As preseason is approaching for several different sports, you may be wondering how to prepare for this? Here are 5 things to concentrate on to help you get back into the swing of things.
Keeping up your fitness - Taking a rest once the season has ended, is imperative in order for your body to properly recover and set you up for the next season. However, due to a well deserved decrease in training load, it’s unrealistic to train at the level you were at during the season. Therefore, gradually building your strength and aerobic capacity back up to competition level is necessary to prevent injuries prior to preseason training. There are several ways to do this including completing a light exercise program a couple of times a week provided by your coach or an exercise physiologist, or depending on your sport playing around with light drills.
Nutrition and hydration - Nutrition is a key in allowing your body to build muscle and fuel your activity to enable you to be energised for the day. Ensuring that you’re eating a healthy diet filled with carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats is crucial. This can be done by eating foods from the 5 food groups; Vegetables, fruit, grain foods (etc pasta, rice, oats), protein based foods (etc lean meats, tofu, legumes, beans) and dairy based foods (etc milk, yogurt, cheese or their alternatives). Allowing your body to get the proper nutrients, will aid you in your training, to be the best you can possibly be.
Making sure you are drinking plenty of water everyday is essential to maintain body temperature, eliminate waste products and help in delivering nutrients around the body
Sleep - Sleep and rest is extremely important in letting your body recover from the previous season and recover from your current. Getting the recommended sleep per night (at least 7 hours) will help decrease the risk of injuries, improve reaction time, reduce mental errors, improve accuracy and ensure that you are ready to perform at your best.
Psychological preparation - Although it is crucial to train your body before the season commences it is also important that you are able to focus while playing the sport. There are different ways to improve your focus including goal setting, positive self-talk and meditation to help you with decision making and concentration.
Fitness testing - Can help you understand what needs to be improved upon and what your strengths are. It guides you on which exercises and activities you should do, that are going to help you decrease the risk of injuries and aid your performance. If you’re aware of what fitness tests you may complete in pre-season it may be worth trying some out before to better prepare you for pre-season.
If you’re unsure of the fitness assessments or exercise program you should be completing and would like to be at your optimal level before pre-season begins, come see one of Accredited Exercise Physiologists today. We can test your strength and power through our Axit system and create an individualised program that works for you.
Contact us today on 0419 159 903 or via social media.
This blog was written by Exercise Physiologist Isa Barkachi