It’s that time of year where athletes are about to start up their spring season and transition from their off-season/late-offseason training programs into in-season. This typically confuses a lot of people in regards to how to balance their playing and practicing schedule with their training schedule. First off, people must understand that training in-season is much different then training in the off-season. Here are some of the considerations you must make.

1.DECREASE TRAINING VOLUME

In the off-season phase of your training program you are typically training anywhere from two to five times a week, depending on your age and your training level. Whereas once you reach the part of the year when you are in season you must drop this down to anywhere from one to three times a week. This must all be in accordance to how you are feeling and how much you are doing on the field. To put it simply your volume is inversely proportioned to the amount you are competing/playing. In training you are constantly working against competing demands, in this case you must take into consideration the amount time spent on the field and back down the athlete’s training volume.

In regards to intensity, you don’t want to see too much decline on lifts, as you ultimately want to continue to challenge the central nervous system (CNS). However, you do not want to go over board and risk overtaxing your CNS.

2.SHIFT THE FOCUS OF YOUR TRAINING TO MAINTAINENCE

During the off-season developing strength should be your main focus, as you have no other factors such as practice or games to contend with.  However, as you get closer and closer to your season your focus shifts from developing strength to applying your strength into absolute speed. Essentially when it comes to the training continuum you must start with a base of strength. With out strength, all other physical attributes such as power, speed, agility, etc. would fail. So it is paramount that you develop strength first. As you move along the training process you will start adding in more strength-speed and speed-strength biased training into your programming.

Once you hit the season your focus shift from building strength and speed to maintaining it. This does not mean you take out resistance training altogether from your program, it just means you are performing it at a volume that will not negatively effect your nervous system. In other words you would cut your sets in half on your power lifts as well as your auxiliary lifts.  In this phase of training workouts typically are finished much quicker than in the off-season, often lasting under an hour.

3.CONTINUE ALL INJURY PREVENTION AND CORRECTIVE EXERCISES

This is the time of year where these are very important as it is during the season where athletes will develop all their muscular imbalances and unilateral asymmetries.  This becomes the most time consuming component of your training program this time of year. Although you are only spending one to two days in the weight room, you should be doing all flexibility and mobility work every day. Examples are:

Foam rolling/Myofascial release/soft tissue work
Flexibility and Mobility circuits
Corrective exercises

Here is an example workout plan for a baseball position player:

            Day 1(in the gym):

Soft tissue work/flexibility and mobility/Corrective exercises

Dynamic Warm Up

Safety Bar Box Squat – 4×2 @ 60%

DB Drop Step Lunge – 2-3×6 /side
Thoracic mobility work – 2-3 sets

SL RDL – 2×8/side
Wide Stance Cable Rotations – 2×10/side

            Day 2(field work):

Soft tissue work/flexibility and mobility/Corrective exercises

Dynamic Warm Up

Short Distance Sprints < 60yds

Arm Care work

Day 3:

            Flexibility and mobility circuits

Day 4(in the gym):

            Soft tissue work/flexibility and mobility/Corrective exercises

Dynamic Warm Up

Box Jumps to SL Landing – 3×3

SA Bulgarian Split Squat – 3×6-8/side
SA Cable Row – 3×8/side

Push Ups (rear foot elevated) – 3×5/side
BB Hip Bridge – 3×8

Prone Ring Fallouts – 2×8

            Day 5(field work):

Soft tissue work/flexibility and mobility/Corrective exercises

Dynamic Warm Up

Short Distance Sprints < 60yds

Arm Care work

Day 6:

            Flexibility and mobility circuits

Day 7:

            Off day

As you can see only two of these days are spent in the gym with the remaining four days spent on the field. As always athletes must listen to body and take days off when needed. However make sure that you keep the same level of consistency and effort with your in-season training as you would with your off-season program. This will ensure you will see minimal loss of strength and a significant decrease in potential for injury.

Tags: Baseball, baseball in season training, baseball training, in season training, Injury Prevention, Mickey Brueckner, nj gyms., nj training, Performance Training