The 4 Phases of Sport Performance | The 12 Month Plan

The term "strength and conditioning" sends shivers up and spines of any current and former athlete. Regardless of sport, age, or physical preparedness, coaches from middle school through college have their student athletes doing max power cleans and running miles a day. Why? Most of the time its to see who "really wants it," and if someone gets injured its because their bodies were weak and they "couldn't hang." Sound familiar?

At Top Crop Barbell we aren't strength and conditioning coaches, we're sport performance trainers...there is a difference. Our trainers build a customized training program based on our athletes' movement patterns, sport, and competition season. We don't get our programs from a simple Google search, and this is what coaches aren't willing to give up...simplicity (aka "the easy way out"). We also encourage our athletes to train year-round. We'd rather have an athlete train year-round 1-2 times a week, rather than binge train 3-4 days a week for 2 months. The results are vastly different and the athletes are healthier and stronger as a result.

Sport performance training should be composed of 4 phases.

1. Corrective Exercise
Anyone who sits for 8 hours a day (which is every student in America) develops terrible sitting and standing postures. This directly is translated to their sport and can have lifelong consequences such as irreversible postures and athletic career ending injuries. You must start sitting, standing, and moving properly before you get biggest, faster, and stronger. This phase has no end and should be continued regardless of the time of year.
Frequency: Every Day
Duration: 15 min-1 hour

2. Offseason Training
This is where the magic happens. The offseason is where an athlete can fill gaps in their athletic and sport-specific performance. As my high school basketball coach says, "Just because you're a year older doesn't mean you're a year better." For example, if you never pick up a basketball after the last game of the season in February, you won't walk in to practice in November a better basketball player. Same goes for building strength, quickness, and power. Notice I didn't say run for miles and Olympic lifts are your ticket to building explosiveness. Remember, all training should be tailored to fill the gaps between an athlete's strengths and weaknesses, not to crush their souls with crazy amounts of cardio and leave them injured and frustrated due to haphazard instruction from their (uncertified and unqualified) coaches.
Frequency: 3-4 days a week
Duration: 1-2 hours

3. Pre-Season Training
Pre-season is the few weeks before the season starts and the time to start fine-tuning your training to be even more sport-specific. Now athletes should start doing their speed-agility-quickness (SAQ) training with a basketball (going back to our last example), and increasing their cardio base for the season ahead. This doesn't mean avoid weight training. On the contrary. Keep up with the weights (still keeping it customized to their abilities, age, sport, etc.), but it should start transitioning to workouts integrating more multi-planar movements.
Frequency: 3-4 days a week
Duration: 1-1.5 hours

4. In-Season Training
What?! Athletes should train during the season?! Yes! Especially if they are "specialists," only participating in one sport all year round, or are in a power-driven sport such as baseball/softball, volleyball, and track and field. Power sports are those requiring short bursts of high intensity, followed by slower game play and/or long rest. The goal of in-season training is "add to maintain." In other words, keep up the strength training in order to maintain as much strength as possible. Don't worry about getting crazy strong during the season, its just not going to happen. The goal is to keep your muscles, tendons, and ligaments as healthy as possible while maintaining speed developed during the offseason and pre-season.
Frequency 1-2 days a week
Duration: 1-1.5 hours

Not all sports are the same, and neither should your training.