When athletes start working with us, their parents usually ask, “Is this something we will have to do forever?”  Which is a good question since our service is a paid service.  They don’t want to sacrifice their college savings for this.  

Unless, they are gambling that this will pay off in a college scholarship and then they won’t have to pay. ☺

BUT SERIOUSLY…

You have to look at it like this.  There are 52 weeks in a year.  Are you going to be training 52 weeks?  Probably not.  But, there are built-in breaks from your training.

Chances are you are probably going on a vacation or 2 during the year.  I’m usually not a big fan of training on vacations, unless it happens to be right in the middle of your season.  Which, with all these club sports training year round, that very well could be.

Typically though, vacations are not during the season, so you have a couple weeks off there.

I highly recommend taking a week off after your season ends.  You need to decompress and the body needs to start recovering.  Even, if you are heading into your next sport season, at least take 3 or 4 days off.  Do absolutely nothing.

If you are a kid who is fortunate enough to have final exams at the end of the semester, then you might have to take exam week off from training.  I personally, would not.  I would use it as an escape from my studying and a way to recharge my batteries.

But, what I’ve learned in life is that not everybody thinks like me.  Wish they would.  Would make my life a lot easier.

A lot of times, athletes are so stressed out from training that if they come to work out, it tends to be a really poor quality session.  And nothing really is gained.  A wasted session.  So, this week could be skipped entirely, but preferably if you could ride a stationary bike for 15-20 minutes or something like that, it would at least keep your body active.

Having laid all that out, I will answer the question like this.  If you are an athlete that has aspirations of success – success is defined by you, not me – you might have to consider training year round, but you won’t necessarily be training every week.

As stated above, you will probably have natural breaks that will be put into your training schedule.  To recap, those would be plus a couple more:

  • Family vacations or a vacation not during the season.
  • A short break when your season ends.
  • A break possibly during exam week or heavy school time.
  • Injuries maybe.
  • I’m a big fan of in-season training, but once the season starts your training might have to halt.

If you are going to take weeks off beyond that to sit around because you have been playing so many games and it is beyond what I stated above, then that certainly is fine.  But, you would be wasting precious opportunities to make yourself a better athlete.

I mean honestly, how many weeks off do you need to have??  Once the season starts, school starts, the one thing you don’t have is time to train.  So, if you find you have the chance to train then take advantage of it.

If you take a week off for the above reasons, then when you do come back, you will come back with a long block of time of consistent training and your break will actually help you recharge for that training.

You continue to take weeks off beyond that, you could continue to derail what little gains you are making with your training.  And, you will give the advantage to your competition that has been training like a fiend to defeat you.

I hope that answers the question for you.  Like always, if you have a comment to this post, please place it in the comment’s box below.

Photo courtesy of Sam Howzit on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aloha75/