How Offseason Sports Training Ensures Competitive Season Peak-Performance

Your student-athlete needs to train hard to get competition ready in preparation for the kickoff of the new team or individual sport season. While group fitness training sessions may be the norm during the standard football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, baseball, and other team sports seasons, the burden often falls on individual sports players to create and adhere to a workout regimen.

Whether your student-athlete plays team or individual sports or a combination thereof, strength and conditioning workouts may cease during the offseason unless they participate in an indoor, private varsity, or travel league or switch to a different sport. Not having an off-season sports training plan lined up is never ideal. Athletes spend the first part of their new season playing far less optimally than they could have by not participating in sports performance training exercises during their competitive off-season.

Ask any elite professional athlete, and they’ll all readily share one secret behind their success. When asked about their workout routines, Olympic and professional athletes often say that working out during their off-season is critical to their success on the field, court, track, pool, or wherever else they compete during the competitive season.

Not just any off-season sports training program will do. It must not replicate what an athlete does in the on-season if it’s going to have a certain desired effect. The performance and fitness program should instead have a specialized focus, as we’ll detail below.

Know that whatever your sport, our Greensboro area Revolution Strength & Conditioning trainer can devise an off-season sports training program customized for football players and all other types of athletes. Our individualized training plans can significantly enhance your student athlete’s playing, giving them a competitive edge once the new sports season starts up again.

Why Is Off-Season Sports Training Critical?

An offseason is when an athlete isn’t competitively playing their sport. However, many student-athletes don’t get in an off-season. They instead find a way to fill in the gaps in their schedules by playing other leagues or other sports, making it so that they don’t get any reprieve from playing.

This approach isn’t ideal. Playing during a school offseason leading up to when the training camp starts before the competitive one gets underway can leave your teen susceptible to repetitive stress injuries caused by little rest and overuse. Inaction (not playing or power training) isn’t ideal, either. Requiring your student-athlete to take time during the off-season to practice their sport on a less rigorous schedule than they typically engage in or at a lower intensity, whereby they can refine their technical skills, is ideal.

Knowing what to set as fitness goals for the offseason often isn’t easy. Blaine, the personal trainer at Revolution Strength & Conditioning, can help you devise a fitness and training program that ensures you’ll be functioning at peak performance come the start of the new season.

What Should the Focus of an Off-Season Sports Training Plan Be?

There are three primary factors that your athletic trainer will build an off-season fitness and conditioning private training schedule around including:

Recovery and Rehabilitation

The athletic performance type of personal training should focus on helping student-athletes recover and rehabilitate.

Recovery is one of the most important aspects of the off-season sports training process. Playing sports requires a lot of mental toughness. It’s imperative that recovery is as much about improving health strength (mental fortitude) as improving one’s physical prowess.

Taking time to unwind mentally and emotionally after a busy sports season and reducing the intensity of your student-athlete’s workout or training schedule can aid them with stress reduction.

A Reprieve From Typical Physical Performance

One way student-athlete’s can give their body some degree of rest is to integrate different exercises into their regimen while participating in offseason sports training activities.

Every personal trainer at our performance center is likely to devise a plan that involves strengthening supporting muscle groups that your student-athlete hasn’t typically focused on in the past. Trainers may additionally have student-athletes perform more cardio-intensive activities or integrate innovative ways for them to work out primary muscle groups to keep things fresh as a way to minimize the chances of burnout.

An experienced strength and conditioning coach in Greensboro, NC should also address physical imbalances and athlete performance-enhancement of sport-specific movements along with their client’s ability to maintain stamina at a high intensity. These functional movements and conditioning drills are typical concerns elite athletes focus on during their offseasons.

Identifying New Sources of Strength and Correcting Poor Form

Offseason sports training provides an opportunity for your student-athlete to correct any bad habits they’ve incorporated into their workout approach that may cause fatigue and result in imbalances, which may increase the risk of injury. The offseason may provide the perfect opportunity for an athlete to identify additional sources of strength and fitness.

For example, since significant pressure is placed on a football player’s knees, they may want to focus on strengthening the supporting muscles around them. Likewise, baseball players may benefit from giving their throwing arm a break during the offseason.

Knowing how to best rehab while continuing to engage in functional strength-training activities in other ways is key. It’s something our athletic trainer at Revolution Strength & Conditioning is prepared to help your student-athlete with.

Factors That Affect a Student-Athlete’s Offseason Sports Training Plan

While an athlete should continue working out during the offseason, there are limits. No two student athletes’ offseason strength and conditioning programs will be the same as the training regimen they follow will depend on the following:

The sport they play
Their own physical limitations
Where individual fitness deficits lie

What Should a Student Athlete’s Offseason Sports Training Program Focus On?

Strength and conditioning training may focus on improving functionality and, thus, competitiveness. Some athletic training drills a sport performance trainer may run athletes through to improve a client’s athleticism during the on-season include youth conditioning and fitness programs that center around:

Pushing and pulling
Explosive exercises like squats, agility drills, sprints, plyometrics, and lunges
Push ups
LiftsReach out to our team
Footwork exercises
Rowing
Core-strength exercises
Jumps and hops along with landing
High knee exercises
Acceleration and deceleration
Crossfit-style interval training

Functional training and conditioning in the offseason, as described above, is essential to improving skills that have an indirect or direct impact on your competition readiness.

Deciding Whether Offseason Sports Training Is Right for Your Greater Piedmont Triad of North Carolina Athlete

It’s far easier to ensure an athlete is at peak fitness come the pre season tryouts, scrimmages, group training sessions and workouts, and competitive matchups if they’ve maintained a workout regimen than if they’ve allowed themselves to get out of shape during the off-season.

Our team at Revolution Strength & Conditioning in Greensboro is primed and ready to devise a program that will ensure your student is the best possible athlete come the start of your new sports season. So, what are you waiting for? Reach out to discuss your student-athlete’s performance needs so that we can share more about how we can best help them achieve or exceed them.