Off-season for college club players?

Great question Morgan. We commonly find that either the Fall or the Winter ends up being the off-season for college programs. You will find variance based on geography as well as tradition. Seemingly a lot of northern schools treat the Fall fairly seriously with regard to tournament and practice schedules because weather will preclude them from practicing as a team until it warms up again.

I hope some programs recognize their traditions are sometimes rooted in a historical lack of access to good off-season training resources and adapt to 2017. An example of this might be using the winter to condition, aka develop aerobic capacity, only.

I actually like that these college players practice and play themselves into shape in the Fall because it takes care of something traditionally referred to as GPP or General Physical Preparedness prior to hitting the gym in the off-season. This can be an advantage because out of shape athletes often lack the capacity to complete a high intensity strength & power workout. Acquiring that preparedness puts those athletes in a good position to work hard in the gym and reap benefits.

Each program does have to decide for itself when they want to start training this or that because each program’s goals are different. Perennial powerhouses might not have to peak at Regionals. Growing programs may have to peak for Sectionals. The timelines of these two examples are at least 6 weeks different.

We are happy to talk to college captains and help them determine what kind of training schedule is in their best interest as determined by their goals.

I think its important to recognize that young athletes can generally handle a decent amount of volume and intensity and with such a chaotic college schedule its worth the reminder that “something is better than nothing.”

In other words I wouldn’t hold off on lifting in the Fall because you don’t have a full off-season block to work with. If you have a 6 week block here, a 4 week block there, they can at least get started learning the programming and will benefit from getting in at least 2 x per week.

One of the best times for a really solid off-season block could be the holidays. Tournaments often wrap up in late November / Early December and start up again in February. So, assuming the athletes understand the programming and can do it on their own while they are on break they can get a solid block in during that time. Set them up for success with a very simple but legit program like a the Program.Zero 3 x (coming out soon).

When they get back to competition around February… hopefully they have a solid strength base and can transition into in.season.one style lifting.

All that said, compliance can be an issue with college kids and often times you may only have practice time to work with. If this is the case, foundational patterns, mobility / activation sequences, core progressions and of course SA.Zero,One,Two can be implemented.