Rehab and Return to Play (RTP): Strategies to Optimise Rehab and Player’s Availability

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The best attribute for players is availability. Given that players constitute a significant portion of your club's budget, keeping them healthy and available is crucial to ensure you're not investing in sidelined talent. While some injuries, particularly those from collisions, are unavoidable, soft tissue and overload injuries are more common and preventable. This is where the Performance and Medical departments come in, using their expertise to minimise the risk and severity of injuries.?

In a perfect world, every injury would be preventable. While that's not reality, tools like GPS units and the ultra-precise data from OHCOACH provide valuable insights for managing training loads and monitoring players effectively. This data allows for the creation of player profiles, detailing chronic training loads and match day loads, which are essential for planning injury prevention and rehabilitation.?

Now, in this blog, we will talk about GPS tools – like our OHCOACH data can optimize your team's performance and reduce injury risks.?

Injury Prevention and Player Profiling?

Longitudinal monitoring your squad with GPS data helps create detailed individual player profiles. These profiles include important metrics like chronic training loads and match day performance, providing a roadmap for managing injuries. Understanding your training weeks by the numbers is crucial, especially when it comes to Return to Play (RTP) situations.

When injuries occur, the RTP process typically follows a framework of progressing from high control to high chaos, simulating the unpredictable nature of sport (the image below). This gradual exposure to increasing and complex loads ensures that the player is ready for the demands of full training and matches (as shown in the image above). The duration of this process varies based on injury type and severity, ranging from 6-9 months for a cruciate ligament injury to 4-6 weeks for a moderate-grade hamstring strain.?

Structured RTP Process?

Quantifying individual player profiles, including match averages and training loads, is vital. For example, if an injured player averages 1200m of high-speed running in a game, the RTP plan should aim to safely expose the player to similar volumes during rehab. This reduces the risk of reinjury by ensuring the player is adequately prepared for the physical demands of a match.?

OHCOACH’s tools, like the Match Day and Season Week tagging feature coming out in the Report Renewal feature update, enhance the RTP process. By tagging data for specific training and match days, you gain detailed insights into what each player typically experiences, allowing for tailored rehabilitation plans. This ensures that reintroduction to training is well-calibrated, minimizing the risk of setbacks.?

Utilising Live Data?

One of the most powerful tools in the RTP process is the OHCOACH live application. This tool allows for proactive monitoring of rehabilitation sessions, enabling real-time adjustments to achieve session goals. For instance, if a player with a hamstring injury needs to progressively reach 90-95% of their max speed by the end of the RTP process, live monitoring ensures this target speeds can be met safely and effectively during the rehab session. If the player reaches the planned maximum speed earlier in the session than anticipated, you can adjust the session accordingly.?

Appropriate planning and communicating?

Balancing the need for quick returns with the risk of reinjury is crucial in the RTP process. Now, you also need to realize that communicating with the Head Coach is essential, especially if there's pressure to speed up a player’s return. Maintaining a good relationship with the coaching staff helps set realistic timelines and ensures player health isn't compromised for short-term gains.?

Conclusion?

In injury rehabilitation, actually, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The RTP process blends science and art, requiring both objective data and subjective judgment.??

By leveraging GPS data and live applications, you can provide objective evidence to support your decisions, ensuring players not only return from injury but remain injury-free.?

OHCOACH equips you with the tools to monitor, adjust, and optimise the RTP process, ensuring your players stay available and effective on the pitch. By integrating these strategies, you can optimise player availability, ensuring that they are on the pitch and making a significant impact during games.?

We’d love to chat with you to help you managing injury prevention and rehabilitation for your team!??

You are entitled to a free consultation with one of our experts, feel free to set up a call trough the link!

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