As the year comes to a close, so does the first stint of footy or soccer preseason training. More than likely, you’ve taken some time off since the end of the 2025 season and just got back into the swing of things.
Enter: the silly season.
Christmas parties, holidays, catching up with family and friends… Eating, drinking, putting your feet up by the pool… Load management is usually the last thing on your mind – and quite rightly so! However, when January rolls around, the real preseason kicks off again, and so does the onset of soft tissue overuse injuries and tendinopathies.
What do we mean when we talk about load?
Load refers to the amount of physical work, demand, and stress on the human body across exercise and activities of daily life. This is extremely difficult to accurately quantify at the best of times, and local sporting clubs/recreational sports people often don’t have access to GPS tracking and impact measuring tools that are utilised by professional athletes. It is dependent on the activity duration, intensity and frequency, but is also influenced by factors such as psychological stress and cumulative fatigue.
Why does this matter?
Our bodies thrive in “the sweet spot”. This is when load, for example, across any given week, falls within the threshold of what our bodies are conditioned for, or are capable of. In order to make gains in strength and fitness, we must push ourselves beyond this threshold to allow muscle adaptations and improvements in cardiovascular capacity. However, this must be done in a gradual and progressive manner to avoid excessive fatigue and overloading, which result in overuse injuries.
So what now?
This is NOT to say that you shouldn’t have a rest or you shouldn’t rock up to preseason training – only that we need to factor in the deconditioning that occurs when we take time off. We obviously cannot expect to do nothing post season, train hard for 6 weeks, rest again over the holidays, and come back all guns blazing after 4 weeks off. My tips for you:
1. If you have had a rest over the holidays, do not resume training at the same intensity where you left off. You may need to reduce the intensity of training, or maybe do 75% of a session to help ease into it.
2. Maintain some conditioning over the holiday period. Go for a run/jog on the days that you normally would train, or a more social kick in the park. It doesn’t have to be full on, but whatever you do in that time reduces the spike in load when you return.
3. If you have access to a smart watch, use measures like distance travelled, energy expenditure or time training to help monitor load.
4. Listen to your body. It is okay to do less – but equally, it will tell you if you need to move!
Hope you all have a lovely holiday season however you celebrate! And please do not hesitate to reach out to the team if you need any assistance.
Post by blog post by Adrian Ng