11 Ways to Spend Your Off Day as a Footballer

11 Ways to Spend Your Off Day as a Footballer:

Taking off days are a very important part of your development to becoming the best footballer you can be.

Letting your body and mind rest are a very important part of you reaching the next level as a human, and a footballer.

Taking your body to extreme levels every single day without getting the proper rest needed is a recipe for disaster. This can lead to physical burnout, mental burnout, injury and even a loss of love for the game.

Most people think that you you need to train 5-6 hours per day 6-7 days per week to become a top level professional.

But, that couldn’t be further from the truth..

The funny thing is that you don’t improve, grow, and adapt on the field or in the gym. You grow during your rest periods (mostly during sleep).

Finding a Balance Between Work and Rest:

When you are in the gym or on the pitch, you are in a sympathetic nervous system state (heart rate is high, breathing is fast, muscles are being stressed) and you are breaking your body down.

You adapt in a parasympathetic state when you are “resting and digesting.”

The most important thing you need to remember is:

You need to recover as hard as you train!

Though, nowadays (maybe with the rise of Take No Days Off Coaches), I see a very big pendulum swing from one side to the other with no “middle ground”.

People are either training too much or too little.

Trust me, I get it, balance is tough…

I believe everyone has their own balance. There is no “one universal balance,” so you have to find your own balance.

Earn Your Rest:

But before you think about resting and taking off days, you must actually be training!

As David Goggins says, “you must train before you rest! Too many people are asking about rest days before actually training and pushing their mind and body to its limit!”

If you are reading this article, I’m sure you’re doing the correct and right amount of training. If not, we can discuss how to do that at the end of the article.

I want to give you my best 11 tips on how to spend your off day as a footballer.

 Here are 11 Tips on How to Spend Your Off Day as a Footballer:

1. 8-9 Hours of Quality Sleep:

-If you don’t get 8-9 hours of quality sleep on your off day, you can forget about the rest of the tips in this article. If there was a most important tip, it’s this one!

-If the benefits of sleep were in a pill, the lines at every supplement shop would be out the door and around the corner!

-Sleep is the period where you grow and adapt the most from a physical and mental standpoint.

Without getting too in depth, here are 3 of my Best Sleep Tips: 

-Keep a Consistent Sleep Schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.

-Limit your light after dark. When the sun goes down, it’s time to dim the lights. Also, make sure you get off your phone at least 1 hour before bed.

-Create a good sleep environment. Make sure the room is as dark as possible and a cool temperature (between 64-68 degrees Fahrenheit/18-20 degrees Celsius)

(if you want to read more, check out the article on my blog titled “10 Best Sleep Tips for Footballers)

2. Long Walk, Long Bike Ride or Long Swim: 

-A walk, bike ride or swim will be an excellent thing to do on an off day because it will get your body moving, blood flowing and warmth to your muscles.

-These are all aerobic activities which will get your heart pumping, breath flowing and will deliver key nutrients to your overworked and tired areas.

-All 3 of these have also been proven to be very good for your mind as well, especially if you do them in nature.

-One of my favorite things to do on an off day is to grab some water and coffee in the morning and then go head out for a “fasted” hike in a nice nature trail. You don’t have to be fasted, but for me, I feel so much sharper mentally, and I get excellent creative ideas when I am.

3. Hot Tub or Hot Bath

 -The hot tub or hot bath is excellent to use on an off day because it will improve your blood circulation, metabolic rate and your core body temperature, which will help with “waste elimination” that’s been accumulated from training.

-The warm water will increase blood flow to the arms and legs and into the core which speeds up the process of eliminating lactic acid and other metabolites that are produced while training.

-The hot tub or bath can also produce the release of heat shock proteins, which will help protect your muscular development and are believed to promote muscle growth.

-Try a 15–30-minute soak in a hot tub or hot bath (add Epsom salt as an additional relaxation method) and watch how much better you feel mentally and physically afterwards.

4. 10-20 Minutes of Foam Rolling on Tight & “Locked” Up Areas: 

-Foam rolling is excellent to do directly after your hot tub because your muscles are warm and relaxed, and you can get deeper into the tissue.

