A couple of weeks into pre-season and you start to feel a tendon rearing its head. Or worse - you succumb to a muscle strain.
It's one of the most frustrating times for an injury to hit. You've put the work in, the season is right there on the horizon, and now you're managing a setback instead of building towards the first competitive game.
Here's how to avoid it.
It Starts In The Off-Season
Breakdowns in week two of pre-season are rarely a week-two problem. They're often an off-season problem that's just taken this long to surface, or misalignment between how load is being managed between the two periods.
Your training needs to carry the right amount of load and intensity, applied at the right time. That means:
- Getting the total distance in.
- Managing mechanical load, not just volume.
- Ensuring the body is genuinely exposed to an appropriate amount of acceleration and deceleration.
Skip these in the off-season and pre-season becomes the first time the body meets that demand, which is exactly when you don't want it to.
Load Isn't Just On The Pitch
The gym carries just as much load-management responsibility as the training ground.
That means paying close attention to:
- Previous injury sites - not just where, but the mechanism behind them.
- Building a specific approach - around that area, alongside the surrounding soft tissue that supports it.
A generic programme won't protect a specific history. If a player has a track record at the hamstring or the calf, the gym work has to reflect that - not just tick a box marked "lower body."
Manipulate Load, Not Just Volume
This isn't only about how much you do - it's about how you do it.
- The contraction types you use (concentric, eccentric, isometric) all load tissue differently.
- How the weeks are periodised matters just as much as what's in them.
- Strength top-ups should be built in deliberately, to plug gaps as they appear - not bolted on reactively once something's already gone.
Monitor It, Don't Just Plan It
A programme is only ever a prediction. What actually happens once a player is out there is a different conversation, and that conversation needs data to back it up.
- Track total distance, high-speed running, and accel/decel counts session by session, not just at the end of the week.
- Use that data to flag spikes early - a player jumping 30-40% above their rolling average is a red flag, not a coincidence.
- Pair external load (GPS) with internal load (RPE, wellness, soreness) — the two don't always agree, and when they don't, that's usually where the useful information is.
This is where the off-season plan and the on-pitch reality get reconciled. Without it, you're guessing whether the programme is doing what you designed it to do - you're just hoping.
Don't Ignore The Small Signals
Every breakdown has a warning shot before it - tightness that doesn't quite ease off, a niggle that lingers a day longer than it should, a session that felt heavier than the numbers suggest it should have.
- Treat these as information, not inconvenience. A player mentioning tightness isn't being soft, they're giving you a data point the GPS unit can't.
- Build in the option to adjust a session on the day, rather than forcing through a plan written a week out.
- Small, early interventions (a reduced volume day, an extra recovery modality, a tweak to gym load) are cheap. A grade 2 strain is not!
The players who make it through pre-season aren't the ones who never feel anything. They're the ones whose staff act on the first signal, not the third.
The Bottom Line
Being rigid with your programming will cost you opportunities. The players who make it through pre-season unscathed are usually the ones whose programmes flexed with them - adjusting to injury history, current load, and how the body is actually responding, not just what was written on the plan in June.
Pre-season success isn't decided in pre-season. It's decided in the weeks before it.
