This article is intended for athletes and sport coaches.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created uncertainty around sport seasons, changes in training environments, and a void in physical activity for many athletes. It is important to stay as prepared as possible for your return to sport in order to avoid a drop-off in skill and an increase in injury risk. Here are some tips to help you stay prepared.

1. Match your training density. When your sport returns, how many practices or lifting sessions will you have in a week? Make sure that you are accumulating similar volumes each day and week as your return approaches. If you are only training two times per week and then jump into 5 practices per week, that will create a massive spike in your training load. You will experience substantial fatigue and an increase in injury risk.

2. Play your sport. Most athletes are aware that there is a difference between being “fit” and being in sport shape. You have trained all off-season to be ready, but those first few practices are still tough to get through. The only way to be truly fit to play your sport is by playing the sport itself. This is because strength and conditioning programs do not typically include a substantial sport-skill component. In addition, playing a sport comes with added stressors due to their chaotic, unpredictable and reactive nature. Make sure that your training not only meets the metabolic demands of the sport, but that you are including some position-specific skill work into your training. You may not be able to do this with other team members, but there are likely still plenty of individual drills you can do.

3. Match your training volume. This might not be feasible for everyone and can be difficult to measure. That being said, if you play a field-sport and have a wearable fitness device, you likely have a good idea of how far you run every practice or game. If you don’t have the wearable tech, there’s a good chance that information relative to your sport has been researched and can be found online. If you normally run a total of 5k in a practice, make sure some of your training sessions include a total running volume of 5k. Of course there several other factors related to the time-motion demands of your sport that you may not be able to measure. Just make sure that all of those factors applicable to your sport get some attention.

4. Focus on your nutrition. Athletes fuel, train, recover, and repeat. Your nutrition impacts every aspect of your life including physical and cognitive performance. If you want to continue getting better during the lockdown, prioritize those things that are easily controllable.

5. Jump, Cut, and Sprint. The general principle behind all field sports is that the offense needs to create and manipulate space to generate scoring opportunities. The defense needs to reduce that space to create mistakes and turnovers. Athletes create space by jumping (in some sports), cutting, and sprinting in combination with misdirection or deception. Those are also some of the most taxing movements on your nervous and musculoskeletal systems that you will perform in sport. As such, they are also actions commonly associated with non-contact soft-tissue injuries. Jumping, cutting, and sprinting should be staples of any S&C program for team-sport athletes, so don’t neglect them. Also, they require little to no equipment!

6. This one is for the coaches. Ease back into your sport. Yes, it is your athletes’ responsibility to make sure they are prepared at the conclusion of the off-season. That being said, no matter how hard they work they will not be adequately prepared if they are not playing their sport. Err on the side of caution. My favorite analogy to preparing athletes is baking a cake (credit: Keir Wenham-Flatt). You’re better off baking the cake slowly, because you can always bake it more if needed. But once the cake is burnt, it’s too late. Once you have pushed your athletes too hard too fast and injuries occur, you’re losing the training time you thought you were gaining. Also, while it is important to train to fatigue in many circumstances, remember that skill acquisition under fatigue is highly diminished.

-Nick Shedd, MS, CSCS