Make the most out of your off-season!

Almost all winter sports have now come to a close, and summer-season sports are underway in their pre-season. An athlete at this stage of the training year will most likely fall into one of three categories:

1. Transitioning from Winter to Summer sports → An example of this is someone going from rugby to basketball. This is quite common among youth and developing athletes who are encouraged to play multiple sports all year round before specialising, in line with the Long Term Athletic Development model (Lloyd et. al, 2016).

2. Transitioning to different seasons within the same sport → This directly applies to a few individual sports. Two common examples include swimmings changing from short course to long course races, and middle/long-distance runners changing from Cross-Country to Track & Field.

3. Transitioning to a period of rest before the start of the next season → This would apply to most team sport athletes currently who have just finished their season and aren’t playing other competitive sports.

The latter is commonly known as what is referred to as the “off-season” - a period where we are encouraged to take a break before pre-season training kicks off! Here are some things to focus on while in the off-season!

In this blog, I am going to discuss its importance within the training year, as well as what I recommend athletes participate in during this time period!

The importance of the off-season within the training year:

To understand why the off-season is often necessary, let’s discuss the three key phases of periodisation:

Pre-season (accumulation & transmutation)

This is where the bulk of your “hard” training sessions are completed. The pre-season can be split into two phases:

1. Base Phase (accumulation) - where coaches and fitness professionals will aim to get you fit from an overall perspective. In this phase of the pre-season, intensity won’t be too high, but training sessions will be longer and with a focus on the core fundamental skills of the sport, where you start to “blow out the cobwebs” and work on your weaknesses (e.g., hip mobility, your defence, game tactics, etc.). This phase can last anywhere from four to eight weeks (Holmes, 2023; Ajibua & Yakassai, 2011), usually consisting of one mesocycle training block.

2. Specific Prep Phase (transmutation) helps the individual and/or playing group incorporate that fitness attained during base training into their game-specific skills and team plays. Here, a much greater focus on training & playing intensity will take priority, the the total volume of training sessions will decrease right through to the in/competitive season. Again, this part of the pre-season can consist of one periodised mesocycle training block.

Thinking of the three variables of performance (physical, tactical & technical elements) (Heatrick, 2012) in your sport, the base phase will primarily focus on physical & technical elements. As the season progresses, your team will shift from fitness towards tactical, with still some focus spread between fitness and skills.

In/competition season (realisation)

This is essentially when all games and competitions are held - where you put your fitness, skills and tactics to the test against your competitors!

Similar to the pre-season, there are 2 key aspects of this phase of periodisation:

1. Competition - These are all your competition/game weeks. Across the vast majority of sports, training volume will be at a low-medium level, definitely a lot lower than peak pre-season volume. The focus here is to maintain all the physiological adaptations that you have accumulated during the pre-season, almost all emphasis is on your team’s tactical abilities on the field/court. In individual sports, such as middle-distance running, training sessions may have some volume in the sessions, however, will be less than what would have been completed over the previous season.

2. Active rest - This is where breaks between rounds/competitions occur. A common example of this is the break over Christmas and New Year’s where there are usually 1-2 weeks off from athletics competitions in New South Wales. Another example of this can be a bye-round for a sports team. In these periods, training volume may increase slightly and intensity may decrease slightly (or vice versa) to assist in maintaining or slightly improving fitness, however, nothing too different will change between training on a bye round and training in a regular round.

Thinking back to the elements of sports performance, a much greater emphasis will be on tactics, with skills and physical qualities maintained or slightly improved.

So what is the off-season?

After these 2 seasons in the training year comes the off-season, where the ultimate goal is rest & recovery! These can last anywhere from 4 weeks to 3 months, depending on the sport (Hoshikawa et. al, 2005; Igbokwe, 2023; Nehr, 2023), depending on when you finish your season and when pre-season starts for the next season.

But the main purpose of the off-season is to allow your body to rest & recover. Rest & recovery is important after a competitive sports season, as it helps reduce the risk of an overuse injury from continuous repetitive intense training that may creep in during the pre-season or in-season.

So what should you do in the off-season?

There are a few things you can do in the off-season, here are my three suggestions!

Take a break:

This is the most important thing to do when you are in the off-season, hence why I have listed this first.

Let’s use AFL as an example. In Sydney, the playing season starts towards the end of March and has 18 regular playing rounds (including byes) before reaching 2-4 weeks of finals games, assuming your team makes it through to the finals. Most clubs also start their pre-season training around early to mid-November.

This means that for those playing AFL, the off-season only lasts for around 8-10 weeks. That’s just under 20% of the calendar year!

