KEY INFORMATION

Recommended age group: 14–16. It will also support students involved in sports club/sports training programmes.
Time required: approx. 75–90 minutes depending on the chosen options.
Equipment: student-facing presentation; printable activity sheets from presentation: fact or fiction answers, EDITOR process and pledge sheet. Optional: music as working.


ACTIVITY IDEA

Warm up

  • Introduce the students to a stress management technique (used by elite sportspeople) that will support their recovery in sport and life. Choose from breathing exercises or anchoring.

Explore

  • Ask the students to watch the film and discuss the choices they see (some of the decisions being made may be more obvious than others). Ask them to identify the good intentions and possible pitfalls of each choice.
  • Working in small groups, ask the students to complete a timed fact or fiction quiz. Use the answers to highlight what helps or hinders recovery.
  • Use the slide and/or questioning to draw out the five key recovery strategies.

Challenge

  • Working individually, ask the students to identify pressure moments in the life of a young person their age. Optional: use the slide to share examples from sport, school and life as a stimulus.
  • Ask them to consider their routines before, during and after those moments: what creates problems in terms of them managing that pressure?
  • Explain that this activity will help them to identify possible solutions to those problems.
  • Using the slides, introduce and guide the students through the EDITOR process: Empathise, Define, Imagine, Trial, Observe, Retain/Refine/Reject. Briefly run through an example as a class.
  • Ask the students to work in threes, identifying their own/ or using another example pressure moment and using the EDITOR process to discuss possible solutions.
  • Run three rounds: trios work through one student’s problem at a time then rotate roles (approx. 15 minutes per round).
  • Encourage the students to trial their solutions outwith school.
  • Option 1: each student completes the EDITOR process individually at home. Option 2: the trios reconvene after the trial period to support each other through the final EDITOR stages.

Cool down

  • Use the key learnings slide to reinforce the key five recovery strategies. Link these to the ideas the students identified through EDITOR.
  • Linked to EDITOR, ask the students to create their personal recovery pledge, followed by a group discussion to identify team goals and ways to spread healthy recovery ideas in the school/sports club.

Reflection 

  • Revisit the challenge after a week’s trial. Based on their experiences, ask the students to work in groups of six (pair the trios) to agree their top five practical recovery tips. Share these with the whole group. Use the slide to summarise.
  • Based on these tips, ask the students to create ‘good recovery’ messages for their peers in school or a sports club.