Nth Degree Performance are a premier provider of elite level remote physical preparation and performance support to the best field hockey players, teams and coaches in the world and to those who want to be them in the future. As an official partner we have access to exclusive content and we are pleased to share the latest installment with you 'The Winter Break'.
Opening Scene-Setter
You’ll already have seen and felt it - winter is here. And with it comes a unique and individual set of physical needs, opportunities, and risks for every player. No two athletes experience this block in the same way: some are deep into indoor, some are fully on break, some are juggling both, and others are dealing with cancellations and disruption.
In this blog, we want to get you started in understanding four key things:
- Your situation — what this winter period actually looks like for you.
- Your objectives — both the immediate demands you’re facing now and the longer-term goals for when outdoor resumes.
- The opportunity — how, used well, this block can lead to meaningful physical progress.
- The risk — how the length and content of your break can influence your readiness and performance when you return.
Once you’re clear on these, the next step is putting together a plan that works for your reality and delivers what you need.
The Realities of Your Situation
At this time of year, your situation might look very different to the player standing next to you. You may be about to play - or already have played - your final outdoor match of the first half of the season. You might be gearing up for an intense and exciting indoor block. You might have six weeks until your next outdoor fixture… or your next competitive outdoor match might not be until the end of March.
To show how extreme the variation can be, take three players from the same Premier Division club:
1. An international player preparing for the Hockey India League and Pro League all the way through to the club’s restart in late March.
2. A high-level indoor player already deep into training and gearing up for repeated, high-intensity tournaments with demanding schedules.
3. A player with no indoor commitments, no HIL, and no international hockey — meaning no competitive matches until the end of March.
The variation is gigantic.
So ask yourself the key question:
What is your unique situation, and what does success look like for you during this period?
Evaluating Opportunity & Risk Through Each Example
1. International / HIL / Pro League Player
You should have a team around you helping you with your short and medium-term planning, so this isn’t the blog to go into that situation. That environment comes with its own planning, staff input, and competition pathways, so the principles in this blog apply differently.
During my time leading the England, GB and Malaysian teams we would be working with HIL teams whilst overseeing the player's long term progress. Although most players reading this won't have that service, the principles for your development still apply.
2. High-Level Indoor Player
For the indoor player, load isn’t the issue. The nature of the sport gives you plenty: short-distance acceleration, repeated high-intensity efforts in tight spaces, and real sharpness in your game. The challenge is staying injury free. Indoor brings its own risks — contact injuries, hand injuries, and the constant strain of being in low positions in close proximity to opponents. Add congested tournament formats and hard, unforgiving surfaces, and you’ve got another layer of stress to manage.
So the questions become: how do you find time to recover, and how do you create space to develop the physical qualities indoor doesn’t give you — high-speed running, max-velocity sprinting, and deceleration from high speeds? Not just to develop physically, but to protect yourself when you return to full-sized pitches where those qualities come under huge strain after weeks or months without them.
3. Player With No Competitive Hockey Until March
For the third player, the challenge is the opposite: a prolonged break with no formal competitive play for anything from six weeks to four months. The length of the break matters, but the principles stay the same — how do you return battle-hardened and ready to compete, while also using this window to recover and develop the physical capabilities your new performance ambitions demand?
Bringing It All Together
So your job — whatever category or combination you fall into — is to identify the realities of your situation, define what success looks like for both your on-pitch and physical performance, understand the opportunities your situation offers, recognise the risks it poses now and when you return to outdoor hockey, and then build a plan that maximises opportunity and minimises risk. Easy, right!?
To Give You an Idea of Where to Start With Your Planning…
To give you an idea of where to start with your planning, here’s what we focus on with the junior international and elite players I’m working with. Our number one aim, regardless of circumstances, is maximising physical robustness and resistance to injury. That starts with building aerobic capacity and maximal aerobic speed, because more aerobically capable players recover faster and can handle higher volumes of high-intensity work. We then focus on maximum strength and resistance to fatigue in the key muscles, muscle groups and movements they’ll rely on when they return. Once those foundations are in place, we look at their schedule for the best opportunities to develop them before moving on to performance qualities such as speed, power and ball speed.
Closing Thoughts
As we draw this to a close, the message is simple: your situation is unique, and the winter break will offer you both opportunity and risk. Your job is to navigate that deliberately, not drift through it. Know your situation. Know your objectives. Understand the opportunities this period gives you, and be honest about the risks it poses now and when you return to outdoor hockey. Then create a plan that fits your reality and moves you towards the player you want to be.
Take the thinking in this blog and apply it to your next few weeks. Where are you right now? What do you need? What can you realistically execute? The players who use this period well don’t just ‘get through’ winter - they come out of it sharper, more robust, and ready to compete when the season restarts.
