Off Season’s Almost Over!

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It’s almost August and while many kids have been spending their time in the gym and on the field this off season, many have settled into bad habits, not keeping a sleep schedule and kicking the can down the road as far as their training goes. Down here in Florida you’ve got a few weeks before school and your seasons start and if you haven’t been in the gym and preparing for this coming season, you’ve put yourself behind the 8 ball. If you haven’t been dedicated to your training the way you should have been this summer, you can still make some headway in the coming weeks and put yourself in a better position to start training camp. While you can’t get back the time you’ve lost, this article is going to give you a roadmap to make sure you can compete, and stay injury free this coming season.

Get in the Gym

While you’re not going to be able to really increase your absolute strength in such a small timeframe, you absolutely will be able to have an impact on your base levels of strength. This isn’t the time to learn new movements or get really crazy with your training via sex appeal and super specialized movements, but this is the time to stick to the primal movement patterns in a loaded position. For the lower extremity you’re going to want to stick to the following movements:

• Jumping/Landing

• Squat variations

• Lunge variations

• Hinge variations (deadlift variations)

• Sled pushing/pulling

For the upper extremity you’re going to want to spend your time doing the following:

• Horizontal rowing

• Vertical pulling

• Pressing (bench press variations)

• Overhead pressing

Do you notice anything about the above movements? They’re all what we call compound movements. A compound movement is a movement that involves more than one joint. In this next three to four weeks you’re not going to want to waste your time and energy on isolation movements like leg extensions/curls, bicep curls, tricep extensions and shoulder raises. You’re going to want to get the most bang for your buck doing movements that will incorporate not only multiple joints, but movements that will also cue good positioning on the field of play.

Now I wouldn’t normally recommend jumping into 4 days per week of lifting with high volume, however you’ve put yourself in quite a predicament here so we’ve gotta try to get as much out of you as possible in a super short timeframe. You’re going to want to start off doing 3 sets of 10-12 of each exercise you select, and as the weeks progress we can lower that volume to 3 sets of 6-8 reps while increasing the load. The high volume is going to force your body to adapt to the movement, and it will lay the ground work for your conditioning and base levels of strength.

For your lower extremity pick 4 exercises: One squat variation, one lunge variation, and two hinge variations for each training session. Always start your sessions with an AD (active dynamic) warm up, some hip mobility work, and some low volume jumping/landing. And if you have access to a sled, always finish off with some sled dragging and/or pulling. For the upper extremity pick 5 exercises: Two push/press variations, two horizontal row variations and one vertical pull variation. Start your training sessions with a few core exercises to get your heart rate up, and do some thoracic rotation and upper back “prehab”/corrective exercises. Here’s an example of what your training could look like:

• Monday

  • Squat - 3 sets of 10-12

  • Reverse Lunge - 3 sets of 12 each

  • Barbell RDL - 3 sets of 12

  • SL DB RDL - 3 sets of 12 each

  • Sled work - push/pull 100 total yards broken up into 15-20 yard splits

• Tuesday

  • Bench Press - 3 sets of 12

  • Single Arm DB Row - 3 sets of 12 each

  • Incline DB Bench Press - 3 sets of 12

  • Barbell Bent Over Row - 3 sets of 12

  • Pull Ups - 3 sets of 4-6

• Wednesday

  • Active Recovery Day. Go for a walk, do an AD warm up, go play a pick up game, etc. Just get moving around!

• Thursday

  • Hex Bar Deadlift - 3 sets of 10-12

  • DB RDL - 3 sets of 12

  • DB Lateral Lunge - 3 sets of 12 each

  • DB Goblet Squat - 3 sets of 12

  • Sled work - push/pull 100 total yards broken up into 15-20 yard splits

• Friday

  • Incline Bench Press - 3 sets of 12

  • Chest Supported Row - 3 sets of 12

  • DB Bench Press - 3 sets of 12

  • Pull Downs - 3 sets of 12

  • Machine Row - 3 sets of 12

• Saturday

  • Active Recovery Day. Go for a walk, do an AD warm up, go play a pick up game, etc. Just get moving around!

• Sunday

  • Rest. Play video games to your hearts content, do whatever makes you happy and enjoy the day.

