3 Steps To Nail Your Offseason Training in 2023
The Offseason is almost here…
Maybe this season didn’t go as well as you would have liked it.
Or maybe it went great and you want to keep up the momentum…
Regardless of how this past season went, you know you need to get faster, stronger, more explosive, and fitter to achieve your goals for next season.
Unfortunately, the reality is, you may only have a small window of time away from your team to focus on building athletic skills and you have no idea where to start?
In this article, we lay out the strategies we’ve used to help hundreds of athletes make major strides in their offseason and be a top performer in the seasons to come.
Step 1: Develop a Plan
If you’re an athlete — especially in a team sport — then you know if you’re not clear on what needs to be accomplished, you have no shot at actually making any progress. This is why setting specific goals during the offseason is paramount.
Get clear on your goals, ASAP.
The offseason may seem long, but in comparison to the time you’ll be expected to perform, it’s actually relatively short. You must determine what specific skills you need to develop in this crucial window of time.
Although it may seem obvious, we suggest starting your focus with your weaknesses. Yes, we can always continue to improve on every aspect of our game, but don’t fall into the trap of spending too much time working on the aspects of your game that are already up to speed.
Use the 75/25 rule…75% of your off season work should be on priority weaknesses and 25% should be maintaining or refining other, stronger skills.
What are the things you struggle with on the court/field/track?
Although your strengths and weaknesses should be very clear to you, start thinking about those aspects now, before the off-season drowns you and you are left without a plan.
Do the Minimum (no but actually).
It’s no secret that you have to dedicate time to getting better in order to actually get better, but how much time is enough?
With time being a huge factor in the offseason, you’ve got to make sure every second is worthwhile. The days of spending hours upon hours “grinding” are long gone.
Instead, we need to seek what we refer to in the industry as the Minimum Effective Dose (MED).
What is the minimum amount of time it take to improve the skills you need to improve?
Remember, water boils at 212ºF. Water does not become more boiled with more heat at 213ºF. Understand what you need to dedicate to achieve specific success (you will see that word pop up many times in this article).
With the thousands of athletes we have worked with, our statistics show the following MED is necessary for athletes who are starting a program.
Strength = 24 sessions or 12 weeks @ 2x week for 1.0–1.5 hours per session.
Cardio Fitness = 6 weeks @ 4 x week for 30–60 minutes per session.
Flexibility = 12 weeks @ 5–7 x week for 10-minutes per day
Speed = 10 sessions or 5 weeks @ 2–3 x week for 30 minutes to 1.0 hour per session
Consistency is key.
While it sounds cliche, it’s incredibly true and vital to your success in the offseason.
Repetition is the “mother” of all skill and is going to be the detail that gets you closer to your promise land. And the body learns with consistent doses of that repetition. Bouts of training too far apart and you tend to stay stagnant or regress…
So if you want to get better at something, do it well, but more importantly, do it often.
Step 2: Build Strength NOW
A good athlete is a strong athlete.
But what’s a strong athlete?
Don’t get fooled by Instagram videos of guys pushing sleds with weights piled to the ceiling and believe that’s athletic. Or girls that are knocking out a dozen weighted chin ups and feel this is the standard you need to achieve.
Impressive.
But are you trying to be a competitive weightlifter or a better athlete????
Keep in mind. You want to be strong enough to do the things that give you the best opportunity to execute your skill.
The right kind of strength allows your body to be safe, move efficiently, and generate enough force to move your body as quick as needed.
Gain, then Maintain.
Strength and aerobic fitness are the foundation that underpins every other athletic quality. Once the season begins, it becomes nearly impossible to continue gaining strength due to the demands of your sport.
So, if you don’t build it now…you win’t getting it later!
I know this post is about the offseason, but it’s important to note the small amount of training needed to maintain a skill once you have it (2/3 the amount of training duration & 1/2–2/3 of frequency needed to develop skill can maintain the skill for up to 15 weeks…as long as intensity is the same).
But the body will lose it quickly if it is ignored altogether. Check out these stats on detraining.
Strength can be maintained without training up to 3 weeks, but is gradually lost thereafter
Muscles start to atrophy after 2–3 weeks, though gains usually come back quickly, at least in beginners.
Endurance performance decreases by up to 25% after 3 weeks.
VO2 max declines by up to 20% in highly trained athletes at around 4 weeks of detraining.
Beginners can maintain endurance performance for at least 2 weeks without training, though recent VO2max gains can be reversed after 4 weeks.
Flexibility is reduced after 4 weeks of detraining by ~7–30%
Be Strong with a Purpose
Like we mentioned earlier…every skill you’ll need to perform your sport has an underlying prerequisite of strength.
The key to moving fast and powerfully is force production, which can be simplified as strength x speed.
But as the saying goes…”having force without stability is like shooting a cannon out of a canoe”
So strength doesn’t just exist for speed. Strength is the key to moving at ALL speeds…moving in all directions, and being able to move with the highest amount of versatility.
It is the concrete to our skyscraper. It’s the glue to our model airplane.
