How Often Should High School Athletes Strength Train?

One of the most common questions I get from parents is:

“How many days per week should my athlete be strength training?”

Like most questions in strength and conditioning, the answer depends on the athlete.

But for most high school athletes, 3 strength and conditioning sessions per week is a great target during the offseason.

During the competitive season, that might drop to 1–2.

Here’s why.

More Training Isn’t Always Better

High school athletes already have a lot going on.

School. Practices. Games. Club sports. Homework. Hopefully a social life and enough sleep somewhere in there.

Strength and conditioning is supposed to support those things—not compete with them.

If an athlete can consistently get stronger, faster and more explosive training two or three times per week, adding another two workouts isn’t automatically going to make them better.

We want enough training to create an adaptation while still allowing the athlete to recover.

The Offseason Is Our Opportunity to Build

During the offseason, we generally have more room to push physical development.

For many athletes, three sessions per week gives us plenty of opportunities to develop:

• Strength
• Speed
• Power
• Jumping and landing
• Olympic lifting
• Muscle
• General physical preparedness

The important part isn’t any individual workout.

It’s accumulating months of them.

What About During the Season?

This is where I see athletes make a big mistake.

They train consistently all offseason, get significantly stronger...

…and stop lifting completely when their season begins.

Your body doesn’t know that lacrosse season started.

It only knows that the stimulus that helped it become stronger is suddenly gone.

Fortunately, maintaining strength generally requires less work than building it.

For many athletes, 1–2 well-designed sessions per week can go a long way during their season.

Volume comes down. Training can be adjusted around games. We aren’t trying to crush the athlete. We’re giving their body a reason to hold onto the physical qualities they worked so hard to build.

Consistency Beats the Perfect Schedule

If you’re deciding between two or three days per week, don’t overthink it. Choose the schedule the athlete can consistently maintain.

I’d much rather have an athlete train twice per week for ten months than train four days per week for six weeks and disappear.

For most high school athletes:

Offseason: 3 days per week

In-season: 1–2 days per week

Then adjust based on the athlete.

At STS Weightlifting and Performance in Naperville, that’s exactly how we approach sports performance training.

The program should fit the athlete—not the other way around.

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