Why is Off-Season Athletic Training Important?

The off-season is a period of time when an athlete is not participating competitively in their sport.

For every sport, race and competition, the season has an ending. However, the span of time
outside of competitive play is considered off-season. During the off-season, athletes may be free
of games and competitions, but it isn’t all leisure and vacation. They will be involved in off-
season training, a critical practice period that can return dividends if done correctly.

Increasing potential performance in the off-season has many benefits, and is the foundation of
personal athletic growth. It’s important to maintain athletic prowess, because it’s much easier to
stay in shape than get back into shape. It’s also important to find an enjoyable way to train in the
off-season so as to avoid becoming burnt-out or injured. All in all, off-season training is
important regardless of the sport because it is a time to rest, develop, improve and focus on skills
that directly and indirectly affect competitive performance.

Begin with Physical and Mental Rest

Once the season is over, it’s time for some well-deserved physical and mental rest. One of the
most important parts of the off-season is taking time to recover. Without proper rest there can be
negative ramifications.

One major consequence is injury. The body needs time to heal and any athlete, high school or
professional, who pushed too hard throughout the year will almost assuredly see physical harm.
If athletes evade physical injury by some small chance, they still have to deal with the mental
stress.

Playing the same sport over a long period of time can lead to a loss of interest. The same routine,
practice and workouts can cause athletes to “burn out” on their sport and potentially lose interest
in athletics as a whole. That is why it’s important to find balance in the off-season through new
or different exercises and activities.

“Active rest” is the balance between recovery and maintaining fitness. Active rest can be
accomplished through participating in a different, enjoyable activity — something that includes
different muscle groups and a fresh way of thinking. For example, if the majority of exercise
involves heavy strength and weight training, try cardio-related exercises in the off-season and
vice versa. As a tip for finding active rest is to look for exercises that are almost the opposite of
the seasonal sport, and keep it lighter than in-season practice.

Develop and Gain Focus

Athletes are constantly developing their skills, and they return back to the basics during the off-
season. It’s important to develop better, stronger foundations and systems. For example, the
aerobic system supplements energy with oxygen and is responsible for replenishing the
anaerobic system, which is energy lacking oxygen.
Developing both aerobic and anaerobic health during the off-season not only promotes recovery,
it gives athletes a competitive edge. Near the end of the game, when other teams are tired and
spent, those with healthy and developed systems will be able to continue.

It is important to note that the development process should not be as extreme or intense as in-
season practice. During the off-season, exercise and training should be held at a lower intensity
and volume. Slowing down enhances an athlete’s focus on the basics and on specific movements.
Athletes who want to stay in shape should decrease frequency and duration of their training, but
focus on maintaining intensity. Exercise lacking in intensity will result in a loss of fitness, so the
off-season is an important time to shorten duration, but maintain competitive effort.

Improve in New Ways

The off-season is when athletes can improve their strength and learn how to correctly access this
newfound strength. No matter the sport, athletes place unequal pressures on parts of their body.
These imbalances can be dangerous if left unchecked; therefore correcting them can improve an
athlete’s health and prevent injury.

This effect is easily visible within sports like baseball and football. Baseball players rely heavily
on their throwing arm which means it needs extra care and rest in the off-season. With football,
it’s their knees that take the brunt of the damage, off-season efforts need to be focused on resting
their knees and strengthening the supporting physical attributes.

Improving strength is the foundation of further physical performance and needs to be pursued
equally. After addressing muscle imbalances created by their sport, athletes can focus on
increasing their strength. As stated previously, finding balance in these exercises is important.
Improving specific muscle sets in isolation and with other groups helps athletes achieve their
desired results.

Near the end of off-season, athletes should begin redirecting their focus back to sport-specific
exercises. Keeping intensity the same but duration and amount decreased, athletes should
reintroduce their bodies to the ‘old’ exercises and ease their transition back into seasonal form.
Once their competitive season commences, they will be warm and ready with newfound abilities
and a stronger defense against injury.

Goals for Off-Season Training

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Train for the Game LI in Sports Performance No Comments

During the off season there are athletes that go out and continue to train hard for their next
season. Then, there are athletes that go through the motions and workout infrequently in an
attempt to maintain their strength and there are athletes that during pre-season training, suddenly
realize how out of shape they have let themselves become and find themselves struggling to
catch up to where they need to be.

What many athletes don’t realize is how quickly the body can regress back to pre-training levels
after periods of de-training when duration and intensity is reduced. Research has shown that
these changes also occur more quickly with women than men both aerobically and anaerobically.
However,  for both genders off season is arguably the most crucial time for an athlete to
focus on maintaining training and preparing the body for the next season

Goals for the off-season include:

Providing a base level of conditioning,

Preparing the body for more intense training,
Combating muscle imbalances to reduce the risk of injuries.

Often times during the season, the body experiences very repetitive movements and some
muscles are worked more than others due to the nature of the sports we engage in. There are
three planes of movement the body works through and sometimes in sports we are in one plane
of movement more than the others. During the off season we can emphasize increased strength
and mobility in the other muscles and planes of movement that don’t always get enough
attention and can lead to injuries.

