The Case For In Season Training, Again

I’ve been yapping a ton about injury prevention for our young athletes and just the  general youth population. To me, one thing that still gets ignored by many that can help this is the value of in season strength training. Here are the 3 reasons people try to give and my counter to them.
 
The first argument I hear against this is that they should focus on getting stronger in the off season only.
 
The most glaring issue with that statement is, most of these athletes don’t have an off-season these days, so how do you expect them to only get stronger in the off season? The vacant two weeks around holidays that they could probably use to recover and not get hurt and spend time with family? That’s a negatory friend.
 
The next thing I hear is usually what follows above, I don’t want my athletes hurt or burnt out.
 
As I’ve stated before, barring catastrophic injuries, which is not something you can really prepare for, in season training will have the exact result you seek in terms of not getting hurt. Assuming you use half a brain with the programming, athletes will likely be able to find more energy later in the season than if they did in season training than not. Also, not hammering athletes into the ground with mindless conditioning would be a way to prevent that, as many sport coaches like to do.
 
The last thing I hear it, there’s no time to do an in season lift.
 
B AND S to that. My teams do a 45 minute in season lift after practice and about 90% of them are better for it every time. It shakes out some of the soreness, maintains their mobility and keeps their strength, sometimes even makes them stronger during the year. Tell me where the downside on that is.
 
To very little surprise for most, the downside to getting in an in season lift is very little when some thought is put into it. Hope everyone found this at least informative and helped dispel some of the silly ideas out there. Have a good rest of the week friends!