In Season vs Off Season Training (Youth Athletes)

Why You Should Still Lift During the Season

We put in so much work in the off season, then lose a lot of those adaptations when we stop training during the season.

And with youth sports, kids are playing ALL the time. Is there truly ever an off season for them?

Everything has its own context but in general let’s look at the following 3 graphs to help explain what your training should look like in season versus off season and why I still strongly encourage you to lift during season.

Graph 1 = Lifting Volume

 Graph 2 = Lifting Intensity

 Graph 3 = Frequency

OFF SEASON

In the off season we will see higher lifting volume, intensity, and frequency.

Athletes shouldn’t spend the summer doing nothing.

And you lose your speed and power much faster than your strength when training stops. If you stop sprinting for multiple weeks, you will lose those gains faster than you think. Research shows that explosive and neuromuscular qualities can decline rapidly when sprinting and high velocity work is removed for a short period of time (Mujika & Padilla, 2000).

Make sure you are still sprinting both acceleration and top end speed emphasis and jumping. You don’t need equipment for this; you just need space and intent.

As far as strength goes, use your body weight or grab a backpack and load it up with books. You still need to train strength. Even simple consistency goes a long way during the off season.

Off season training is where we still sprint, jump, and change direction but we definitely emphasize strength and laying the foundation for pre-season and in season.

You’ll often see:

• Higher volume

• Higher frequency

• Higher intensity

• More eccentric based work

• Slower tempos

• Deeper range movements

  
  

All of these are great for building capacity, but they also come with more fatigue.

TRANSITIONING TOWARD IN SEASON

The closer we get to in season we will place a higher focus on power and speed while still hitting some strength to maintain strength and tendon and muscle resilience to reduce injury risk.

Volume and frequency start to come down.

However, intensity can stay relatively high.

The goal is not to stop training, but to adjust the dose so you can perform when it matters most.

We will shift toward:

• Power

• Speed

• Reactivity

• Strength work

• Tissue resilience

IN SEASON

In season, let’s place an even larger emphasis on the minimal effective dose. Practices, games, travel, and skill work already create a large training load in season, which is why weight room volume often needs to decrease.

We are trying to:

• Maintain strength

• Maintain power

• Reduce fatigue

• Stay explosive for sport

  
  

Example:

Off season:

• 225 x 8 reps on deadlift with tempo work

In season:

• 225 x 3 to 5 reps

• No tempo

• Lower sets

Same stimulus, less fatigue.

Keep intent high but volume low.

YOUTH ATHLETES

For youth athletes, they honestly don’t always need to change their training that much in season.

Younger athletes:

• Recover faster

• Tolerate training better

• Can maintain strength training year-round effectively

So, while older/collegiate and professional athletes may need to reduce volume more aggressively in season, youth athletes can often keep training fairly consistent depending on their schedule and recovery.

Everything still has context though:

• Practice load

• Game schedule

• Sleep

• Growth and development

• Overall stress

SUMMARY

Off season training you will see:

• Higher volume

• Higher frequency

• Higher intensity

In season training:

• Volume decreases

• Frequency decreases

• Intensity stays relatively high

Closer to in season we shift more toward speed and power while maintaining enough strength work to keep performance and injury resilience.

Always come back to filling your buckets. What is your sport giving you? What is it not?

If you stop lifting for 8 weeks, that strength bucket starts to drop faster than most athletes realize.

Don’t undo the progress you just spent so much time building up.

REFERENCES

Lloyd, R. S., et al. (2024). Youth resistance training: Updated position statement paper from the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 38(2), e1 to e33.

Mujika, I., & Padilla, S. (2000). Detraining: Loss of training induced physiological and performance adaptations. Part I: Short term insufficient training stimulus. Sports Medicine, 30(2), 79 to 87.