Barcelona defender Thomas Vermaelen has revealed he was shocked by the intensity of the club's training sessions during his first weeks at Camp Nou.
The centre-back joined Barca on a free transfer after leaving Arsenal in 2014 but has been injured for much of his first 18 months in Catalonia.
Vermaelen will hope to face the Gunners in the first leg of his side's last-16 Champions League tie on Tuesday and spoke about the demands on the squad during every session.
"The first thing I noticed here was the intensity of the pressing," Vermaelen told the Telegraph.
"The pressure is on straight away when we lose the ball. We do a lot of positioning games, focusing on getting the ball back. The pressure the players put on you is incredible, you have no time on the ball."
The Belgium international then discussed a warm-up routine known as 'rondos' which involves players trying to keep the ball in a circle while one team-mate in the middle attempts to steal possession.
He said: "We always do it at the start of training, it doesn't only warm you up but it’s a training session in itself, you try to keep the ball in possession and make the guys in the middle do the pressing.
"We did it sometimes at Arsenal but not a lot of clubs do it like we do it here. "It's a tradition. Even if we have a game in the evening, we come here in the morning and do a rondo."
Vermaelen added that he has "warm memories" of Arsenal, where he made over 100 appearances between 2009 and 2014.
"I watch a lot of Arsenal games because I have warm memories of the club, and because they are a very attractive team," he said.
"I watched the Leicester game last week, it was very stressful but these are the most beautiful games to win.
"Now the title race is wide open, if they hadn’t won it would have been more difficult but now it’s on. I always said at the start that Arsenal had a big chance to win it.
"Unfortunately we had to go our separate ways but luckily I signed for a beautiful club like Barcelona."
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