Falling Forward in Week Three

Week one of pre-season always feels good. The squad walks in fresh. Bodies are loose, minds sharp. The ball moves well, the numbers look great, and there’s this shared sense of anticipation. Everyone’s healthy. Motivation is high. Coaches are aligned, staff are dialled in. The GPS data confirms it… momentum is building.

You’ve got a plan, the individual progressions are locked in. Group sessions are layered with intention. There’s structure, flow and optimism. You’re not just ticking boxes, you’re ahead of schedule and everything feels possible.

Preparation starts in week one…….then comes week three.

Execution begins, the rhythm shifts. This is the stretch where the plan gets teste, not by opponents or pressure, but by the slow, invisible build-up of fatigue. The players feel it first. Heavier legs, slower reactions and those small hesitations in decision-making. You feel it too. Not just physically, but mentally – the meetings, the last-minute changes and the quiet pressure to make everything fit just right.

By now, the staff are working overtime. Rehab tables are fuller, conversations are shorter, and sleep gets lighter. You’re walking the tightrope between getting fitter and staying upright.

And then, as it always seems to, it happens. One moment, a mistimed movement, a plant foot and a twist….ankle! A player goes down and instantly the energy changes. You see the swelling, he can’t put weight on it. You go through the process – ice, compression, scan. MRI shows damage…….structural. Not season-ending, but enough to pull him from the flow.

Two weeks out, maybe three. Manageable, you tell yourself. You adjust the plan, rework the groups and reassure the coaches. You carry on, because that is the job. That’s the expectation….. you keep moving. But somewhere in the middle of that motion, a question lingers, did we miss something?

And that, right there, is the moment that matters.

Because this isn’t just about an ankle, it’s about what happens next – what you do when something small breaks inside a system that is meant to hold together under stress.

This is where failing forward begins – not in principle, but in practice. It starts with a pause, perhaps not long, but just long enough to look honestly. To sit down with the staff and ask the harder questions. Was the progression too sharp? Did we listen well enough? Were there signs buried in the noise that we didn’t hear?

You revisit the weeks, looking at the numbers again, the comments, the training footage and the life outside of the club. You pull it all forward, not to point fingers, but to understand the picture more clearly. And then you sit with the player, not just to talk about timelines or treatment blocks, but you ask about his experience. What did he feel before it went? Was there something he held back from saying? Did he push through something he should have flagged? You let him speak and you listen. You don’t just manage the injury, you honour the moment.

It doesn’t stop there, the group feels it too. One player down shifts everything – rotations, energy and responsibilities. Not much yet, but it does shift a lot of things. You speak to the team, not to dramatize, but to build awareness. This isn’t about blame, it is about seeing clearly, understanding that performance is about more than effort, it is about attention.

And this, right here, is what turning failure into feedback actually looks like. It isn’t pretty, and it isn’t always efficient. It doesn’t slot neatly into a spreadsheet, but it builds something stronger than recovery, it builds trust.

When you choose to stop and learn instead of just moving on, you show your staff, your players, and yourself that the process matters more than the pace. That clarity matters more than control. That this injury is not just a setback, it is a signal. Most teams deal with injuries,
only a few teams learn from them. So, do you move on quickly or grow slowly?

You can’t always control who gets hurt, but you can control what happens after and the response. That moment of reflection, connection, and shared learning – tells you more about your environment than any full week of perfect training ever will. The mistake we make far too often is waiting and saving reflection for the off-season. By then though, the insights are stale, the patterns are buried under months of noise, and the emotion is gone. So do it now, while it is fresh, real and you still feel it in your stomach.

Because failing forward isn’t something you talk about at the end. It’s something you practice, in the moment the plan breaks, when things go wrong and when the fatigue bites. That’s when the real work begins.

Preparation starts in week one
Execution starts in week three.

Thanks,
JP