Although training is the hardest in pre-season, given the length of the playing season, you would need some form of a break for a few reasons:

1. Give your body time to rest & recover - given what has been discussed above, if you don’t give yourself a break, then you’ll be going into pre-season (most likely) feeling sore and tired

2. You need to live your life outside of your sport(s) - for the vast majority of us, we are more than the sport we play. We can be fathers, mothers, doctors, teachers, runners, etc. Strengthen your relationships with those areas while you have extra time.

I recommend taking 1-2 weeks completely(ish) off, with another 3-6 weeks of training before commencing the pre-season. This will all depend on how much time you will have before you start off your next pre-season. Within this break, some modes of training are acceptable, leading to the next point.

Reset, refocus, and get ready for the next season!

Training you can do in the off-season:

Whilst you can take a break, you do not need complete rest from physical activity. Here are some examples of training you can complete:

1. Slow and longer runs/jogs, or other activities that work in aerobic training zone 2 (potentially zone 3)

2. General circuit training

3. Other team sports (e.g., cricket, touch football, etc.)

4. General resistance training

These activities, are all not intensity heavy and do not need to be volume-heavy either. Just enough to keep you moving without overworking yourself. You should be completing the vast majority of your sessions not feeling exhausted or you’ve put in a flat-out performance.

For those competing in other sports (team or individual), be sure to account for this in your own training, allowing time to rest & recover between games and training sessions. An example of this can be reducing time spent on your recovery jogs and other sessions not related to your current sport. This will place less stress on your body, allowing you to recover for your games and team training sessions.

I recommend that only ONE aerobic & resistance training session per week (maximum) should be classified as “hard” (greater than 7/10 on the RPE scale). As I have outlined previously, the bulk of training in the off-season should be at low intensity (cardiovascular exercise [e.g., running]) or Rate of Perceived Exertion 6-7/10, or Repetitions In Reserve 4+ (resistance training [e.g., weights]).

Make any changes that are necessary:

Whilst this shouldn’t be a priority, some of us might need to alter our diets or change some habits to be more optimal in our next season. The off-season is the best time to start introducing these changes. As a personal example, I like to use the off-season to make alterations to my diet and medications. Usually right before the end of the season.

There is no pressure to change whilst dealing with the demands of the other 2 phases of a training year so you can focus on committing to any change/s that need to be undertaken. As I have written about in my previous blog on change, it is optimal to change one or two things at a time. This may mean that you only change one or two aspects before the pre-season, and maybe one more quality during the pre-season.

Therefore, if you need anything changed during the off-season, I suggest you complete the following steps:

1. Reflect on the season - what went well, what didn’t, what needs to improve. This may involve you speaking to your coach(es) in order to get a better understanding.

2. Create a plan to work on things that might need improvement. This should include steps to progress and ways that you can be held accountable during the process.

3. Continually reflect upon yourself and reassess whether you have made progress and what needs to be altered to get the desired outcome(s).

Putting this all together

To put this all together, look at the diagrams below to provide an example of how an off-season might be ‘loosely’ structured.

Off-season example for a middle-distance runner.

Off-season example for an AFL player.

If you need any other tips, advice or recommendations regarding off-season training (or training in general), I am always free for a chat!

Yours on the field, on the track & in the gym,

Paul

Head Coach & Owner

References:

Ajibua, M. A., & Yakassai, M. G. (2011). Periodization: a training science for optimal performance in sport.

Heatrick, D (2012). Sports Performance Training & Coaching Model. Rerieved from https://heatrick.com/2012/08/03/sports-performance-training-coaching-model/

Holmes, T. (2023). Macrocycles, Mesocycles and Microcycles: Understanding the Three Cycles of Periodisation [accessed 5 September 2023]. Retrieved from https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/macrocycles-mesocycles-and-microcycles-understanding-the-3-cycles-of-periodization/

Hoshikawa, Y., Kanno, A., Ikoma, T., Muramatsu, M., Iida, T., Uchiyama, A., & Nakajima, Y. (2005, May). Off-season and pre-season changes in total and regional body composition in Japanese professional soccer league players. In Science and Football V: The Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress on Sports Science and Football (p. 165). Routledge.

Igbokwe, N. (10 March, 2023). How long is the NFL off-season? Full timeline of lead-up to the 2023 NFL season [accessed electronically 5 September 2023]. Retrieved from https://www.sportskeeda.com/nfl/how-long-nfl-off-season-full-timeline-lead-up-2023-nfl-season

Lloyd, R. S., Cronin, J. B., Faigenbaum, A. D., Haff, G. G., Howard, R., Kraemer, W. J., ... & Oliver, J. L. (2016). National Strength and Conditioning Association position statement on long-term athletic development. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 30(6), 1491-1509.

Nehr, Z. (2023). Your Guide to Cycling Off-Season: When and Why You Need a Break [accessed electronically 5 September 2023]. Retrieved from https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/cycling-off-season-guide/