How to Maximise your Christmas Break from Sports

As the year draws to a close, this is a time that the majority of sports seasons will either end, or take a mid season hiatus to allow players to rest and recover, before the second half of the season resumes. For GAA players, this is a perfect time to prime the body before the preseason training begins in January. For Soccer and Rugby players, it can be a great time to catch your breath and address your body before entering the second half of a long season. This blog post aims to guide you through your recovery, injury prevention, and what you can be doing to optimise your performance for whatever January may bring, regardless of your sport.

The mid season break or the off-season is an ideal time to allow the body the recovery it needs after strenuous few months before hand. This doesn’t necessarily mean complete rest and inactivity is the ideal solution. It is important that we don’t let out fitness completely drop as the before we know it we will be back in the throws of preseason or a heavy match schedule. While recovering, we should still be aiming for around 20-30 minutes of light exercise a day to maximise our recovery while maintaining out fitness. There are a number of things we can do to help this:

1. Gentle Aerobic Exercise:
Low intensity cardio can be a great way to keep the fitness up, without sacrificing recover, such as walking, jogging, or cycling.

2. Mobility training:
Exercise such as yoga, pilates, or a stretching session can be helpful to maintain mobility and stay moving through the break.

3. Strength and Conditioning:
Though the break might not be the ideal time to build muscle mass and increase max strength, it is important to keep our strength up and light sessions can be huge asset to recovery.

Whether finishing the season, or taking a mid season break, the last few months may have taken their toll on the body. This is an ideal time address any niggles or injuries that you have noticed in the last few months. This time can be well used as a window to perform your rehab, without feeling the pressure of being fit for each passing weekend. It is important to get these injuries assessed early, so we can prevent them from becoming more significant as the season wears on and we reduce the risk of missing cup matches and play-offs for an injury that could have been treated early. Book in with your physio and put a plan in place for the window of time between now and your return to play to make sure you are in as good health as possible.

While the this is a time of rest to a degree, it is important not to lose the strength and fitness you have built over the last number of months through the season and from the previous preseason block. The goal in this window of time should be focussed on maintaining, rather than building. There are a number of things we can do that can allow for good results, while still optimising our recovery:

1. Short Strength Sessions:
Focus on one compound movements like squats, lunges, and deadlifts per session to engage multiple muscle groups, while using lighter accessory movement to maintain strength without overloading muscles too much.

2. Interval Training:
Include short, high-intensity interval sessions to keep your cardiovascular conditioning up before returning to competition.

3. Low Impact Exercise:
Exercise such as yoga or Pilates is a great way to maintain condition over the break, while also reducing the impact to help continue our recovery.

Over the course of the season or having just finished a season, depending on how you individually, or your team have performed, things will arise that you may feel need to be addressed. These things can be something as simple as a few individual skills that need sharpening, or gaps in the teams play style or skill set that can be changed easily. Spending a few minutes working on a skill a few times a week can help us stay sharp, improve on that skill, and play a part in our active recovery, without placing us under too much heavy load. This can also be a good time to reflect on first half of the season or the final stretch of the previous season, and see where your team have succeeded or fallen short, and begin thinking of how that can be addressed when the season resumes.

After this break in the season, it is essential to ease your way back into sport, and avoid the temptation to rush into high intensity training and games. Ease back into it, listen to your body, and continue the recovery work you have been doing to reduce your chances of picking up an injury as the sports begin to increase intensity again. If any aches or niggles do arise, contact us at PMC Physiotherapy and our expert physios will work with you to avoid them worsening, allowing time for them to recover before games resume.