One of two things, and both are avoidable. Either everything stops and they come back flat and behind, or nothing stops and they come back empty. The fix is structure without a schedule.

The drift version

Six weeks with no training, no routine and no fixed sleep. The physical loss is smaller than parents fear and recoverable within a fortnight. The real cost is that the habits go, and habits take considerably longer to rebuild than fitness does.

The other cost is confidence. A young person who has not touched their sport for six weeks does not feel like an athlete in the first week back, and the start of term is often exactly when assessments and winter squads get decided.

The relentless version

The opposite problem and the more common one in serious programmes. Holidays fill with camps, festivals, tours and extra coaching precisely because school is not in the way. A young athlete can go from a busy term to a busier holiday and reach the new term having had no break at all for a year.

If there has been no genuinely empty week in twelve months, the holiday is where it needs to go.

What structure without a schedule means

Three things, none of them a training programme.

A rough sleep window, because holiday sleep drifting by four hours does more damage than missing sessions. Some movement most days, which does not have to be their sport and is often better if it is not. And one thing they have chosen themselves, at a time they picked.

That is enough to come back in shape and not enough to stop a holiday being a holiday.

Protect one clear week

One full week with nothing in it at all. No sessions, no gym, no video. Put it in the diary at the start rather than hoping it appears, because it will not appear.

The short breaks

The same problem in miniature, and made worse by winter or off season programmes that run right up to the last day and start again immediately. A ten day gap is not a lapse in commitment. It is the only off season some young athletes ever get.

Coming back

Expect two weeks of feeling wrong, and say so in advance. Young athletes who are warned that the first fortnight back always feels awkward tend to ride it out. The ones who are not warned conclude they have lost something.