IN SEASON TRAINING

It has always amazed me that so many coaches neglect or de-emphasize strength training during the season. The whole reason athletes train in the off season is so they can perform during the competitive season. What is the point of being  strong, powerful and fast as the season approaches only to lose all of those characteristics becasue of the detraining that often takes place once the games start? The major goal of the off season is to prepare athletes for the specific competitive stress of their sport and to train their bodies to recover between exposures to their sport. If these goals have been met, there is no reason to baby our athletes during the season. We as coaches may have to be creative with volume load and the monitoring of the athletes readiness for each training session but it can be done. The only way to get or stay strong is to lift heavy weight. Because of the increased physical, emotional, and mental demands of their sport, athletes will not be able to handle large quantities of work during the season but, barring injury, the quality and intensity of work should not drop off. They must continue to touch that heavy weight. Obviously, many other aspects of training (recovery, mobility, nutrition) must be addressed as well but it seems to me that as our knowlede of these other areas expand, many of us are forgetting that the base of the pyramid for our athletes is still strength and power. The super bowl is today and both the Giants and Patriots began their journey towards this game almost 6 months ago. Think about how much can be gained or lost in 6 months of training. I dont care what you did during the other half of the year, their is no way to "maintain" or even better improve over 6 months without some serious training. Do you think Tom Coughlin plans for his team to display peak performance tonight or on some random day back in August. For most of us, the in-season is the longest period of consecutive training weeks we may have with our athletes all year and if we dont take advantage of that time, we are truly doing our athletes a disservice.