The Canadian University Soccer season is here, and this year marks my 3rd season as Assistant Coach and Fitness Coach with the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) Ridgebacks Women’s Varsity Soccer Team.  This season, I will be blogging every day with a ‘Tip of the Day’ – a small piece of information about the testing, training, monitoring, or performance analysis I am doing with the team.

Today’s Tip of the Day is once again about recovery.  As I mentioned in previous editions of this blog, recovery during the university season in general, and during pre-season in particular, is crucial to the success of any team.  A few days ago I discussed the use of the Total Quality Recovery (TQR-A) “Actual” scale, which requires players to keep track of the recovery activities they perform and calculate a score out of 20 each day.  Today I will briefly discuss the second piece of the TQR process – the TQR-P (Total Quality Recovery “Perceived” scale). 

The TQR-P requires players to answer the question “How are You Feeling Today?”, based on a 6-20 scale (6 being “very poor recovery” and 20 being “Excellent recovery”).  Typically, this score is taken first thing in the morning, or at the earliest time of day that coaches see their players.  Knowing the answer to this recovery question is especially useful when the number is compared to the TQR-A score from the day before. If players’ perceived recovery is good, then they must be doing a good job with their recovery activities, however,  if perceived recovery is poor (and/or if the number decreases over the course of the season) then looking at the TQR-A can give insight as to how/why the problem happened, and what can be done to fix it. 

Keeping track of players’ recovery status is extremely important for coaches and fitness coaches, because inadequate recovery can lead to overtraining, injuries, and overall decreased performance.  I have had a slot of success using the TQR-A and TQR-P with players at various levels (including the Canadian National Women’s U17 team, and the Toronto FC Academy teams), and they have also been an integral part of my work with UOIT.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this topic.  Drop me a line here to get the conversation started.