“We can train, but once practices/the season start we will have to stop.  I just don’t have the time to get him/her there.”

That is the common statement I receive from a lot of parents about getting their athlete in for speed/strength training. And I get it! But, I’m here to say that something needs to be changed.

YOU MUST LEARN TO MAKE TIME.

Share this post with your athlete, coaches, whomever, but if you are going to continue under the philosophy that these young kids need to be in their sport year round, have 3-5 practices a week the majority of the year, then your athletes full athletic potential will never truly be tapped.

The athletes that I meet want to get stronger. They want to get faster. They just can’t find the time.

Plus, with the growing trend of travel teams playing year round (thus blurring the lines of when in-season ends and offseason begins), there is a prevailing thought that you can’t speed/strength train AND practice on the same day. We don’t want to wear these kids out?

Let me expand on the first sentence of this post. That is a statement I heard a lot this year. The parents are investing money to have their kid play on a travel sport. But, the kid needs to develop as an athlete. Because of the demands of this sport, they only have 5-7 weeks off a year and maybe not all in one chunk.

If you don’t do the training that I can help you with, your athlete will continue to be struggling for whatever that goal is – starting time, making the team, colleges to look at him/her.

You have to realize that you will have to train during your season. Or train during the portion of the season that is least important. Plus, whatever training you do and then stop (like when the season starts), you are ultimately going to lose those gains after about 4 weeks. I don’t know many seasons that last just 4 weeks.

If you don’t trust me though, then listen to some college coaches I reached out to. I just wanted them to give me their thoughts on how they approached in-season training. Did they completely stop or did they continue on with a varied approach?

See for yourself:

  • “In-Season with Lacrosse we lift twice a week on Monday and Wednesday.  The Monday lift is a little more aggressive than the Wednesday lift.  In terms of tapering for the season we will begin to taper right after Spring break to account for postseason play.” – Michael Szemborski, CSCS, USAW, Director of Strength and Conditioning for Olympic Sports at University of Maryland.
  • “In regards to your track questions, we strength train twice per week through most of the season.  We have meets most every weekend from mid-January until May and then every other week after that for about a month and a half.  We do taper for our championship meets and depending on the schedule of the meet may only lift once or not at all on those weeks.  During track season what is done in the weight room is just supportive of what needs to be done on the track and especially at those times of major championship meets, the strength training needs to take a back seat to what must be done on the track & not take resources away from this.” – Chris Ruf, Director of Athletic Performance, Baylor University.

I want to thank these two strength coaches for taking the time to comment on this topic. Basically, what I wanted to illustrate was that you will eventually get to a point where you will have to do training during the season in addition to the practices that you are already doing.

Your reply might be, “Well, those are college athletes that got a scholarship to play that sport year round.”

Is that not what you are trying to accomplish for your kid now? Doesn’t this kid play on a team year round to develop skills to get that scholarship? Then you might want to set aside the time to do in-season speed/strength training especially when it seems like they are always in-season.

Next week’s post, I’m going to continue on this topic as it relates to soccer. I had a strength coach reply to my request with a great response and I want to dedicate an entire post to it. Feel free to comment on this in the box below.

Photo courtesy of Sean MacEntee on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/