Forward Chelsea Aubry said there was no room for a post-break playing hangover as her side prepared for a road trip to tackle the Canberra Capitals on Friday, followed by Saturday's home showdown against the Melbourne Boomers.

"The competition is tough top to bottom - anyone can win against anyone on any given day," said Aubry, who joined her team-mates for a New Year's Day training session. "Bernie (Harrower) likes to call this the business end of the year, and that's exactly what it is.

"Canberra has beaten some of the top-ranked teams. They have so much experience and some good young players and that's a deadly combination so it will be a tough game."

Aubry said the defending champions also expected a tight defensive match against the third-placed Boomers.

She said that despite Spirit's 13-1 record this season, there was plenty of room for improvement.

"We have put some spurts of minutes together and I think that has won us some games... but we haven't put together four quarters.

"We need to lift the intensity and produce some longer strings of minutes - we are really capable of doing that so we need to keep working hard at training and we'll keep improving both individually and as a team."