It is this time of year that we see the performance gap grow even further between the trained and detrained athletes.
“We are around the halfway mark of our Spring sport seasons.
Not only will the performance gap continue to grow between the trained & detrained athletes, injury susceptibility in the detrained increases as well.
Being strong & fast now is more important than any other time.”
-Ray Zingler on X
A lot of strength coaches like to talk about the importance of in-season training as soon as seasons start, but then they largely let pressing the agenda go.
It is this time of the season, near the mid-way point that in-season training is most important.
Before I get started, I’ll give a summary on why in-season training is important to begin with.
I’ll do this by asking a simple question.
Would you rather be at your peak speed, strength, and power during the most important time of the sport season or during the pre-season when it doesn’t matter nearly as much?
There you go. That’s the whole summary.
Athletic qualities (speed, strength, power, etc.) when not “touched” become rapidly untrained and many of the mid/late season lulls athletes see when they should be experiencing midseason strides/peaking phases, come not from “burn out”, but from not appropriately feeding their bodies the appropriate stimuluses’ to maintain increased levels of performance throughout the season.
And to take it a step further, not only will we inevitably see performance regressions as the “grind” of the season carries on, but it is also this time (statistically speaking, not my opinion) we see an increase in injury occurrences.
How could we not, though?
We’re placing increasingly large demands on depleted bodies and their tissues quite literally don’t have the capacity to keep up.
You can’t “will” yourself to increased levels of tissue tolerance.
You must earn it.
Therefore, it is now you’ll see the studs becoming bigger studs and the average kids getting lost in the weeds.
I don’t place the blame on the kids, though.
It is the adults who are conditioning this concept of sport participation abundance into kids in the often, complete absence of physical preparation.
The adults watch the overwhelmingly few outliers (who can get away with damn near anything) play a lot of sport and not prioritize performance training and think that’s the best prescription for all.
(If you don’t believe me, just look at our.. ya know.. whole youth sport landscape from top to bottom for context).
Much like the outlier will never reach the pinnacle of his or her potential without prioritizing year-round S&C, most athletes will never even get to sniff their potential.
You MUST train in-season to have a chance.
