Dealing with mid-season breaks

[KingCanary]

I'm currently managing in the Ukrainian league, which features an extended 6/7 week break in the middle of the calendar. I'm also experiencing some minor European success which means my first games back from the break are often knock out games against tough opposition and I'm finding it a challenge to get my team fit again to face these games. 

Right now I'm running an almost full preseason schedule of 4 friendly matches to try and get the team up and running but they seem slow to regain sharpness I'm wondering if there are other things I should be looking at? 

[toolkit68]

Germany has a similar long season break and what I tend to do is adding physical stuff into the 2 weeks just before that break and when they get back. You cant really do anything about the match sharpness though beside playing games which has never been a real problem for me as long as players have enough tactical familiarity before the break. All players should be fully familiar with their positions before the break else you will struggle as those 2 things add up. If they only lack sharpness after the break things are manageable as the other teams have basically the same problem.