It’s always tricky to find the motivation to dust off your sporting gear or rugby boots weeks before the season kicks off for pre-season training. Most sports are played seasonally so there is a lot of the year where players aren’t training or playing regular games.
During the off season it is common for muscular strength, endurance and general conditioning for the sport declines. When the new sport season begins, there are massive physical demands on players. Going from nothing to full training and competitive games can lead to injury, due to lack of conditioning over the off season and the sudden high demand on the body. It would be like running a full marathon after doing no training for 3 months, this would be especially hard on the body and most likely lead to injury.
Why is pre-season training beneficial?
Pre-season is set to take place before the competitive season begins to allow time for players to progressively work on their fitness, strength and game specific skills.
Pre-season training gives players time to condition their bodies to the physical demands of their sport. This will not only help with the players ability to reduce injury during the competitive season but also help improve technical skills of the game. Having a good training schedule weeks before the competition begins means your player will be able to hit the first games performing well, and not feeling as exhausted afterwards.
The impact a team has when they start the season fit and conditioned to the sport is massive, compared to starting unfit and having done no skills for months. This can be the difference between a successful season and a season full of lost games and player injuries.
Along with building the physical aspect of sport, pre-season training is great for team building. It is important for players to spend time with each other, getting to know each other, how they play and interact in order to have a cohesive team.
Tips for Pre-Season training;
- Start off easy. Give yourself time to increase your physicality and intensity of your training sessions. This will allow time for your body to adjust to the increase in load on the body.
- Recovery is just as important as training. An easy way to target this is to add cooling down and stretching into each training session. This will help reduce tightness in your muscles which can help to reduce injuries.
- Have a good mix of exercises and drills. There are many aspects to training that are beneficial to making pre-season training worthwhile. Cardiovascular training is great to help increase your fitness. Resistance training helps to reduce muscle imbalance and builds strength. Speed and agility training is great and be sure to add in sport specific skills and drills, so you are ready for the demands of your sport. Stretching is important too. This will help muscle recovery and increase flexibility.
- Add in fun games and activities. It doesn’t all have to be sport focused. In order to build sportsmanship and increase team bonding, try some activities that push your players out of there comfort zone or away from the sporting context. For example, taking your team to mini golf, or day tramping or even a movie night.
Where we can help:
We can help with our expert physiotherapists. Our physiotherapists are trained to sport muscle imbalances, biomechanical issues and can test range of motion, flexibility and muscle strength and function. Identifying these can be key in avoiding injury.
We can also help by tailoring individualized exercise program, warms up or drills to ensure you are correctly loading your muscles and optimizing your training load.
Our podiatrist can also offer expert advice. They are trained in assisting with shoe selection. This can be helpful to people who are new to sport or people who will be spending a lot of time in the shoes they have chosen for their sport as it can be a good way of reducing injury or muscle soreness.
Podiatrist can also do gait analysis. This is extremely helpful to analyze your walking and running style to see if you need any assistance with exercise to improve the way you walk or run. This can be hugely beneficial in injury reduction.
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