Well well well… here we are. We just hit one year since my surgery. There has been a legendary amount of crash outs this year. Don’t get me wrong there’s a lot to be proud of. I had a great rehab and I have played in probably half of my team’s games this fall round. Even still I’ve found the past 6 months to be emotionally draining. In a lot of ways, I’ve felt like I’m chasing the ghost of the player I used to be. It’s hard knowing that even after all the work I’ve put in, I’m still not where I want to be. I wonder if my focus is in the wrong place? I’ve spent an insane amount of time trying to come up with excuses about why I’m not playing well, trying to rationalize it blah blah. Recently, I realized no one gives a fuck about the “why.” What’s important is the “what” & the “how.” What are you producing on the field and at training, and how are you preparing for these performances? So, right now, my focus has shifted into what I need to improve in my performance and how I am going to structure my off-season training to achieve these goals. I am going to come back in this spring round and prove to myself, and everyone else, that I have surpassed my pre-injury levels. I have until January 7th to figure it the fuck out. Let this be my little journal where I detail what exactly I am doing to get better mentally and physically, why I’ve decided on certain exercises or skills, and how I feel about it after.

Welcome to… “The Game Plan.”

In order to fix whatever is wrong with me, I first need to figure out what exactly is wrong with me. So, in true Kim fashion I decided to go above and beyond what a normal, mentally healthy person would do. I rewatched all of my 90 minute matches from this round, counted all of my passes, the types of passes, and the recipients of my passes per half. I also counted my tackles and air challenges. From this data I created a spreadsheet where I could compare across games. This was honestly super helpful for me. I noticed some trends that weren’t really surprising given my teams playing style. However, there were also things I noticed that I would like to improve. They may not totally align with the style of my team, but I think that improving them will help me be a better soccer player overall, and really that’s most important. I also made sure that the things that I deem most important to work on were agreed upon by our training staff. So, before I left for the break I also made sure to have a meeting to discuss the season and what I can improve on with our assistant coach. Pretty much everything we talked about in the meeting I had already come up with on my own but it was nice to talk things out with a coach and get another perspective.

One good thing I learned about myself coming out of this process was that I don’t miss a lot of passes. My lowest passing percentage was 79% and in that game I attempted more long balls than usual. So, it’s understandable that the accuracy was slightly lower. Most often, my passing percentage was between 82%-94%. I also found that I mostly pass to my outside back and goalkeeper. This was unsurprising given the playing style of my team. However, I would like to find more entry passes into the middle of the field. I think modern CBs are creative players who can really start the attack from the back.

How do we adapt into this more creative CB who joins the attacking part of the field? We work on ball striking and weak foot ball mastery. It will also help to become an unpressable defender. Which is something I also think I need to work on going into the spring round.

Since coming back from injury, for the most part I feel really good. There’s still some rust to kick off, but physically I feel strong. The only area I can tell there’s a significant lag is my 1v1 defending. I attribute this discrepancy to my lack of pre-injury levels of speed and explosiveness. The way I see it I can either adapt my game to my current speed or attempt to get faster. I think I still have the ability to get my speed back. Before leaving for break, I met with our motor coach to develop my strength and conditioning plan over the break. It consists of a 2 week isometric block and a 3 week eccentric block all aimed at my specific deficits and needs.

Ok, so this one is kind of obvious. My anxiety this round was at an all time high, and my confidence an all time low. I can’t go through another round with the intense peaks and valley as the fall. My biggest goal of the off-season is to develop a pre-performance regimen that will allow me to relax going into trainings and matches. In this break I am going to experiment with imagery, mindfulness, and meditation.

The theme of this week has been BOREDOM. I started my isometric block of exercises this week. It was just as terrible as I thought it would be. Imagine, going to the gym everyday just to stand still. That’s it, that’s literally my plan. Like I get it, we have to build a foundation of strength blah blah blah but like holyyy it really lacks excitement. The only positive is the one day a week I get to power clean, but the happiness is so short lived because the next day, it’s back to the isometrics. I also realize I’m complaining but there’s quite literally no one to blame except for me because I wrote the damn thing.

Next week, I will start with my on the field training. Let’s hope it gets a bit more exciting.