How to condition your body for increasing sport and activity levels

Below are some tips on how to prepare yourself for an increase in activity, and ensure your body recovers as quickly as possible, ready to go again!

Preparation

You should be preparing your body for whatever sport/activity you will be doing, and that means it has to be “specific”. This can be done in many different ways, depending on your sport, but can include sport specific drills, repeating key activities or movements and ultimately practicing your sport. This is to ensure your body is able to cope with the stress of playing your particular sport, and is done by gradually increasing the difficulty or intensity over a period of time to ensure you are ready. 

Goals

We should all have targets. They encourage us to improve and keep us motivated and  on track with our desired sport/activity. It doesn’t matter if you are competing or just going to the gym for general wellbeing, set yourself some short and long term goals. I would encourage people to ensure the goals are specific, achievable, and measurable.

Recovery

Recovery is something you may hear many professional sportsmen and women labelling as one of the most important parts of their training, and it’s something we need to factor in everyday (especially as we don’t have the luxury of being a full time athlete!). some examples of how we can optimise our recovery are: 

Rest

Have a couple of planned days off through the week. This can have a massive impact on your mental health as well as your physical wellbeing. You do not have to sit on the sofa all day but take it easy and do something different and not so physically demanding.

Sleep

Guidelines suggest we should get at least 8 hours of undisturbed sleep per night for optimum recovery. Our muscles repair and grow during sleep, and when you are stressing your body, this is extremely important to keep on improving and feeling ready to hit another hard session.