Doing focused, distributed prep around a pit-heavy September without lighting up your back.

• Start moderate, build up. Get the warm-up base back online, re-map the rep, and see how the back takes the returning pit hours before you add home volume.
• Pit sitting counts as load. A performance day is a heavy day — home practice that day is short/seated or just mental. The plan budgets pit + practice together. After a ≥3-hour pit day, home work is a Sound day or recovery, never Endurance.
• Quality over volume, hard. With the pit eating your hours and energy, audition prep wins on focused, spaced touches — not long sessions you don't have the time or back for anyway.
• Prep your paid work a few days ahead. Before each professional project, a short refresh of its rep ~2–4 days before it starts — protected time on a light/recovery day, off the practice pieces, so you deliver a good level at work.

• Touch a few pieces each day — don't grind one for hours. A short go today plus another tomorrow beats one long cram; accuracy settles overnight while you sleep.
• Give the singing excerpts time on back-to-back days. That's how the in-tune, expressive playing locks in.
• New tricky spot? Drill it on its own first, then fold it back in and play it mixed with the excerpts you already own.
• Always put the chunks back together at tempo. Finish by playing it joined up, or you'll hear little gaps where the pieces meet.

Balletorkest set below (history). The NedPhO and Residentie anchors are in the Endurance- and Sound-day steps (set to today's goal; the tracker holds your current BPM and the marked tempi from the parts).

The metronome steps below start at a sensible slow-practice anchor. Set it to today's goal from this table when you get there, and nudge +4–6 BPM only when it's clean and the back's okay. Write down what you actually reached. For the fast excerpts, slow practice clicks the quarter; the performance pulse is noted in each step (Figaro is alla breve, Beethoven 7/iii is one-in-a-bar).

Every day: morning back check → physio → warm-up base (scales & arpeggios, double-stops for tuning, a left-hand drill, an étude matched to the day's demand) → the day's focus → cool-down → log + back check. Keep playing stretches to 25 minutes or less, break between each, stop on pain. The étude and double-stops are the first things to drop if the back or time is tight.

• Concerto day — Mozart 5 mvt I + Sibelius mvt I, plus Residentie's Mozart 29/i and 39/iv; a short Dvořák read while you're deciding the Dallas concerto.
• Endurance day — morning: the NedPhO fast set (Beethoven 9/ii, Rossini Act 1 Finale, Rachmaninoff 2 fugato, Daphnis, Shostakovich 1/ii, Tchaikovsky 4/iii pizz, Bartók CfO). Afternoon: the Residentie heavy set (Schumann 2, Mendelssohn, Don Juan, Brahms 1/iv, Mahler 9/i). Short bursts, back-risk.
• Sound day — NedPhO lyrical (Mahler 9/iv, Bruckner 9 Adagio, Britten Dawn) then Residentie lyrical (Mahler 9/iv 1st vln, Beethoven 9/iii, Bizet, Tchaikovsky Waltz, Bruckner Trio). Gentle on the body.
• Mock-audition day — record the list cold, in order, keep the best (see the mock-recording guide).
• Recovery day — score study / mental run / physio / walk, plus a light winter-piece seed touch. Use it on heavy pit days.

Your two hard days (Concerto, Endurance) sit apart with an easier day between. Move things the moment your back check tells you to.

• Back check comes back sore → ease right off: less playing, no standing, switch to sitting / mental practice / rest. The audition dates yield to this, every time.
• A passage goes out of tune twice in a row → stop the block and play a slow recovery pass.
• After a ≥3-hour pit day → home work is a Sound day or recovery only, never Endurance.
• It's feeling much harder than usual → shorten the rest of the day's blocks.
• Never two limit days (Concerto + Endurance at tempo) back-to-back — keep the two hard days apart.