Being athletic is much less about producing the highest amount of force at any given time. It’s better to be able to produce the RIGHT amount of force in the right part of your body at the right time.
Now that’s a formula for success.
Don’t fall in the trap of only training the portion of your body that you think you need to get stronger. Get total body strength and watch your physical performance sky rocket.
The formula we look at that has the biggest effect on speed? Bodyweight to Strength Ratio (BW:S).
This is the ratio of how heavy you are to how strong you are (or how effectively you can move your body). The formula is simple: increase your strength disproportionally more than the increase of your bodyweight, and you will continue to move athletically at ANY speed with less injury.
Well-Rounded = Less Injured
Many injuries occur due to a weakness or asymmetry in the musculoskeletal system leading to compensation.
The body is the smartest “machine” on earth. And naturally, our physical systems learn to create the most efficient ways to carry out movements that are executed most often.
Your body will always take the path of least resistance when it comes to movement, and it will remember that path.
You have tight hamstrings? Your body will find another way to get hip extension (cue the back). You have weak glutes? Again, your body must find a way to stabilize the knee (cue ACL).
Athletes today begin to specialize in one sport far too early, leaving them at risk for injuries due to the same chronic movements over and over leading to overuse thus compensations.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to play multiple sports throughout your entire career, but it does mean that you need to find ways to make sure that your body is developing a vast array of strength in different joints, directions, and coordinations so that you do not increase the likelihood of overuse.
Take it from our former partner and Orthopedic specialist Dr William Graham when he states, “in actively growing athletes, traction apophysitis (ie. Sever’s Disease and Osgood-Schlatter’s Disease) are often caused by a clear asymmetry in strength and flexibility in the body while creating force during movement”.
Get strong in your whole body, in full ranges of motion, in all speeds.
Step 3: Stop Prioritizing Sport-Specific Work
There is no more clear way to define “athleticism” than by how fast an athlete is.
When someone flies past another to get to the ball or space first as if they were standing still. It speaks volumes.
YES!
But you have to still execute on the play. It doesn’t matter how fast you are if you can’t score the goal, finish the lay up, or catch the pop fly.
The most important parts of the game…in all games…no matter the position, rely on speed…without the ball!
2 myths you should avoid:
Speed is genetic
Sport-specific speed is the best kind of speed
Don’t believe that speed is not a skill that you train and develop. And don’t believe the lie that sport-specific speed is best trained with the ball at your feet or the stick in your hand.
In fact, these mental speed bumps are the very thing that is slowing you down.
Drop the Equipment and Build Pure Speed
A series of questions for you.
Can a lacrosse player run a 40-yard dash with their stick as fast as without? Can a soccer player change direction quicker with our without the ball?
Answer. No and No.
If today your 100% speed is a 5.0 40-yard dash and you can run 90% as fast with your sports equipment (pads/stick/ball/etc…), how do you build sports speed?
Answer. Improve your 100% speed so your 90% speed improves.
I get it. It seems logical that if I want to get faster in my sport, I should make sure that I am replicating the sport as best as possible so it translates. Right?
Not so fast.
The body and mind don’t work like that. Speed is largely neurological and the more you distract the nervous system from purely focusing on speed, you slow down.
AKA…when you have to control a ball or perform a sports skill, you rarely move as fast as you do without.
But, if you decrease that 40-yard dash in the off season and build your acceleration ability without sports equipment…when you do get back to training in a specific skill, you will be that much better.
Understand Physics
Like we touched on, MANY people still believe that speed is something you are born with. Like your adult height or your eye color.
But time and time again, science and anecdotal evidence proves that you can develop speed just like any other skill in sports.
Here’s the best evidence I can give you.
Over 90% of athletes that have attended our proven model of speed training, over the last 12 years, have been AT LEAST 5% faster after 5 weeks of training.
In other words, after 10 sessions at 2 x week training…you get a 6-foot head start in a 40-yard dash from your original self, 5 weeks earlier.
We have proven this with athletes from 9 years old to college at every sport and level.
Speed is a formula and — like everything else — lives by the rules of physics.
The thing that separates fast from faster is the amount and direction of force into the ground.
A famous physicist named Sir Isaac Newton came up with the laws of gravity and stated that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
We can leverage this law and develop better body mechanics to produce force backwards into the ground that will create a reactive force back to the body moving us forward.
Manipulate the law in your favor by…
Working your hands from chest to past the hips
Keeping your body posture in line so center of gravity is controlled
Setting up the most powerful push into the ground with a good knee drive
We’ve filmed several videos on these 3 principles in our YouTube channel like this one (LINK). Check it out for even more speed tips.
Now go crush it.
If you’re an athlete looking to make the most out of your offseason, this is your blueprint.
You would be shocked at the amount of athletes, even Olympic-caliber, that are not covering these bases.
If you develop a plan, build the right kind of strength, and understand the skill of speed you’ll be well on your way to making some major upgrades in your game and turning heads next season.
Best of luck.
John Lytton
President & Founder, Performance Unlimited
Want a team of pros to map out your offseason training? We can help.
