What Should an Athlete Do When the Season Ends?
For some local football players, the regular season is about to end. Others will keep playing into the playoffs. Baseball players are also coming out of fall ball, while middle-school schedules turn over at different times but as a whole, they’re wrapping it up this week. There is no single “off-season Monday” that applies to every athlete. AHSAA’s final regular-season week is Oct. 29–30, and the first playoff round begins Nov. 6, which means one player may be preparing for a final game while another is preparing for another month of competition. The first step is to plan around the athlete’s actual calendar, not a generic sports-season label. (AHSAA weekly schedule; APT playoff schedule)
When a season ends, parents often hear two competing messages: “They need to rest completely” or “They need to get right back to work.” Neither is a complete plan. A transition period gives the athlete a chance to let the demands of competition come down, address any pain or accumulated fatigue, and begin training toward qualities that the sport season may not have prioritized. How that transition looks depends on age, training history, the length and intensity of the season, the athlete’s health, and what comes next. There is no evidence-based number of days that every young athlete must follow before resuming training. Most of it is geared towards simply being smart.
Practical example: The transitionary period after my senior year of college football at the University of North Alabama I was selected to play in an All-Star Game. Which is obviously exciting however it’s an incredibly long season — considering little to no depth at practice or in the game — injuries plus wear and tear accumulate and at the end of the season; so much so that I couldn’t lift my arm due to a shoulder injury. That type of thing typically takes months to heal. Was I to not workout at all during that time? Just sit around and decondition before I spent a week in the Northeast practicing and playing a game that weekend? No of course not (however for whatever reason many adults would have their athletes do that, it’s wrong BTW). Here’s the deal, I ended the season with a bum shoulder, I still had two good legs and one good arm. I trained around it. Shoulder wasn’t much better by the All-Star Game but I showed up in the best condition I could. Anyway, back to the article.
That does not mean a player needs to be inactive. It means the next block should have a purpose. After the final game, a coach and family can review how the athlete feels, whether there is pain that needs medical attention (because sport is determential to the human body), how much practice and competition the athlete has accumulated, and which qualities should be developed before the next season. The answer may be a short period of lighter activity, a gradual return to structured training, or continued in-season work for a post season playoff athlete.
Practical example: Typically the biggest gains in college come from a players freshman to sophomore year — why? It’s because they have the smallest practice load and the smallest game load. They don’t travel on the weekends which means their coaches will be gone Friday and Saturday. Thursdays are a cake walk, as well as Sunday nights practice. Monday is typically off. So that means realistically freshman only practice “hard” two days of the week, Tuesday and Wednesday. That being said, they workout more than the travel guys. So while the travel guys are getting beaten up, the non travel guys are building. I say all of that to say this. If you’re not taking a significant beating during the season, you probably don’t need anytime off post season. Anyway, back to the article.
For football players whose season is over, the off-season can become a chance to rebuild strength, acceleration, deceleration, and general movement capacity. The aim is not to punish the player for being out of shape or to cram months of work into a few weeks. It is to build progressively, with coaching that considers the athlete’s age, experience, and existing school or club training. The National Strength and Conditioning Association’s youth training guidance supports resistance training when it is properly designed, taught, and supervised. A young athlete does not need to imitate an adult program to benefit from getting stronger. (NSCA youth resistance training position statement; NSCA long-term athletic development guidance)
Baseball families should also distinguish physical training from throwing workload. A baseball player coming out of fall ball may still want hitting, fielding, or position instruction, but a pitcher’s throwing exposure needs its own plan. A lesson, bullpen, showcase, and game all contribute to the total load on the arm. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that youth pitchers not pitch competitively for more than eight months in a 12-month period and recommends three months of rest from pitching each year. That recommendation does not mean a player must stop all physical activity; it means families should coordinate throwing plans and respect a planned break from pitching. (AAP, “Baseball and Softball”)
If the athlete is younger, the goal is not to build a miniature college player. The goal is to develop a broad base: running, stopping, jumping, landing, changing direction, learning to handle resistance, and responding to coaching (example would be the FIT Performance Pyramid). As athletes mature, training can become more specific to their sport and position. Even then, a program should fit around competition rather than blindly pile extra stress on top of it. The same principles apply to athletes who play one sport most of the year: more sport exposure is not automatically better if recovery, skill quality, and physical development are ignored.
