The Importance of In Season Training

Stopping strength training during the competitive season is one of the most destructive things an athlete can do to their performance.

And yet, it happens every year.

An athlete busts their tail getting stronger, faster, and more explosive leading up to their season.

Then the season starts.

Practice.

Games.

Homework.

A social life.

Family commitments.

It all adds up, and strength and conditioning is usually the first thing to fall off the schedule.

But here’s the thing:

You don’t need to train with the same frequency or intensity during the season as you do when the demands of your sport are lower.

You just need to keep training.

There Really Isn't an "Offseason" Anymore

For most young athletes, the traditional idea of an offseason barely exists anymore.

There’s the high school season.

Then club.

Then showcases.

Then camps.

Then summer leagues.

Then preseason starts again.

That doesn’t mean we think kids should be going full throttle 365 days a year.

Quite the opposite.

It means strength and conditioning needs to be titrated up or down based on the demands of where an athlete currently is in their sports calendar.

When sport demands are low, we can turn training up.

We can spend more time getting stronger, building muscle, developing speed and explosiveness, and attacking weaknesses.

When sport demands are high, we turn training down.

Less volume.

Fewer training days.

Less fatigue.

But we keep enough of the important stuff in the program to maintain the qualities they worked so hard to build.

Think of it like a dial, not an on/off switch.

The Goal Is to Maintain What You've Built

Taking the entire season off from strength training means gradually giving back some of the strength, speed, power, and physical capacity you spent months developing.

And that's the exact opposite of what we want.

Nobody wants an athlete to be at their strongest and fastest on the first day of practice and then slowly deteriorate as the season goes on.

We want them to be their freshest, fastest, strongest, and most confident at the end of the season when the stakes are the highest.

Fortunately, maintaining those qualities requires significantly less training than it took to develop them in the first place.

For many athletes, one well-designed strength session per week can go a long way toward maintaining strength during a busy competitive season.

If their schedule allows for two, we may even be able to continue making progress.

The key is adjusting the dose.

So What Does In-Season Training Actually Look Like?

It doesn't need to be a 90-minute workout that leaves an athlete crawling out of the gym.

In fact, it shouldn't.

A good in-season training session should give the athlete enough stimulus to maintain or improve their physical qualities without creating unnecessary fatigue or soreness that interferes with their sport.

That might include:

1. One big full-body strength exercise

Something like a front squat or trap-bar deadlift that allows us to train a lot of muscle at once.

But instead of doing a bunch of hard sets, we might perform two or three easier sets to get in the groove and then one challenging working set.

Enough stimulus to tell the body, "Hey, we still need this strength."

Without enough volume to leave them sore for practice tomorrow.

2. A few high-quality sprints and jumps

Speed and explosiveness are qualities we want athletes expressing all season long.

A handful of short, high-intensity sprints, jumps, or throws allows us to continue exposing athletes to those qualities without creating a ton of fatigue.

Quality over quantity.

3. A few accessory exercises

We'll finish with exercises that help maintain or build muscle, address individual needs, and keep athletes resilient.

Again, we're looking for exercises that provide a lot of benefit without creating unnecessary fatigue.

Then we're done.

Training Should Match the Sports Calendar

There shouldn't be a point in the year where an athlete says:

"I'm playing my sport now, so I don't need to train."

And there shouldn't be a point where we're blindly hammering them with hard workouts despite an already demanding competition schedule.

Instead, the question should always be:

What does this athlete need right now?

Sometimes that means three hard training days per week.

Sometimes it means two.

Sometimes it means getting in once for 45 minutes, hitting the most important things, and getting out.

At Resilient, we coach our athletes based on what they need, where they are in their development, and where they currently are in their sports calendar.

The goal isn't to train as hard as possible all year.

It's to train appropriately all year.

Because when the season starts, all of the strength, speed, and explosiveness you've built shouldn't disappear.

That's when you need it most.