How to Handle a Team After A Long Season

As a Strength and Conditioning Coach in the University setting, the majority of the time I see my athletes, they are in-season. Up here in Canada, classes start in September and run until April, which is similar to the timeframe of their seasons (as long as we make Nationals in the spring). That means the offseason for most of our teams coincides with summer break, when many of our athletes return home to work for the summer and enjoy home cooking. I do run sessions over the summer and am doing my best to hold everyone accountable over that time, but as all university S&C will understand, the summer is a tough go for accountability when you aren’t able to actually see your teams consistently.

That is why I have found it to be extremely important to set the foundation for the summer/offseason as soon as their season ends. For some of our teams, that might be a couple of months, for others it might only be a couple of weeks from the time they compete (and hopefully win) at U-Sports Nationals to the time the exam period begins. Over the years, I have tried a few different methods to bridge the gap between our in-season work and the offseason grind, but the one thing that has remained is an optional training week or two right after the season.

Depending on the sport, the coach, when the season ends, and how the season ends, I tell those athletes that there is no expectation to come lift for at least a week, sometimes two. Usually everyone adheres to my advice on the first week, enjoying their first real break from physical training since the same time last year (I tell my athletes “This is the ONE week a year that I give you completely off, so take it. It’s a long off-season grind from here until September after this.”). By the second week, some athletes start to trickle back in, itching to pump some iron again.

Some coaches might scoff at giving them time completely off, but for me, it comes down to a few things. First, this is the one or two weeks I give them off in the whole year. Yes, we deload at times, and I give them a few days off at a time, but never this long of a break. It also serves as a great time for them to catch up on school. Especially if they competed at Nationals, that often requires them to travel across the country, miss a week of school, and fall behind in class. Giving them more time in the day to catch up and study for exams in the spring is extremely valuable, in my opinion.

Lastly, it creates the mindset I want heading into the offseason. I don’t want athletes to be sore, tired, and thinking, “man, I am kind of sick of this” from Day One because they’ve been grinding since September. I want them to want to come back and get after it. I want them hungry. That is why I usually give them the first week off, and then the second week is optional. I know some athletes feel they need to lift to stay alive (which I was one, so I can empathize with that), and that second week is a good judge of how many kids show up to optional sessions hungry to work.

Then what? After a long season and two weeks off, what do we do then?

Again, I have tried multiple things over my time - Bodyweight circuits, slow tempo work, bodybuilding-style training. Honestly, I had success with all of it. Then this past year, I tried something I have never tried and found so much success with it that I am probably going to keep going with it until the end of time (or until I find something else that works better). We used the 1 x 20 (by Dr. Michael Yessis).

“No way!!” I know, not new, not revolutionary by any means, but for us it was, and I will explain why.

First, let me explain how we did it because I feel like some coaches run it differently, so I want to be clear on what happened within the four walls of our weight room.

I chose 15 exercises. We did 1 set of 20 repetitions of each. We repeated the same workout three times a week. We repeated for 2 weeks. This gave us six total sessions in a row of the same workout.

Fig 1: 1 x 20 used in Sparta

Here is where it got spicy. I told my athletes that they had to go up in weight on every single exercise, every single session, until we were done. No, I’m not joking. 6 sessions in a row (technically 5 after the first intro one), you need to hit a new 20 RM. Sounds like madness, and it was, but let me dive in a little more for you.

First off, I told them this right away, so they went pretty light to start off. Then they slowly added weight each session until by the last session or two, they were going to failure on pretty much everything. We also have micro plates that allow us to add 0.5, 1, and 1.5 lbs to our DBs, so they weren’t always making 5 lb jumps in weight.

While I will share my thoughts and reasoning behind all this in a second, some of the feedback I got from athletes was:

“It was a fun change to what we normally do.”

“It was a nice mental break to just do an exercise once and move on.”

“It was challenging to do 20 reps.”

“It started off easy but got harder with each session.”

“It sucked” (lol)

So, not the worst feedback in the world, and I would say a majority enjoyed the change of pace and style of training. Okay, now here is why I loved it:

• It was something different from what we had ever done, which gave athletes a mental break.
• As they started light, it did help reduce the soreness right off the start (although the 20 reps didn’t help).
• 20 reps is a good challenge and helps build work capacity to start the offseason.
• As I told them, they had to increase weight each session, which set a great foundation for the offseason on teaching athletes that they need to add more weight to get stronger.
• As the weight was lighter, athletes could focus on getting quality reps (full depth on squat, etc). Since we did this 6 times, that is 120 quality reps which once again set the foundation for the offseason of going heavier with full range since inseason training tends to get shaky by the end of the year with heavier loads and injuries/niggles. So this was a great “reset” for the body.
• It was really hard by the end, and athletes were happy to move into something different for their offseason (again, setting the mental state I want heading into the offseason grind).
• We used dumbbells for everything, so the sessions flowed much better in our small weight room (no one had to wait for a rack).
• It taught athletes what training to failure feels like.
• It taught me that you can make gains with just 1 quality set.

Now I know there have been many coaches who have followed Dr. Yessis’ program for a while with great success, particularly at the high school level. I had heard the success stories over and over, but just thought that kind of program was “below me”. Now I see it as a great asset to athletes of all ages and levels, it just needs to be applied in the right context and time of year.

I have been incorporating some variation of the 1 x 20 once a week in my training for the past year, and I really enjoy it. Good change of pace and a great way to progressively build strength.

So there you have it. For me, the secret to success in the off-season is to set them up right in the transition period. That always involves a full break, an optional break, and then this past year, it meant slowly coaxing the gains out with the 1 x 20. Our offseason this past year went well. Best adherence we’ve had, kids came back fit, fast, strong, and ready to dominate. Now that is probably not all because of the 1 x 20, but as mentioned, it is a tool I am going to continue to use and get as much out of as I can moving forward (if you are a Spartan and you are reading this, get ready…)