I am a firm believer of in-season training and I’ve had many arguments with coaches on this topic. Of course there are different ways to in-season train and it means different things to different ages of athletes. So let’s dive right into this topic and see what we can come up with.

We’re going to start with the assumption that if you are reading this post, you probably aren’t working with college or professional athletes. If you do work with those athletes and are reading this post, thank you. But, I know this topic isn’t much of a debate for you because those athletes are working out in-season. There isn’t an option. They are doing it period.

So that narrows our focus on high school athletes and younger. I was a strength coach for 5 years at a local high school and would battle the various sport coaches on it all the time. I know the arguments:

“We don’t want to keep them here to all hours” or “We don’t have enough time”

You’re talking to me like I was never a high school athlete. I know the drill. You practice after school until 5:30 or 6pm. Sometimes if you are playing a sport that needs gym time, you aren’t practicing until 6pm. You need all the practice time that you can to whip your kids into playing shape and get them correcting their mistakes they had in their game. I get it.

Here are my points. Now understand, if you haven’t done any off-season or pre-season training prior to your season starting, then doing speed work or strength training is going to be useless. You’ll be sore, it will affect your games, so it isn’t worth your time to start during the season. Here’s why you need to continue your training into the season:

  • If you do not work a muscle at a decent intensity at least once a week, you will start to lose some of the strength and muscle gains you worked so hard to achieve in the off-season.
  • After not working a muscle for a month, your strength loss decreases at a much faster rate. Last I checked, most sports have longer seasons then a month.
  • Keeping your muscles strong during the season will also help reduce the chances of injuries occurring. If you get injured, you will be able to recover quicker.
  • The volume of work you do during a training session in-season is much less than off-season. A good quality program could take you 20-25 minutes tops. You also aren’t doing this 5 days a week either.
  • Virtually every college program does in-season training with their athletes and the rules for coaches working with students is much stricter in college than in high school.

I probably have some other reasons, but can’t think of them right now. I would limit your in-season training to weights and active recovery (stretching and foam roller work). Even though I’m a speed coach and I depend on people to hire me for income, I don’t think in-season speed training work is that necessary for high school athletes. Spend your energy on your practices and games. You should be as fast as you’re going to be prior to the season beginning. You probably aren’t going to lose speed, if you are going full blast in your games.

Younger athletes it just depends. Seventh and eighth graders probably can do in-season weight training and active recovery as well. I don’t think speed work should be done because their schedule is more hectic. Just like high schoolers, they probably don’t have the time to do it. Younger than that though, speed training work could be possible. A lot of those athletes only have a couple practices a week and off the other days. I’ve worked with many fifth and sixth graders during their season on speed/quickness work and they’ve seen a lot of improvement. Their able to have the energy to spend on speed training to make the necessary improvements.

Bottom line is this: I think high school athletes should be doing in-season training of weight lifting and active recovery. Speed training isn’t necessary if they were doing it right up to their season beginning.

Coaches, you can make the time to get the necessary lifting in. The 20 minutes you are sacrificing a couple times a week isn’t going to affect how well your athletes will play that week. They might perform better because they will be maintaining their strength throughout the season. Plus, if you have a late practice you still have time for the athletes to get started on their homework (most are probably sleeping anyways) and get in for a quick workout before practice.

Feel free to post your comments in the box below. I would love to hear what others think.