5 Tips to Have a Better Game After a Travel Day
If you play club soccer, you know that traveling is a big part of the game. It’s one of the biggest inconveniences we deal with because it can be tough on both your body and mind. If you don’t proactively keep your physical and mental health in check after a travel day, the stress and exhaustion can have a huge impact on your performance.
Though it’s tempting to just do whatever you want during this period, you’ll find yourself feeling significantly better when you’re much more selective with your activities.
Based on our own experience as pros, here are six ways to prevent traveling from inhibiting your performance the following day:
1. Drink Lots of Water
Traveling is draining in a way that physical exercise is not. When you feel exhausted after traveling, often it’s at least partly because of dehydration. So, rule number one for having a better game after a travel day is drinking plenty of water. Traveling is harder on our muscles and joints than most people realize, and water makes sure they feel nice and loose come match time.
2. Stretch
Speaking of muscles and joints, you should stretch right after your trip, just like you would after a good workout. If you don’t, you’ll definitely feel it the following day.
Traveling forces you to remain in a single position (e.g. sitting down) for an extended period. The tension you feel afterwards comes from the lack of blood flow, and stretching gets that blood circulating again, pretending any tension from building up.
3. Move Around
We get it: The last thing you want to do after traveling is move around. But staying immobile - after already sitting for hours and hours - can throw you off your biological rhythm. You wouldn’t normally sit or lay down for that long, right? No, you’d move around, so getting some light exercise is what your body needs.
4. Stay Away from Mentally Draining Activities
Now for your mental health. We all have non-physical, recreational activities we enjoy, whether it’s playing video games, watching movies, drawing, etc.
What’s subjective is the effect these activities have on you. With some recreational activities, your mind takes a break. Others require considerable mental energy. You’re focusing, making decisions, and emotionally invested in the outcome.
You may want to steer clear of these activities so you can save up that precious mental energy for your match, when you’ll have to stay focused for long periods and make decisions left and right.
5. Put Your Mind at Ease
Lastly, just make sure that every recreational, non-physical activity you engage in puts your mind at ease. The idea is to minimize decision-making during this period and fill up your time with activities that make you feel happy and relaxed.
Believe it or not, most pro soccer players have their own lists of activities like this that they incorporate into their pre-game routine. Yes, even the greatest athletes reserve time to watch funny TV shows or write in their journals. It’s like giving your brain a good night’s sleep before it has to work extra hard the next day. Ideally, you should have these activities planned out before traveling, so you don’t even have to waste a little mental energy deciding what to do with your free time.
When you wake up for your game, you’ll have so much mental energy stored up that you’ll be excited to put that brain to use and devote 100% of your focus to the task in front of you.