The above is a sample of what your first week could/should look like. It’s going to be the week that lays down the foundation for the next few, and it’s an absolute grind to get through but stick to it and you’ll be glad you did moving forward. As the weeks progress you can stick with the same movements, but drop the reps and try to increase the loads that you’re lifting as long as you can stay in a good position!

You’re Gonna Have to Condition

Now I’m not a huge fan of including a ton of conditioning into your training throughout the offseason. However, you do need to condition some in order to not get hurt this coming season. The sled work and lifting outlined above should help lay the foundation for your conditioning, but they’ll never get your heart rate above maybe 150-170 bpm at most. You’re going to need to stress your cardiovascular system in order to get your heart into shape. This can be accomplished with short sprints on a bike, slide board, or out on the field/court/ice. But what kind of sprinting/conditioning should we do, how should it look? Well, take a look at your sport and see what the intervals of effort look like. If you’re a baseball player your conditioning should look vastly different than a hockey player, and that hockey player’s conditioning should look much different from a soccer players’ conditioning and that soccer player’s conditioning should look very different from a football player’s conditioning. Each sport operates on different energy systems for different lengths of time, and your conditioning should mimic what you’ll need on the field of play.

You don’t have a ton of time to lay an aerobic base, but that’s ok! All of the work you’re going to be doing in the gym and within your conditioning while anaerobic (less than 2 minutes at a time) in nature, will help increase your aerobic base. While lifting and sprinting your heart rate will increase above base levels, and more than likely not come down to your base level throughout your training sessions (unless you take too long of rest periods). It will stay elevated over that 45-60 minutes that you’re training. What this means is that you’ll get the benefits of “long slow distance training” like running, while pushing yourself in your training so we don’t have to waste a bunch of time increasing our aerobic base! It’s a win/win.

You do not want your volume of sprinting to be too high in the beginning, because this will leave you overly sore, tired and unable to do all the training that you need to get done in this short timeframe. The first week you should allow for a 1:3 or 1:4 work to rest ratio. This means that if you do a 10 second sprint, you should “rest” for 30 to 40 seconds before doing your next rep. The first week add in conditioning to two days of your training, but not on your rest day as you’ll need to rest for both your mental and physical health. Start with 8-10 short sprints (20-40 yards) on one day, and 4-5 longer sprints (60-80 yards) on another day. If you’re using a bike or slideboard think eight to ten 5-8 second sprints on one day, and four to five 15-20 second sprints on the other day. Start with a longer work to rest ratio week 1 and over the weeks either increase your sprint volume, decrease your work to rest ratio or a combination of both.

When programming your conditioning, try to think about it like your lifting. You can’t hop into the gym and squat 300lbs day one, you have to slowly build up to those kinds of numbers. Conditioning is no different in the sense that you cannot start off with twenty 100 yard sprints day 1. Give yourself time over the weeks to both increase yardage/time, and decrease your work to rest ratio. We tend to get hurt when we’re exhausted, so make sure you give yourself the opportunity to succeed and not end up injured before your season even starts. As you progress through the weeks, increase your overall volume by 10-15% a week, and you can decrease your work:rest ratios as you begin to recover faster.

Mobility is Important

While you need to prepare yourself physically with weight training and conditioning, DO NOT forget that mobility also needs to be on the forefront of your brain. Your mobility is one of the pieces to your preparedness this coming season. The main area of focus for MOST athletes needs to be the hips. Anything and everything that attaches at the hips is more than likely going to be locked up if you’ve spent most of your summer sitting around not preparing. The main areas of focus need to be the external rotators, the hip flexors, hamstrings and the groin. Now there’s a few ways to increase our overall mobility in these areas and they are the following:

• Tackling the joint

  • This involves banded distractions of the joint itself through various stretches. At each joint we have a joint capsule, and this joint capsule can get tight much like a muscle can. Using bands to help “pull” at the joint can actually help “stretch” the joint capsule. Band distracted half kneeling and hamstring stretches can help a TON with mobility.

• Tackling the soft tissue

  • Stretching and foam rolling are going to be your friends in this space. While stretching alone will do very little to increase your range of motion, it needs to be part of your plan as far as mobility is concerned. Soft tissue changes take roughly two minutes, so during your cool downs and active recovery days make sure you’re holding these stretches for a good amount of time (roughly two minutes).

