Return to Performance: From Rehabilitation to Performance

Return to Performance: From Rehabilitation to Performance is organized by Dutch Institute of Allied Health Care / Nederlands Paramedisch instituut (NPi) and will be held from Apr 17 - 18, 2026 at Hotel Papendal, Arnhem, Gelderland, Netherlands.

Description
Many field athletes re-injure themselves after a previous injury. This highlights a significant gap between rehabilitation and a full return to performance. This final, crucial step toward athletic performance requires more than just a timeline: it requires a well-founded, criteria-driven approach tailored to the specific demands of the sport and the athlete.

From insights to field application.
During this course, you'll learn how to bridge this gap with the endpoint in mind. You'll delve into current insights into rehabilitation for ACL, hamstring, adductor, and ankle injuries, as well as methods like Velocity Based Training, the Constraints-Led Approach, and neurocognitive training. You'll learn not only to understand these insights but also to analyze, evaluate, and apply them in realistic training situations.
The emphasis is on substantiating choices using objective data, sport-specific criteria, and the design of dynamic exercise routines. This way, you'll help athletes return to the field stronger, more adaptive, and more resilient.

Course Structure:
Before the course, you'll watch three knowledge clips and read a selection of scientific articles. During the two-day course, theory and practice will alternate. You'll develop critical thinking skills to guide the rehabilitation process: from test results to training decisions, from insights to performance.

Goal
After completing this course, you will be able to design a well-founded and targeted rehabilitation plan for field athletes with lower-extremity injuries, ultimately aiming for a successful return to performance.
You will describe and interpret the latest scientific insights on sport-specific recovery and apply them in practical situations.
You will analyze the loading demands of various field sports and evaluate recovery programs based on criteria-based progress with the endpoint in mind.

Based on this, you design a personalized rehabilitation plan that not only allows athletes to return to their previous level, but also to perform stronger, more adaptively and more resiliently than before their injury.

Sub-objectives
After completing the course you will be able to:

• Explain how strength training methods such as Velocity Based Training work and apply which parameters you use when building up sport-specific strength training.
• Explain how neurocognitive training influences decision-making in sports and integrate how to build up this form of training within a rehabilitation program.
• To analyse which underlying factors (such as underload or a less dynamic training environment) contribute to the high recurrence rate of sports injuries and substantiate how these factors influence rehabilitation.
• Applying the Constraints Led Approach by designing practice situations in which task, environmental or personal factors are purposefully adjusted to influence motor behaviour.
• To interpret the most current return to performance criteria for common lower extremity injuries (such as ACL injuries, hamstring/adductor injuries and ankle injuries) and use them to inform decision-making moments in the rehabilitation process.
• To evaluate the importance of conditioning training during different phases of rehabilitation and to develop a tailor-made training program that matches the physiological demands of the sport.