If You Are Serious About Your Sport, You'll Find a Way to Train In Season

If you are serious about your sport, you'll find a way to train in season.

That may sound harsh, but I think it's true.

A lot of athletes train hard in the off-season. They get stronger, more explosive, faster, and more athletic. Then the season starts, schedules get busy, and training is the first thing to disappear. The problem is that your body adapts to the stress you consistently place on it. You built those athletic qualities because you showed up, trained, recovered, and adapted. When that stimulus disappears, your body has less reason to maintain those adaptations.

That's one of the biggest reasons in-season training matters. You worked hard all off-season to improve your strength, power, speed, and durability. If you stop training completely for months at a time, some of those qualities will inevitably begin to decline. Parents, this needs to be a priority.

Think about how much time, money, and energy you invest into club teams, tournaments, private lessons, travel expenses, and equipment. If you spent thousands of dollars on club sports this year, it makes very little sense to neglect one of the biggest factors that determines how athletic, healthy, and durable your child is when they step onto the field.

All of those things are intended to help your athlete perform at a high level. In-season training helps ensure they show up to those opportunities in the best physical condition possible.

Without it, many athletes gradually become worn down as the season progresses. They lose some of the strength, explosiveness, and athleticism they worked so hard to build during the off-season. We've all seen it: the athlete who looks fresh and springy in the first few weeks of the season but seems to lose their pop by the end. In-season training helps prevent that.

The goal isn't to make athletes tired. The goal is to help them stay strong, healthy, explosive, and prepared to perform when it matters most.

One common misconception is that practices and games replace strength and conditioning. They don't.

Practices make athletes better at their sport. Strength training makes athletes more capable of performing the demands of their sport. A baseball practice develops baseball skills. A volleyball practice develops volleyball skills. A lacrosse practice develops lacrosse skills.

None of those activities are particularly effective at building maximal strength, maintaining muscle mass, or improving an athlete's ability to produce force. Those qualities are largely developed in the weight room.

Another important reason to continue training is injury prevention. No program can guarantee an athlete won't get hurt, but strength training helps keep muscles, tendons, and joints strong and resilient. Throughout a season, athletes accumulate bumps, bruises, soreness, and movement compensations. Continuing to train allows us to maintain strength, restore range of motion, and address small issues before they become bigger problems.

Seasons are physically demanding. Sprinting, jumping, cutting, changing direction, and absorbing contact all create wear and tear over time. Strength training helps athletes better tolerate those demands.

In-season training should not look like off-season training. When I say athletes should train during their season, I am not saying they need to crush themselves in the weight room three or four days per week. The goal isn't to set squat PRs in the middle of a competitive season. The goal is to maintain the qualities you've already built and keep your body healthy enough to perform at a high level.

A well-designed in-season program is shorter, more focused, and more efficient. It gives athletes exposure to the strength, power, and movement qualities they need without creating so much fatigue that it negatively affects practices and games. Done correctly, athletes should leave training feeling better, not worse.

During my years coaching college athletes, one pattern became very obvious. The athletes who continued to improve year after year were rarely the athletes who trained hard only during the off-season. The athletes who made the biggest jumps were the ones who stayed consistent year-round. Their training changed depending on the season, but they never completely abandoned it.

Consistency beats intensity over the long haul.

Perhaps the biggest reason to train in season is long-term development.

If an athlete plays a fall sport and a spring sport and completely stops training during both seasons, they may spend half the year or more without any meaningful strength and conditioning. Over the course of four years, that's a tremendous amount of missed progress. The athletes who make the biggest improvements are rarely the ones who train hard for a few months and then disappear. They're the ones who continue showing up, even when life gets busy and the focus shifts toward competition.

The goal of in-season training is not to make athletes fitter than everyone else.

The goal is to make sure they don't become less athletic as the season goes on.

The best athletes don't stop training when the season starts. They simply adjust the training to match the demands of the season.

Best of luck with your training today!