players responded well to Losada’s regimented style while others did not – including Paul Arriola, whom The Athletic reported left the club in large part due to Losada.
Losada was fired early this season after just 15 months in charge. Perhaps a different coach would’ve been given more time but the Argentine had clearly rubbed many within the organization the wrong way.
Seitz says Losada left him at ‘rock bottom’
On Tuesday, former DCU goalkeeper Chris Seitz told a story that elucidated some of Losada’s methods on Twitter.
Seitz, who retired earlier this year, said he was confronted over, of all things, a photo of his wife and kids having a picnic.
“One day I came in early to practice to do my run and our strength coach came up to me,” Seitz said. “It was Mother’s Day the day prior and I posted a photo of my wife sitting at a picnic table eating a sandwich with chips with our kids, I was not in the photo & the photo was from 2 years prior.
“He told me the coach had pulled him into the office to talk about the photo I had posted and why I was eating poor food choices. It was a picnic at the park and there was sandwiches, chips, and waters and sodas on the table.
“I thought he was joking, I was working hard, damn near starving myself, and doing everything he asked of me, to be who he wanted me to be.
“This was right when I got benched and after a poor start to the season from myself and the team so this broke me. It put me in a place [of] self doubt and depression.”
Seitz added that his wife would later remark that he had become a different person, adding that he knew he had hit “rock bottom.”
The 35-year-old went on to say that his wife and nutritionist helped save him from injury and that he “realized that life, happiness, family, mental health, and everything outside of the sport was so much more important to me than making one coach happy!”
Read Seitz’s entire thread on Twitter
A thread about when fitness and daily lifestyle in pro sports was taken to far. And how it can affect a pros mental health.
I will start out by saying i was one of the big boys, from year one at RSL i was a member of the fat camp. Every coach i ever had questioned my figure.
— Chris Seitz 🎈🅱️ (@Seitzy1) May 10, 2022