An inconvenient truth: Your high school aged athlete may still be technically a “young athlete”. If they’ve skipped developing a large broad base of physical literacy, strength/power and work capacity; there’s no amount of “sport specific workouts” that can get you past that hurdle. Most of these athletes max their skill level out and have a gaping hole where strength/power/work capacity should be.
A good parent question is not simply, “How many workouts can we add?” Ask instead: What is the next block supposed to improve, what is the athlete already doing, and what can we reduce so the training can work? If the season is still active, the answer should protect competition and recovery. If it is over, the answer can shift toward rebuilding. For an athlete who wants to keep improving over several years, that change in emphasis is part of the plan.
Something to consider: You can only have one #1 priority at a time during seasons. If you’re a baseball player let’s assume you care the most about your high school season (at school) in the spring. Ok, that’s priority #1. This now means that your priority in the spring is the season. Everything you do downstream from priority #1 should be supportive, not priority. A properly set up sports season should look like this.
The sport season
strength and conditioning
skill development
You’ll spend the least amount of time developing skills because you should’ve already done that in a different season (training block). A moderate amount of time in strength and conditioning because it’ll support staying strong, powerful and healthy FOR the season you care most about. Don’t expect to have massive strength, speed, power gains when you aren’t prioritizing strength and conditioning. This should be obvious, why would you get stronger, faster and more power? You didn’t PRIORITIZE IT. You deemed it supportive and not priority, remember? Strength and conditioning during the season helps slow down the rate of strength/power/speed lose for most starters. Realistically maintaining what you have is a win. The only people who DO GET STRONGER in the season are basically non contributors.
Now that we have deemed the spring season is for competition, when do you plan on having a season dedicated towards increasing strength, speed, power, agility, etc. Remember you can’t have two #1’s. Surely you don’t think you can just hit the weights for 3 months when it’s convenient for you and expect to get anything out of it. From a realistic standpoint, it MAY take your kid months to figure out how to the do the exercises correctly — that’s totally dependent on them and their physical literacy. Surely you don’t think you can prioritize summer ball then go straight into fall ball and have that as a priority #1 as well, lol. If the goal of some of these seasons is to stay frosty, I totally get it, it should be #3 or #4 on that list, not #1. You can still play year round, but be honest with yourself, create a sports periodization schedule for yourself and continue to develop accordingly.
At The FIT Facility, Sports Performance and Youth Performance are coached around the athlete’s age, season, and current workload. The goal is to add useful strength, speed, and movement development—not just another appointment. If you want help deciding what belongs in your athlete’s next block, learn about Sports Performance or Youth Sports Performance, then get started with the athlete’s current schedule in hand.
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The season ends. What should the next block look like?
Before you add another workout, look at the whole schedule
Preview text: A season transition should match the athlete’s sport, workload, and next goal.
Fall sports don’t all end on the same weekend. Some football players are finishing the regular season; some will keep competing in November. Baseball players are coming out of fall ball, and their throwing schedule needs to be considered separately from strength training.
When a season ends, the answer is not automatically “stop everything” or “start another intense program tomorrow.” The next block should account for what your athlete has been doing, how they feel, and what needs to improve before the next season. A good plan gives the athlete room to recover while still developing strength, speed, and movement skills over time.
Read the article: What Should a Young Athlete Do When the Season Ends?
If you want help deciding what belongs in your athlete’s next block, learn about Sports Performance and get started. Bring the current practice, game, and throwing schedule so we can make the plan fit the athlete—not the other way around.