Preseason ≠ “Let’s See How Much They Can Survive”
Every year, athletes return to campus and suddenly the goal becomes:
More running. More lifting. More conditioning.
All with no direction or proper progression.
As if the purpose of preseason is to see how much an athlete can tolerate before the season starts.
I think we should look at it differently.
The goal of preseason is to prepare athletes to PERFORM.
Not to survive training.
Not to make them as sore as possible.
Perform.
Your athletes are not necessarily “out of shape” when they return. And more work does not automatically mean better preparation.
Adding more and more training simply because you have a few weeks before competition can leave athletes
entering the season already fatigued.
The question shouldn’t be:
“How much work can we get them to survive?”
It should be:
“What do they need to be ready to perform at their best?”
Don’t Stop Lifting During the Season
One of the biggest mistakes I see is treating strength training like something athletes need to “get through” in preseason and then abandon once competition starts.
You don’t need to stop lifting.
You need to adjust the dose.
1. Decrease volume
As sport demands increase, training volume in the weight room usually needs to come down.
That doesn’t mean strength training becomes unimportant.
It means we’re managing the total stress placed on the athlete.
You don’t need five sets of everything to maintain strength.
Often, the minimum effective dose is enough.
2. Maintain intensity
Reducing volume doesn’t mean everything needs to become light.
We can maintain meaningful intensity while cutting unnecessary volume.
The goal is to continue providing a strong stimulus without creating fatigue that interferes with practice or competition.
3. Choose lower-residual-fatigue movements
Exercise selection matters.
During the season, I want movements that give us a high return without unnecessarily putting the athlete into a recovery hole.
That might mean:
Lower-impact plyometric variations
Box jumps instead of repeated depth jumps
Consistent strength movements, no need to reintroduce new movements during season
Less eccentric damage
Less unnecessary time under tension
Fewer exercises that create soreness for the sake of soreness
This isn’t about making training easy.
It’s about making training appropriate to meet the athlete where they are at.
Stimulate, Don’t Annihilate
This is probably the simplest way to describe my approach to in-season training.
Stimulate. Don’t annihilate.
We want to maintain the qualities that matter:
Strength. Power. Speed. Coordination. Tissue capacity. Movement quality.
But we don’t need to completely exhaust an athlete to train them.
A great training session doesn’t have to leave an athlete crawling out of the weight room.
The best session is the one where they leave feeling better prepared for tomorrow’s practice or game.
Your Athletes Don’t Need More Fatigue. They Need Better Preparation.
Athletes may show up to preseason tired, move slower, or even experience more aches and pains.
That doesn’t automatically mean they didn’t prepare over the summer.
Sometimes they’re simply accumulating an enormous amount of stress:
Practice
Conditioning
Lifting
Travel
School
Competition
Poor sleep
Psychological stress
And the general demands of being a college athlete and student
Our job as strength and conditioning coaches is not to ignore those stressors.
Our job is to account for them.
Preseason should bridge the gap between preparation and performance.
It should expose athletes to the demands they need to handle while giving them enough recovery to actually adapt.
Because the best-prepared athlete isn’t necessarily the athlete who survived the most work.
It’s the athlete who is ready to perform when it’s time to compete.
Preseason ≠ “See how much they can survive.”
Preseason = prepare them to perform.
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