-Spend 30 seconds-2 minutes rolling up and down your body with a foam roller and/or lacrosse ball. When you find a tight area, sit on it and breathe into the tissue to help it relax and release.

5. 10-30 Minutes of Quality/Long Duration Stretching:

 -When you are warm and your muscles are relaxed, you can have the most influence on your tissue.

-Long Duration stretching is one of the best things you can do to improve how you feel and move.

-Stretching will maintain and or restore your ideal range of motion, reduce your risk of injury, increase blood flow and circulation which will boost your tissue health and correct abnormal or compensatory movement patterns that may lead to tension or injury.

6. Game Analysis:

-Analyzing your game or another professionals’ game is one of the best things you can do on your off day as a footballer. You aren’t stressing your body, but you are improving your mind without much effort.

-Game analysis is becoming more popular with the improvement in technology all around the world. Therefore, it should be easier for you to get your hands on your own games.

-When you analyze games, you can improve your positioning and decision making on the pitch which will make you a much better player.

Sit and carefully watch your game:

-Ask yourself: what could I have done better here? What did I do well here? Was that decision the right one or was there a better option?

-The most important thing is to be honest with yourself because video does not lie!

-Work on what you did poorly in training the following week and continue to work on what you did well to make them your strengths as a player. Then, obviously, the goal is to not make the same mistake again in the game the upcoming week.

7. Keep Caffeine Intake Low:

 -Caffeine is a stimulant and is one of the best supplements to improve your performance from a physical and mental standpoint. It has been shown to improve focus, concentration, memory, as well as your endurance.

-Though, it does increase your heart rate and can make you anxious if you don’t metabolize caffeine well.

-On an off day, experiment with cutting your caffeine in half as you do on training days, and you may feel less anxious and more relaxed.

8. Hydrate:

-Hydration plays a crucial role in performance, injury prevention and recovery as an athlete, as well as your mental performance and concentration.

-Even though you’re not training as hard on an off day, proper hydration is very important for getting the right nutrients around your body.

-Males should drink at least 3.7 liters of water per day. Females should drink at least 2.7 liters of water per day.

-Throw a pinch of high quality salt in each liter of water you drink for an added benefit!

9. Good Quality Protein, Complex Carbohydrates, Vegetables & Fruits:

 -Eating whole, nutrient-dense foods will always make you feel and recover better because they do an excellent job in reducing inflammation and helping your body recover.

-Proper nutrition is always important as an athlete but off days can serve to be a good time to meal prep and prepare your food for the next couple of days.

-During an off day, you aren’t spending as much time training, so you should spend more

time preparing.

-Prepare your foods for the following training days and make sure you are properly fueling yourself with the right foods as well so you can come back stronger and recharged for the following training day.

10. Watch a Movie/Go Hang Out with Friends:

-You probably think about football 24/7 and you’re always trying to improve and get better…

-Though, one of the best things you can do is take your mind off football and improving yourself. Go hang out with good friends that make you happy and smile or watch a good movie to get your mind off football and training.

-Believe it or not, when you do this, you will come back to training fresher and more motivated!

-Plus, hanging around good people who bring you up has been shown to improve your dopamine levels drastically (your “feel-good” hormones).

11. Plan for the Days Ahead:

-Personally, I love planning and goal setting.

-Your mind is generally fresh and sharp on an off day, so this could be a good time to sit down with your planner/journal and write down what your goals for the upcoming months and years.

-One thing my online clients and I do is “reverse engineer” our goals.

For example:

-You write down your 3–5-year goal (please dream big!), and you reverse engineer from there:

-What do you have to do in this next year to get there?

-What do you have to do this month to get there?

-What do you have to do this week to get there?

-If you perfect the daily habits and rituals to get you to that 3–5-year goal, you will get there smoothly and seamlessly without having to think much about it.

Conclusion:

I hope these 11 tips on how to spend your off day have helped you out.

Try all of them and see what works best for you. Then, pick a couple of the best ones and do them consistently on your off day.

Most importantly, make sure your off day from football isn’t just sitting on the couch with your feet up eating Cheetos. Get up and move. Trust me, it’s the best thing you can do for your mind and body.

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