Rain Delays - how to turn them into a positive

At this time of the year, British Columbia seems to get punished for great weather it receives in summer and fall months as the heavy rains begin and never seem to end. For those of you who participate in indoor sports you probably can not relate to this article, however, for those who play/compete outdoors then you are fully aware of the challenges of playing fall/winter sports outside.

 

The community based sport programs constantly fight uncontrollable weather conditions. They attempt to schedule games on the new artificial turf facilities but unfortunately there are not of these new-age fields to accommodate all sports (football, soccer, field hockey, lacrosse), all ages (5 years old to the masters (over 40’s)), all levels (recreational to elite), and both male and female.

 

The grass fields take a battering with large volumes of activity each weekend, compounded by inclement weather; it does not take much for games to get cancelled due to field closures. Though I will point out that playing fields now are required 12 months of the year and it is important for us to appreciate that if fields are closed, it is for the betterment of all sports for the entire year.

 

As athletes how do we deal with the cancellation of games? Nothing can replace competition, however, the cancellation of games may provide an opportunity for you to; rest and regenerate if you are recovering from an injury or sickness, or train specific sport conditioning aspects that you have neglected during the playing season, or fine-tune some technical training on your own, or analysis your performances with your coach and/or conduct a self analysis, or take the opportunity to hang-out (bond) with your teammates.

 

As you can see you can easily convert a negative (cancellation of a game) to a positive. I recommend that you have contingency action plans in place during these winter months, because there will be game cancellations, so use this time productively. If you are able to work on individual or team weaknesses during the “down” time then it will give you the edge of over your closest rivals, who maybe using the time to catch up on their favorite TV shows!

Craig Dalrymple

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