Chris Burke believes his less-is-more strategy is one reason his Kilmarnock career continues apace.
The Killie wideman is now 37 but has featured in 22 of the club’s 26 games this season.
Ahead of the trip to Hibernian in the Scottish Premiership on Saturday, the former Rangers, Cardiff and Birmingham player, who won seven caps for Scotland, spoke about his preparations for football these days.
He said: “I look after myself and myself only.
“The one thing I would say – and it is shocking to say – is that as a footballer, the household revolves around me. It is shocking to say but it is because I need to rest and recover.
“I can’t go out and go to the park with my kids when I have a game the next day. I try to go to bed a little bit earlier. I will stretch more rather than do activities in the gym.
“The manager has been good to me and the club has been great with me because I don’t think I would be able to play the amount of games I have played this season if I hadn’t trained a day less than the group, and that was something that got addressed very early in the season.
“I did try and train with the group every day and compete with those lads with distance covered but it slowly caught up with me.
“Having an extra day to recover and not training with the group is one of the reasons I have been able to continue.”
Killie have won two and drawn one of their last three matches after a five-game losing streak.
Burke revealed boss Alex Dyer kept preaching self-belief to the squad.
He said: “We had a sticky patch and were struggling to get points on the board.
“But as the manager said, we just need to believe in each other and keep working hard.
“The reason why he said that is because it is easy to have self-doubt, it is easy to give up when you’re not doing well and then that run can last longer.
“But we stuck to our principles and in the recent games we have done really well, and that is all due to believing in ourselves.”
