Off Season Training
The Summer is here and we all know what that means, it’s time to TRAIN! There’s less organized sports and camps are popping up all over the place but right now is the time to lay the groundwork for physical preparation for your season. The fact is that your offseason is a lot shorter than you think int is, and we need to take the time to manage it properly. You’ve only got around 12 weeks to prepare for the season, really less if you take the time to recover at the end of your season. Today we’re going to talk about what the entails, and how you can manage your own offseason training!
Playing Your Sport
I’m going to preface this article with the fact that the majority of you reading this article are young in your athletic careers, and you’re still trying to gain sport specific skillsets. You still need to participate in training for your sport! However, this training needs to be focused on skill acquisition and not X’s and O’s concerning your sport. When coming off the field of play you shouldn’t be gassed or crushed, you should absolutely feel like you worked but this isn’t the time to focus on sport specific conditioning. Your skills coaches for your sport shouldn’t be conditioning you on the field of play, it’s WAY too early for that. Instead you should be focusing on things like these:
Basketball
Your shot and dribbling skills
You can shoot 100 baskets and work on your handles on the court without destroying yourself and leaving plenty in the tank for training. Stay away from excessive jumping and “footwork” on the court and save that for the weight room.
Baseball
Your swing and your throwing
Your volume still needs to be controlled as baseball is notorious for way too high of volume in throwing even in youth athletes. Pitchers should not be throwing early in your offseason, let yourself rest and recover from the season.
Hockey
Stick handling and shooting. Honorable mention: Your skating stride
You can spend 30 minutes stick handling per day, or take 100 shots and it won’t kill ya and still leave plenty in the tank for training. Hockey’s also a very different sport in that the primary means of movement are a skillset in their own right and this needs to be worked on. HOWEVER, do not take this as an opportunity to condition on the ice, volume should be low and instruction should be high.
Tennis
Your serve and hitting
Tennis is a weird sport in the sense that coaches think you need to have a VO2 max of 70 plus year round and spend 4-5 hours on the court in the offseason. I’ll let you in on a little secret: the only reason your coach thinks you need that much time on the court is because their income is DIRECTLY tied into how much time you spend practicing with them. Get away from the court and into the gym.
Soccer
Passing, dribbling and kicking/shooting
Spending time with low impact skill work will still leave you with plenty in the tank to train. DO NOT fall into the trap of conditioning too much too early. Focus on acquiring strength early in the Summer, your conditioning can be focused on closer to your season.
Figure Skating
Jumps and edge work
Figure skating is another weird sport in which coaches believe you need to constantly condition year round using outdated conditioning methods that aren’t even pertinent to the needs of the sport. All I can say is RUN if your figure skating coach is trying to be in charge of your off ice training. I’ve been around it and the cognitive dissonance these coaches have when it comes to their own ability to train their athletes off the ice is insane. They typically DO NOT know what they are doing (even if they’re a “personal trainer”) and they’re doing it for one of three reasons: your money, control of every aspect of your training, or both.
Football
Position specific skill
Play some 7 on 7 and/or get your skill work in. There’s ZERO need to condition right now. Youth programs and high schools have Summer Conditioning, try not to fall into this trap. Conditioning should be the LAST thing on your mind right now.
As you can see in these examples the amount of work done on the field of play is fairly minimal and focused on skillset acquisition. STAY AWAY FROM CONDITIONING FOR YOUR SPORT EARLY IN THE OFF SEASON, it isn’t necessary and you’re taking too much away from the other adaptations you need for the season.
Post Season
This part of the offseason is rarely discussed but it’s important. For the majority of youth athletes the FOMO effect is real and we feel the need to get right to work for the following season. The thought process is that if you’re not working you’re getting left behind the competition. This absolutely isn’t true and we need to take some time to heal, recover and mentally step away from the game. Try to take at least two weeks to go be a kid and have some fun. Play unstructured sports, go to the beach, play some video games, whatever you fancy just get away from your sport! I know it’s hard because organizations will offer camps and spring/summer teams and leagues and it makes you feel like you’ll be missing out and getting left behind everyone else if you don’t participate, but try not to fall victim to this.
Try to take two weeks to have some fun and relax, you’ll need it if you’re going to be training all off season!
Block I - Work Capacity and Growth AND Proper Movement/Mobility
This is the first four weeks of your training and it is going to be HARD! This is a high volume block with lots of work. We’re going to focus on doing hard things pretty much for the sake of doing hard things. This block is categorized by:
High volume barbell and dumbbell work
High volume bodyweight movements
Sled pulling/pushing/dragging
Loaded carries
Mobility work
FULL range of motion work
I’m gonna level with you here, this is by far the hardest block of your training. You’re going to want to quit, and you’ll be fairly consistently sore throughout this block. Believe it or not you’re probably horribly deconditioned for the gym after a long season, you’re more than likely conditioned for your sport but you’re not ready for the loads and volume you’ll see in the gym. This high volume work conditions your body to be able to handle the heavier loads AND be able to recover later in the Summer. Your training should look NOTHING like your sport (this is good advice year round to be completely honest tho) and we need to focus on:
Jumping/Landing
Squatting
Pushing
Pulling
Acceleration Mechanics
Lunging
Rotational movement (not super high on the priority list during this block though)
Hinging
We need to really focus on nailing down these movements and in the process we can reclaim some good positioning and patterning while being in a high volume environment which will contribute to hypertrophy (muscle growth)! This block should be about four weeks and this block is NECESSARY, DO NOT SKIP THIS BLOCK!
