): Talking About A Carpool: Episode 41 – Season Finale | Off-Season, Managing Your Body & Mind, Top 14 Final Wrap & Season's Best Teams

is about the off-season and managing yourself as a professional rugby player um the kuleana repeating myself again is the education part and that's why we started this podcast just to educate people and the things that we wish we knew uh going through our careers and Trying to be the best professional player and trying to win a contract every year and be of value so we can continue this dream that we were able to achieve.

But part of that is the off-season.

As I say the word off-season, there's two words off-season.

What comes to you? What feelings come to you?

Oh, mate, straight, straight away off or off season, mate.

It just means I've got two sides to the happy side and the sad side where you get some rest, you get to see family.

I'm talking about the lenses playing overseas and coming back home or it's completely rugby off.

You know what I mean? I think, yeah, it scares me when I hear off season, but at the same time, it's a bit of a refresh into the mind a bit when I hear off season where most people European club players now are indulging on at the moment, you know, getting off other visiting back families over here in New Zealand, Donga, some more from the Pacific, from Europe, or just having a holiday back in Europe in the summer.

But yeah, how about you, Dawo?

Yeah, it's something I probably didn't manage well.

And an episode like this would definitely help me just manage myself a little bit better.

See, like, all these thoughts are a reflection of what we experienced on all the many off-seasons that we had.

But yeah, there's many off-seasons that I didn't get it right.

And then pre-season just became a little bit harder.

We're just going to go through a few things just to help you, one, switch off, but two, stay ready for what's coming in pre-season.

And there's all these different reasons why pre-season is important.

It sets up the whole campaign for that following season that's coming up.

And all the efforts that you put in there You don't want to be starting.

You want to hit the ground running, as they say.

I often have SNCs say that, strength and conditioning coaches say that to all our players when they address us before we break up.

You want to come back, hit the ground running.

and yeah as you hear about offseason you think about all the wrong things you did because you went backwards a bit before you started running again but we'll start right off the first thing we got here is about mental rest actually switching off and i feel that this is important with the offseason again and this is right because especially if you're playing I think any type of season, whether it's in Japan, whether it's here in Australia, New Zealand, or even in Europe, it's stressful to think about rugby over and over again.

Your job is about performance and preparation.

You're thinking about how you do that.

People can clock off, close their laptops, turn off their computers and go home and just like, chill with the family but for rugby players I couldn't go home and just relax and chill out because everything that I put in my mouth anything any information I digested how I managed to use my time to make sure that I was up on all the things new things that we had to do for the week to prepare for the game all those things were running through my head and even competitions.