Summer Training For College Athletes

I’m happy to send a nice, warm “Welcome Home” to our college athletes who have recently finished up exams and are back for the Summer. This post will be dedicated to all of you, and hopefully some of your family members are reading as well. Because, as most of you know, it takes an army at the college level.

The topic of today’s blog is really about the importance of your off-season approach. If you’re playing your sport in college then you’ve undoubtedly been putting in the training hours at school. Now that Summer break is here, you’re probably excited about the must needed reprieve of school stress and have earned some time off. However, we think its important to maximize the time in this off-season also. Thanks to Spiderman, we know that “with great power comes great responsibility”  and you’re all responsible for staying healthy and getting ready to play. I’ve written before about the different seasons during an athlete’s year, and most of you are officially in the off-season where you’re focus should be improving your physical fitness plain and simple. All of you Fall athletes will be progressing into your pre-season mode soon, so please take that into account. But without further ado, lets talk about your off-season priorities to stay fit and healthy.

The Off-Season is about your base training and developing physical fitness. This requires less use of your sport’s equipment and less contact time, and instead more time improving your strength and cardiovascular fitness. This is the optimum window of opportunity to spend precious calories and effort on intense sessions that you would not be able to do in season. This is because your priority in season is staying sharp and healthy for your practices and competitions. In season, you should maintain most of your intensity in the weight room but decrease the volume. For your Summer off-season, you should really focus on increasing intensity and volume to a point. This means, work the heavy lifts, get comfortably pushing your limits, and don’t neglect your core and cardiovascular training either. The bulk of your off-season training should be spent on resistance training which will ultimately make you better once your start to ramp up your sport-specific drills.

Simply put, the off-season is where you get better, faster, and stronger. And then during your season, the goal is to stay healthy and maintain the fitness that you gained in the off-season. You should still aim to perform some strength work in season, but the volume is drastically different than that of you off-season training.

Many of you are sent home with off-season packets or even pre-season testing guidelines and expectations. Definitely keep open lines of communication with your coaches or strength coaches so you’re prepared, and definitely don’t wait too long. You’ve earned a small break, just get those feet moving soon. If you have any questions, please feel free to give us a call. Even if you’re stuck and don’t know what you should be doing for the Summer, we would love to help. All three of us here at Feldman PT & P have been there and competed at the college level, so we’re eager to help rel-live our glory days.  

That’s it, that’s all I’ve got for today. Stop reading, and go hit the gym!

Welcome back and have a great Summer! #happytraining

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