I’m sure you feel it. The excitement and eagerness to finally be returning to sports after months of lockdown. You’re excited to welcome your athletes back to the training field, and they’re ready to get back into a disciplined training and conditioning program. This excitement may cause the desire to jump right back in where things left off, but that would set your athletes up for an increased chance of injury.
It’s essential to progressively and wisely help your athletes return to sports safely. And that begins with holding proper assessments. True Athlete Performance is working with teams to create phased-in training plans, athlete readiness screenings, and load monitoring. This means helping athletes and coaches plan how to balance the needs of the athletes body, with the likely scenario of getting back to seasons quickly.
The first step is to do some basic screening of fitness and readiness as athletes return. Finding out what shape they are in is important because coaches have never faced this many athletes out of training for so long.
Example Questions:
1. Have you done any structured training programs during your time away?
2. What did those programs entail/look like?
3. Have you been injured at all during your time away?
4. Where do you feel you are lacking and may need additional training focus?
5. Do you feel like you can jump back into the same training level as before?
Next, we help coaches plan a ramp-up of both technical skills and the right physical qualities for the sport that will lower the chance of injuries.
Monitoring how the athletes are responding to the increased load is another strategy that provides an early warning if the training is too much or too little. This feedback can help coaches adjust training plans to get athletes back into shape and competitive form as fast as possible.
Example Questions:
1. How many hours of sleep did you get last night?
2. How are you feeling today? 1 = Bad, 5 = Great!
3. How sore are you? 1=Very Sore 5=Not sore
4. How hard was this training/practice session? 1= easy / 5= hard
TrueAP has simple tools through our app that can help coaches monitor their athletes’ responses when returning to sports after COVID-19 shutdowns.
A breakdown of some beneficial exercises and additional information can be found in our Return to Sports Guide!