AS another week of lockdown beckons, so too does another week of training opportunities present itself. I’ve seen a lot of chat across the water about the precautions that will need to be taken if they’re to restart the Premier League after a prolonged break.

Kevin DeBruyne, the league’s best player in my opinion, came out with two telling statements yesterday. First, this will essentially be the start of a new season, regardless of how many games remain, due to the break. Secondly, he said that if the league wants to avoid mass injuries then they’ll have to allow for a short pre-season period to prep the transition from lockdown to playing.

The GAA club season hadn’t got off the ground so a ‘second’ pre-season isn’t going to be necessary if we do get the green light to play again, but there will need to be a period where players can get back to the pitch, take contact, play at intensity and remind their bodies of that ache you have after a hard-fought game.

Otherwise no matter how shortened the season has became there’ll be plenty of players who don’t see it through because of injuries picked up from now transitioning back into playing again properly.

The other thing De Bruyne spoke about was that it took this enforced break from playing to realise how much he loved the game and how he would be doing everything in his power to prolong his career.

I’d say there’s plenty of men reading this thinking the same. They went into the season taking it for granted they’ll have another few years playing, and then all of a sudden they’re looking at one less year’s ball.

So what are you going to do about it? I’ve dusted down the online coaching boots and started doing some Lockdown S&C programming. Now more than ever you have to train intelligently.

We may be limited with the equipment we have at our disposal and even at this early stage I’ve seen that go two very different ways. One man reached out to me after he decided give he had no weights at home the best thing he could do was run, so that’s what he did. Every day. Some days twice a day. And on the ninth day he heard a pop in his knee and that was the sign something had to change.

Then, on the other side of the coin just yesterday the message came through from an old online athlete saying he’d not done a tap since the gym closed and he’s put a half stone on, feels stiff, sore and needs to get moving again.

Wherever you fall in that spectrum, training to the extreme or not training at all, if you’d rather be pulling on your club colours and kicking ball then maybe now is the time to start doing everything you can to make sure you can continue to do that for as long as possible!

If you’re interested in online coaching you can find me on social media by searching PGthePT.

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