Off-season training is one area where athletes can get a tremendous bang for their buck. Before
we get into specifics, we have to define the off-season.   The off-season is a period of time when
an athlete is not participating competitively in their sport. Team sports like football, basketball,
soccer, lacrosse, and baseball have a clearly defined off-season. With the oftentimes overly
demanding schedules of many youth sports teams, many young athletes jump from travel to all-
star and then varsity high school teams hoping to get ahead without leaving any time for an
actual off-season.

It is critical for all athletes to have some type of off-season built into the year. Playing sports at
highly competitive levels is taxing on the human body. High school pitchers undergoing Tommy
John elbow surgery, tennis players with wrist and rotator cuff issues and knee/ankle problems
from the repetitive stresses of jumping and landing on the basketball or volleyball court are all
predictable consequences associated with overuse and lack of rest for young athletes. It is what
would seem to be common sense: You cannot race a car hard every single day at the track
without something eventually breaking down. The human body responds in much the same way.

The off-season downtime is an opportunity to perform technical skill work or practice but at a
much lower intensity and volume than during your competitive season. For example, this would
be the time a football player develops speed and agility, basketball player could improve
quickness and eye hand coordination or an athlete from any sport can increase speed endurance
or technical work. The key takeaway here is you are not playing your sport at competitive max or
“racing speed.”

So what should the training be like when an athlete is not in season?

Improving fundamental movement patterns like jumping, landing, decelerating, squatting,
hinging at the hip, pushing, and pulling all improve overall athleticism.

The conditioning work done to the aerobic system in the off-season provides the base for the
higher-intensity demands to come in the pre-season and competitive seasons. The improvement
of general strength creates the potential to sprint faster, jump higher, and throw harder during the
competitive season. You simply cannot build these qualities in the middle of a competitive
season. Instead, you must build these qualities in the off-season so they can be expressed during
the competitive season. In a typical 4-12 week off-season, three of the most common goals:

 Develop the aerobic energy system ( Endurance )

 Improve general strength ( Growth, Explosive ability )
 Clean up movement patterns

Regardless of the sport, a well-conditioned aerobic system is essential. Obviously, a well-

conditioned aerobic system will benefit someone like a distance runner or soccer player.
However, what most people don’t understand is that a fine-tuned aerobic system provides
benefits in almost any sport since the aerobic system (energy with oxygen) is responsible for
replenishing the fuel for the anaerobic energy system (energy without oxygen). In other words,
football and hockey players need their aerobic system to replenish the anaerobic systems that
allow them to perform bursts of high-intensity work intervals. This is a tremendous advantage
late in the game during the competitive season, and it can only be accomplished by doing some
work dedicated to improving the ability of the cardiovascular system to deliver oxygen to
working muscle.

Off-season training for youth athletes should also have an emphasis on lifting heavy things and
putting on some muscle mass. The force a muscle is able to produce is directly related to its
cross-sectional area. If you want to be able to run, jump, and throw harder next season, strength
training is essential. Strength training simply means you are going to stress the muscle by lifting
something heavy, and your body will respond by making it bigger and stronger. An athlete does
not have to go to the weight room or have access to fancy equipment to strength train. In fact, for
most youth athletes, bodyweight is the best place to start. After all, if you cannot move your own
body weight appropriately, adding 50 pounds on top of your back is asking for an injury.

When strength training, the focus should be on movement patterns rather than on specific
muscles. For example, you want to improve strength in fundamental movement patterns such as
squatting, hip hinging, pushing, pulling, and core stability. This is easily done with body weight,
free weights, sandbags, and resistance bands. It is not easily done with the machines you find in
most gyms that isolate specific muscles and joints.

Building a solid foundation of strength in the off-season is followed by learning how to express
that newly developed strength during the pre-season and fully expressing the strength in the
competitive season. The key here is to focus on improving general strength in the off-season and
then working during the pre-season and competitive season to apply it.
The final objective of the off-season is to clean up movement patterns. This is the time to make
sure you can absorb force correctly, clean up fundamental patterns, and develop good posture.
This aspect of training is becoming even more important in today’s society. Think about the
amount of time children spend sitting on the computer, texting on their phone, and sitting in
classrooms. It is causing an epidemic of bad posture and inefficient movement in those
compromised positions. Even worse, training and competing in compromised positions is a
major contributing factor to several youth sports injuries such as (stress fracture in the lower
back) and shoulder injuries. When you spend all day hunched over and your lower back is in
excessive curvature, you develop poor posture, and this can set off any number of ailments when
training load is increased.

If you look at everything presented about off-season training and put it in the context of the
bigger picture, it becomes clear how important it is when thinking long-term. Most parents and
coaches are only concerned with the short-term. They want to win the big game next week,
win the tournament this weekend, or make the U-13 all-star soccer, Lacrosse team. They
may achieve those things, but they take shortcuts to get them, such as skipping the off-
season. Those shortcuts eventually catch up.
On the other hand, the true champion athletes are focused on the long-term from the very
beginning, and they never take shortcuts. They do the work in the off-season, and over the
course of years, they develop outstanding conditioning and strength while often avoiding
injury. They also are the ones who may have missed out on winning the championship in
7th grade, but they eventually end up with scholarship offers and notable accomplishments
when it counts.

If you pay the price of time and sweat during off-season training, you will reap the benefits
during the heat of the battle in-season.

Getting help from professional and experienced strength and conditioning coach will
continuously motivate you and ensure that you are not just training harder, but training
smarter, in order  to stay on top of your game and a step ahead of competition!