Block II - Strength, Work Capacity and Growth
So now we’re four weeks into our offseason and we need to create a shift towards acquiring more strength. We’ve laid a foundation in the first four weeks with our high volume work and now we should be able to handle the heavier loads required to increase our overall strength. Now this doesn’t mean that we need to try to be powerlifters, strongmen or bodybuilders it just means that we create a shift in our training towards lower volume, higher intensity (weight) work. Another thing I want to mention is that we don’t abandon the principles we used in Block I, we just expand on them and shift. We’re still working on the eight things outlined in the previous section but now we crank up the intensity and drop the volume some.
The majority of you reading this article are either athletes with a relatively low training age, the parents of these athletes, or a coach of these athletes. When I say shift towards strength I do not mean that we need to drop the volume to 1’s, 3’s and 5’s (although 5’s are perfectly acceptable for the majority of y’all). What I mean is we get out of the 12-20 rep schemes and get into the 6-10 rep schemes. Creating this drop in volume allows us to get under heavier loads which lead to increases in strength and resiliency. Again, we’re not powerlifters, we’re athletes. Our training needs to reflect that.
Living in this 6-10 (even 12) rep scheme environment allow us to increase the load, AND grow. The time under tension is still high enough to allow for hypertrophy (muscle growth) but the increase in load (weight) will allow for better strength acquisition. We’re still jumping and landing, accelerating, hinging, pushing, pulling, lunging, rotating, and squatting but the intensity (weight) is now higher with a drop in the overall volume; we’re just no longer doing high volume work for the sake of doing high volume work.
Block III - Strength, Speed, Power, Growth and Conditioning
Now we’re 8 weeks into our training and if we’ve done it right we’re in the best possible position to create a shift towards power, speed and even conditioning. The high volume work laid the foundation for strength acquisition, and getting stronger has laid the foundation for becoming more powerful and faster! Just like in Block II, we don’t abandon the principles from the previous block we just shift towards these new adaptations. We still want to hit the 8 different movements we hit in blocks one and two, but now we want to focus a little bit more on speed of movement, and we want to get back to more high volume work to condition for the season.
As with anything else, we can’t just add this work in to the schedule. When creating these shifts towards other adaptations we have to decrease our volume in other areas. What does this mean? Well we’ll more than likely not be able to sustain 4-5 days in the gym because you’re more than likely back on the field of play preparing for the season, and on top of that we’re now conditioning as well. My recommendation is back down to probably three (MAYBE four if you can handle it) days in the gym, practice your sport HARD (there’s a conditioning training effect to playing/practicing hard), and add in a little bit of extra conditioning off the field of play to be ready for practices and games.
DO NOT stop weight training during this time, DO NOT stop using accessory movements in an attempt to create growth in the muscle, DO NOT stop doing the things necessary to maintain the adaptations you made throughout the summer. You worked HARD for your new found strength and size, do not for a second think it’s ok to lose it when you need it most. We’re now including conditioning and playing our sport a little bit more, we aren’t abandoning our training completely.
Putting It All Together
Now you have some vague information on how your summer should look, but how should you structure your individual training sessions? Well if you’ve got a spare 15 minutes check out this episode of the podcast as it breaks down what individual training sessions should look like. Here are some general guidelines as well for volume and intensities:
Block I - Four Weeks
Jumps/Accelerating Mechanics
Included in your warm ups. Volume should be low to moderate
Weight Training
Higher volume work for both main movements and accessory work. 12-20 reps per set per exercise. Let the volume dictate the load.
Work Capacity
Pushing/Pulling a sled for 10-20 yards at a time. Let the load be dictated by your abilities. If it’s too easy add some weight.
Conditioning
NONE. You’re getting PLENTY of work right now, PLEASE DO NOT CONDITION RIGHT NOW
Block II - Four Weeks
Jumps/Accelerating Mechanics
Included in your warm ups. Volume can be slightly higher than in block I, however it’s still low and the goal is to use it as a CNS stimulant for the work in the gym.
Weight Training
Main Movements
5-6 reps. This volume is low enough to keep the intensity high enough to acquire some absolute strength, but not so high that you’ll end up hurt or over worked.
Accessory Work
6-10 reps. This allows for a high enough time under tension to create enough damage to the muscle to create growth but not so high that we crush ourselves in the gym.
Work Capacity
Same as block I but now try to increase the load a little bit.
Conditioning
ZERO. You’re getting plenty of conditioning from the higher volume work and the work capacity development
Block III - Two to Four Weeks (based on how much time you have)
Jumps/Accelerating Mechanics
Should still remain part of your warm ups and even included in some complex and contrast type training. Volume can be slightly higher HOWEVER, try not to exceed 25-30 total jumps as part of your plan.
Weight Training
Main Movements
Create a shift towards moderate intensities and focus on speed of movement (bar speed). There’s a strength adaptation component to sub maximal work done at maximal speeds. You can read more about this here.
Accessory Work
Same as in block I.
Work Capacity
Dialed back just a little bit to create a shift towards conditioning (sprints and whatnot). We don’t stop doing this, it just gets scaled back slightly to create room for our on the field work and conditioning. Don’t get me wrong, pushing a sled is ABSOLUTELY conditioning, but we do need to create a shift towards conditioning that has a faster speed of movement at this juncture.
Conditioning
The majority of this should happen on the field of play, however we can now include some sprints (short, <30 seconds in duration) into the mix.
Hopefully this gives you a slightly better understanding of what you should at least be aiming for when it comes to your offseason training plan. The goal is always to be better than the year before and we need to continuously build on this training year over year. And just because the season’s started doesn’t mean that we abandon our training in the gym, after all we worked hard for all this new found strength and speed and we don’t want to lose it when we need it the most!