  • When foam rolling, find places in the muscle that are tender and spend some time there. It’s called a foam roller, but you’re actually not meant to roll around on it believe it or not. Find a spot that’s tender and spend 15-30 seconds on that spot before moving on to another spot. Find 3-4 spots on the muscles you’re trying to release and spend some time there. ALSO OF NOTE, drink plenty of fluids when foam rolling, its much like a massage and you’re going to need fluid to shuttle out all the bad stuff you’re breaking up in the muscle. Foam rolling can also leave you relatively sore, so be prepared and also make sure you get up and move around a bit after foam rolling so that soreness doesn’t settle in for too long.

  • When you’re stretching think foam roll first, stretch second, move (go for a walk or something light for blood flow) third.

• Increasing strength at your end ranges of motion

  • Your body is not going to let you get into positions that it doesn’t believe that you cannot get out of. Having a lack of strength at the end ranges of hip extension, abduction, adduction and flexion will cause your mobility to decrease. Training through a full range of motion will ensure that your gain that strength at the end ranges of strength and it will contribute to overall mobility!

When putting together a plan for this coming season, and an abbreviated plan due to the timeframe that’s left make sure you’re incorporating enough mobility work to ensure that you won’t get hurt this coming season.

Sleep is Going to be Your Friend

We’ve established that you don’t have a ton of time left before this school year and season begins, but that doesn’t mean that you have to go into this year completely unprepared. Establishing a base level of strength, increasing your mobility and beginning to condition will help put you in the best possible position for this coming year with the time you have left. One thing we didn’t establish in the information above was that SLEEP IS GOING TO BE IMPORTANT. You’re going to be going from 0-100 over the course of a weeks time, and you’ll need to dedicate enough sleep to ensure you recover from these training sessions. Going from no training to training upwards of 6-8 times per week is A LOT and you’re going to have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Aim for 8-10 hours of sleep per night minimum, and make sure you stick to a sleep schedule. While napping during the day can help with any sleep debt you’re carrying, you’re going to want to aim for at least 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and you’re going to want to try to fall asleep and wake up around the same times moving forward. I know during the summer most of the kids I work with end up sleeping until 11 or 12 in the morning/afternoon, which means they’re more than likely staying up until the wee hours of the night. We want to get away from that!

One way to get to bed earlier and get into better sleep habits is to wake up earlier. Sleeping in until noon every day will only ensure that you’re going to be up all night, which ensures that you’ll be sleeping in, it’s a vicious cycle. Resetting your sleep schedule will make one relatively rough day, but it’ll get you back into the habit of going to bed earlier and waking up earlier which you’ll have to do once school starts anyhow so you may as well start doing it now! Another way to help make sure you get to sleep at a decent hour is to get rid of the screens before bed. Try to make it a rule that at least 30 minutes prior to your new earlier bed time, you put away your phone/tablet/computer/video games/etc. These artificial blue lights kind of trick your brain into believing it’s still day time, and your body won’t start the down regulation process that allows for a parasympathetic shift in your autonomic nervous system. This shift puts us into “rest and digest” mode, which yields much better sleep and a much easier time falling asleep and without this shift we stay in somewhat of a “fight or flight”/sympathetic state. Do yourself a favor and put the screens away.

Another way to create a parasympathetic shift in your central nervous system, is to do some kind of self care prior to bed. This can be meditation, foam rolling/self myofascial release, static stretching, or a combination of these. These kinds of things signal the brain to relax and prepare for sleep so they can help you get to sleep faster. This is a good practice anyway, because you should give yourself 10 minutes of self care for every 60 minutes of work that you do throughout the day. If you spend an hour in the gym, and an hour on the field of play then you owe yourself 20 minutes of self care at some point throughout the day. This 10 minutes is only about 1% of your day if you sleep for 8 hours every evening, but it can make a world of difference in your mobility, flexibility and ability to down regulate and sleep. Do not overlook this aspect of your overall training plan.

Putting It All Together

While you may have not spent the time this summer you needed to, to prepare for the upcoming season it doesn’t mean that you can’t pick it up now and run with your training. There’s still three to four weeks left until the school year starts and what better way to end the summer than making sure you’re prepared for this season! Get in the gym, spend time on your mobility, begin your conditioning and sleep so you can do it all the next day! You don’t have the time to get very specialized in your training, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t increase your base levels of strength and mobility, and be conditioned enough to get through training camp and thrive this coming season!