The winter sports are coming to a close.  End of the season tournaments are starting up.  Only one team or individual can win all of their games left, so chances are your season will be ending soon.

If you are moving on to a spring sport, then there are some things that you need to make sure are being taken care of before your season begins.  Really this can be applied to any high school athlete transitioning to a sport at any time of year.

  • Are you finished with your previous sport yet? If you haven’t been playing a sport in the previous season, then you should be ready and raring to go.  If you did play a sport, then that plays a role in some of the other items in this checklist.  You need to be completely done before you can transition to the next sport anyways, but there could be some little things you can do to get ready and that can be discussed later.
  • Do you have any aches or pains that need to be addressed? Once again, if you haven’t been playing a sport then these should have been addressed and taken care of.  If you have been playing a sport, you need to do an evaluation of these aches and pains.  If the pain is something that can be taken care of with some RICE and a week off, then do it.  If it is something that has been lingering, a little tougher to recover from, and you can play through it, you might have to suck it up and play your next sport.  Understand, you might not be at optimal level all season.  If it is really serious, you might have to get the doctors to fix it which would mean you’d have to take some real time off and not get to your sport for a while.
  • How much rest do you need from one sport to the next? Collegiate and pro athletes will usually take at least 2 weeks off doing absolutely nothing to let their bodies unwind.  Then they might have a couple weeks of active rest.  Not really doing training for their sport, but some light lifting or playing a fun rec sport for some exercise.  A high school athlete really doesn’t have that luxury and might have to consolidate complete and active rest.  If you are lucky, you might get 7 days off of doing nothing.  My guess is you’ll get 1-3 days before you will feel pressure from your spring coaches to participate.  If you do get 7 days, the latter part of that week you could spend doing some light lifting to get back into the swing of things.
  • Assess where you are physically to determine expectations of your readiness for the season? Once again, if you haven’t been playing a sport, you should be in really good shape.  There should be no worries.  If you have been playing a sport, this transition might be rough, but assess what you did during the previous season.  You might be in great cardio shape and depending on what sport you are going into this could be very useful.  Maybe on your off days during the season, you did little things to prep you for the next season – going to the batting cage, taking a few tennis lessons, or doing a strength workout for example.  Just know that it will take a few weeks to kick away the previous sport and adjust to your new sport so be patient.
  • Get all your equipment ready for the next sport. Do your due diligence and be prepared by the beginning of the season.  Any new shoes, new cleats, new gloves, etc. get them bought and broken into before the season begins so you won’t have any major adjustment time.
  • What can you do to keep yourself at a high level during the season? If you have been doing months of speed and plyometrics work, then you can really bring down that volume.  You’ll do a lot of explosive work in your practices and this should be enough to keep your speed high.  You might just do some mechanical acceleration if anything.  The strength can be maintained by lifting each muscle group a minimum of once a week.  If you can get two lifting sessions in during the week that would be awesome, but it is important to do this if you have been lifting all off-season.  Keep the intensity below maximum with a moderate amount of reps.  That should help you keep your strength and keep the volume low.  If you played a sport the previous season, you need to be careful about the lifting.  If you did nothing during the previous season and you start doing some in this new one, you will get sore which will affect your play.  Your strength is so low at that point, the lifting might not be worth it.

There you have it.  An easy checklist to assess what you need to do to make that nice transition into your next sport.  Now remember the most important thing.  Play hard and have fun!