When a football club goes to Turkey, the imagination immediately offers up a beach, sunshine and a lazy pre-season routine. But Isparta (pronounced with a soft "uh" at the start — Uh-sparta) is not about a holiday. It's mid-altitude, 1,035 metres above sea level, where the body is quickly taught that oxygen is not a free option.
130 kilometres north of Antalya, in the Lake District, 220,000 residents, no sea. Mass tourism doesn't come here — it goes to Antalya, Cappadocia, Pamukkale. Only those who need to get to Isparta do: botanists, perfumers and now Baltika's footballers. The city lives on roses: 65 per cent of the world's rose oil is produced right here. The scent your wife dabs on her wrist from a Chanel or Dior bottle physically comes from the same hectares Talalaev's players will soon be running sprints across. Thirty kilometres away is the village of Kuyucak, Turkey's lavender Provence. All of it is within reach of the training base and none of it is relevant. Just a pretty side effect.
Now to the point — altitude.
1,035 metres is mid-altitude. Not Elbrus and not Everest — high altitude starts at 1,700 — but definitely not lowland either. There's 10-12 per cent less oxygen in the air here. The air is thinner, breathing quickens, the heart works harder, tissues receive less oxygen than they're used to. After a week or two the body adapts: hypoxia triggers the production of erythropoietin, which stimulates the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells, and the blood's oxygen capacity grows. After returning to sea level that gain holds for another two to four weeks.
Next — the arithmetic.
Baltika are in Isparta from 27 June to 11 July — two weeks exactly. Then Sochi, 13-25 July, back at sea level. And straight into round one of the RPL — 24-27 July, CSKA away. In other words, the team rolls into the first match of the season precisely when the oxygen effect of mid-altitude is still in the blood, while the legs have already got used to lowland speed. The camps are designed like a two-stage rocket: Isparta pumps up the blood, Sochi converts it into match form. In sports science the closely related logic is known as Live High — Train Low: get the altitude stimulus, then polish match speed down below. Baltika's version isn't the laboratory protocol but a practical footballing adaptation: two weeks at mid-altitude, then Sochi at sea level. In the good cases this kind of work yields a gain in aerobic power, but the main thing isn't even the number, it's the timing: Baltika return to the season not straight out of thin air but after a lowland finishing stage. Europe's top clubs hold mid-altitude camps for the same reason — it's just that there, that kind of altitude costs a different kind of money.
Why Isparta specifically, and not somewhere higher? Turkey has Erciyes at 1,750 metres and Erzurum at 1,900. But high altitude eats the first week: the training ceiling drops sharply, and intense work can only be sustained after adaptation. For a two-week camp that loss is unacceptable. 1,035 metres is the compromise: high enough for the body to respond, low enough to get straight into the workload. Very much Talalaev's style — practical, calculated.
Talalaev himself explained the choice of Turkey in an interview with three reasons: cheaper in terms of value for money, two guaranteed perfect pitches, the right sparring partners — a Turkish Süper Lig club, a fifth-placed Arab side and a European-competition participant from Bulgaria or Slovenia. The fourth reason — altitude — he didn't name. Either he thought it obvious or he didn't want to give it away. But it sits right at the centre.
And one more bonus coaches don't usually talk about: isolation. In Belek there are close to a hundred teams, restaurants, the sea, saunas, temptations. In Isparta there are mountains, pitches and a hotel. If you're a coach and you want the team to think only about football, you pick a place where there's nothing else to think about. But if, by chance, Baltika's players are into botany — they have two weeks to study rare species of rose🌷🌹🌺😂. If they aren't — the same two weeks in which to concentrate on learning to hate them.
Why all this matters for Baltika specifically.
Talalaev's team lives on intensity: pressing, duels, volume. Baltika finished last season sixth — 46 points, the best RPL debutant in 23 years. Ahead of Dynamo, Rubin and Akhmat, and the fewest goals conceded in the first half of the season. That isn't luck, it's physical preparation. To repeat it, simply repeating isn't enough: CSKA finished fifth, just one place higher but five points better, and all the top clubs will surely strengthen over the summer. Baltika answer not only with the same again, but with an upgrade to the method. Not Belek out of habit, but mid-altitude by the logic of the big clubs. By budget the team is at the bottom of the table. By preparation it's climbing towards the top. Baltika don't play in the RPL on money. Baltika play on the fact that Talalaev knows how to count. Isparta is one of his calculated positions.
That's the view from outside. From inside the dressing room it's roughly the same. Defender Eldar Civic told the press this week that the aim for the new season is a fight for the top five: a young, quality squad makes it possible to finish above last year's result. But something else matters more: according to Civic, the current camps are running in a regime of heavy physical loads, and the team fully trusts the coaching staff precisely because the same kind of preparation already delivered results last season. Nobody in the dressing room asks why the flight to Isparta, why run around at mid-altitude in the July heat. Because last season it produced sixth place.
At the camps themselves it's more important to watch not the scores in the friendlies but who withstands the volume. Which of the young players are clinging on, how the newcomers settle in, how many players are working without restrictions, which positions Talalaev is trying out for the opening rounds. In July that matters more than a pretty win in a warm-up match.
In short: Baltika aren't going to rest, they're going to build strong legs and fitness. And then we'll be looking at the running stats from CSKA v Baltika at the end of July. Who comes back from that mid-altitude as a starter, and who simply brings home a nice tan, a bottle of rose oil for the wife and a tired look.
A reminder that every plus on Sports.ru adds +1 to the lads' physical readiness
Upd — A small clarification from the club: the team will be working not just at the altitude of Isparta itself, but even higher.☝️ 🗻🏔️🌋
