Is in season training important?

Is in-season training really important?

Is in-season training really that important? - Coach Vinnie Cagliostro

Being Strength and Conditioning coach, the only question we get more than “how much does this bar weigh?” is “Should my athlete still train during the season?”

This is a very good question with a very simple answer: For all that is holy, YES!

Let’s look at a sample scenario: Johnny has been coming in 3 times a week for the last four months. His strength numbers have increased, his speed is much better, and his power is better than it has ever been. And now that his season has started, you want to completely stop training?  Let me tell you why that’s a terrible idea. 

Let's look at the possible effects of not training in-season: His strength decreases, he slows down, and his power production has dipped. This is week four. In week 10, the numbers continue to dive and now Johnny just pulled his hamstring. That’s not just a theory, let’s look at the scientific evidence:

In a study (1) Faigenbaum et al. looked at the effects of training and detraining on children. They found that after an 8-week program lower body strength increased by 53.5% during the leg extension and 41.1% on the chest press. However, following detraining their upper body strength decreased by 19.3% and 28.1% for the lower body. These results show that strength-training children (age 7-12) improve strength over an 8-week period. However, once you remove the strength training their strength decreases back to an untrained state.  

In another study, Ronnestad et al. (2), looked at the effects of in-season strength maintenance training frequency in professional soccer players.  In this study there was a group that trained once a week for 12 weeks (12 sessions) and another one that trained every other week for a total of 6 sessions. The findings showed that the group of players who trained once a week helped maintain their strength, sprint and jump performance.  With the group that trained once every other week showed a decrease in strength, sprint and jump performance.

RECAP!

We built Johnny up for a hard 4 months and now you want to detrain him back to his normal levels?? Not such a good idea is it.

 Final Thoughts:

In closing, in-season training can be extremely beneficial for athletes, especially younger ones because of their quick adaptations to strength training. Once we remove that stimulus for multiple weeks we begin to go back to our detraining status.

Why do we train to be ready for week 1 of the season but not week 5 and beyond? Yeah doesn’t make much sense.

------- (1) The Effects of Strength Training and Detraining on Children Faigenbaum, Avery D.; Westcott2, Wayne L.; Micheli, Lyle J.; Outerbridge, A. Ross; Long, Cindy J.; LaRosa-Loud, Rita; Zaichkowsky, Leonard D.     (2) Effects of in-season strength maintenance training frequency in professional soccer players. Rønnestad BR, Nymark BS, Raastad T.