Stop Training in-season?... No

One of the biggest, and steepest uphill battles we face in the strength training industry is the stigma associated with in-season training. In my experience, the athletes that are more reluctant to training during their season are typically non-contact sport athletes (I’m looking at you baseball… swimming… tennis…basketball). This isn’t a slam piece to call out athletes, this is an informative piece that will hopefully provide some insight into some appropriate training protocols for different levels of athletes in different sports.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: if you have been training on a consistent basis in a structured program for less than 2 years, and you’re under the age of 18… no matter the time of year…. you need to stay in the weight room. Without a foundation of “strength” novice level athletes are more prone to injury, decreases in performance on the field, and loss of performance gains in the weight room. The novice athlete has so much room to develop, and 2-3 month season is no excuse not to take advantage of that window. Performance gains can and should be made in season. So, for all of you wondering whether or not your youth athlete should stick with their training routine, the answer is yes. Unless your goal in life is to be the all-team JV athlete, your thought process when it comes to development should be long term.

So outside of the youth population, should you train in-season? The answer is still yes, we just need to be more careful monitoring the stress we prescribe our athletes along with stress that occurs outside of the facility. To get an athlete to perform at the peak of their current ability gets way harder as they develop. The more training experience they have, the more energy & time it takes to see even the slightest improvements in strength, speed, or power. They need that energy to be applied to their sport (why they are training in the first place).

Looking at (fig-1), you’ll see a generic representation of a typical athlete’s improvement timeline. At the start you’ll notice a sharp increase in performance, and the sharp rise starts to flatten out as you gather more experience. If you’re an athlete in that first bubble closest to the y-axis, then we cannot afford to stop development for a few months. You may see improvements quickly, but I guarantee that you will lose those improvements just as fast, if not faster if you cease training all together. If you are an athlete a little further away from the x and y axis, you can see it takes much more time to increase performance. That means it takes much more energy as well. Athletes need energy for the sport. The more advanced athlete’s program will typically focus on strength/power/ speed maintenance and above all- total movement ability. This way we do not take away from their on-field performance.

figure 1

What does all of this information mean at the end of the day? The less experience you have, the more you can train in-season without negatively effecting your performance on the field. The more training experience you have, the more cautious we have to be with training in-season, maintenance and readiness are top priorities.

The more experienced athlete will also be better suited to hold on to any performance gains throughout a season compared to a novice athlete. This is because the majority of performance gains occurs neurologically in the novice athlete. Neurological advancements are the first to develop, and the first to be lost. The more experienced athlete will also improve neurologically, however they will also see morphological changes as well. Increases on muscle size will allow the athlete to hold on to their adaptations when appropriately prescribed. This is demonstrated in figures 2 and 3 listed below.

fig 2

fig 3

Finally, the goal the performance training is just that… performance. This is goes hand and hand with injury prevention. When an athlete drops their structured training volume in exchange for unstructured sport practice, their chance of injury goes through the roof. Do not get me wrong, they need to play their sport at the end of the day. But depending on the sport/ position, the body will start to develop greater asymmetries, and sport specific adaptations that if not monitored can compromise performance. Combined with unwarranted weight loss, this could spell disaster. A quality strength coach will regularly monitor factors such as range of motion at key joints (hip/shoulder), body weight, power expression, and daily readiness while micro-dosing strength work. This can only happen if an athlete stays in the weight-room.

There are levels to everything, and if you have aspirations of playing sports beyond high school, you have to be ready for the college workload. Cessation of training every 4-5 months will delay adaptation, decrease performance, and increase the likelihood of injury. The less experience an athlete posses, the more consistent they need to be in the weight-room. The more experience an athlete posses, the easier they can maintain performance. Do not be afraid of a qualified strength coach that nows how to develop athletes. Trust the coach to keep your athlete on track to accomplish their goals.

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