It would have been no surprise if Liverpool's had players questioned the wisdom behind one particular pre-season exercise three years ago.
As Jurgen Klopp and his staff gathered their squad at the hotel pool in the picturesque setting of their Evian base in August 2019, they were introduced to a man named Sebastian Steudtner, a world-class high-wave surfer from Germany. After an introduction from the world-record holder, the players were asked to perform one task: to hold their breath underwater for as long as possible.
Quite how this would help them overthrow Manchester City in the forthcoming Premier League season was probably a mystery to many at the time. After all, this particular team meeting was not focusing on tactical improvements, fitness building or any kind football-related work whatsoever.
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It is said that Dejan Lovren and Mohamed Salah were the best at this underwater experiment, staying submerged for around 90 seconds before finally allowing themselves to come up for air.
It was close to six months later before Klopp made public just why he was asking his players to take an extended dip into the Evian waters that day under the tutelage of Steudtner, whose expertise in dealing with stress management during high-wave surfing was translated to the rigours of Premier League football during his session.
"The best way is you don't breathe pretty much or you jump in the water," Klopp said at West Ham as his side went a whopping 19 points clear in the title race in January 2020. "Don't breathe and then come out after 38 games and then you have a look at what happened there."
The plan to have Steudtner advise the Liverpool team centred around getting better at coping with the suffocating stress and pressure they would come under later in the season with regards to chasing titles.
"A lot of things Jurgen does, he does in his way which might not be common and maybe other people don't understand when he starts doing them," Steudtner would later tell Liverpoolfc.com. "But they see how it works and all of sudden it becomes something genius."
And as Liverpool approach a gigantic April - one that could make or break hopes of a historic, unprecedented quadruple - Klopp may just be asking his players, once more, to submerge themselves, if only metaphorically this time around.
To describe the next month as 'season-defining' doesn't really cut it in this instance. The phrase is often bandied about at various junctures of the season, but the penultimate month of this thrilling campaign really could be the few weeks that decide where this Liverpool's place in the pantheon of iconic Anfield sides sits.
Klopp, of course, is all too aware of the significance of a nine-game stretch between April 2 and 30, revealing as much as he reeled off the list to reporters who were pitch-side at the City Ground on Sunday evening.
"So now we have Watford, Benfica, Man City, Benfica, Man City, Manchester United, Everton," Klopp said after the 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest. "From a Liverpool perspective, these are all massive games and we try to play them one at a time.
"We knew before the game that City would be the opponent but we wanted to go to the final anyway. So now here we go."
It will require absolute focus from everyone within the camp and while there might be some quiet grumblings over a lack of sustained minutes on the pitch from one or two, the Liverpool squad, to a man, will surely be attuned enough to recognise that they could be part of something genuinely great between now and the end of the campaign.
So those murmurs of discontent will be pushed firmly to the backburner for now; they are discussions for another time, which was something Klopp himself conceded last week.
"Some players don't play often enough, some aren't in the squad often enough, they could create a bad atmosphere but they don't, they will not," Klopp said. "They have a clear commitment to this team, this season and when it is done, we will talk about the rest, whatever, the future, all these kinds of things."
For now and the best part of the next fortnight, there is calm around the AXA Centre as fingers are crossed for the safe return of the international contingent, but what follows on the other side is sure to be the mother of all end-of-season pushes - on all fronts.
It starts with April's 28-day stretch that sees Liverpool walking the high-wire to immortality without a safety net in sight. And then? Then comes May.
