So when it comes to off-season training, I have three primary goals:

1. Recapture mobility and movement quality,
2. Focus on qualities you can’t (or that are difficult to) build in-season, and
3. Build overall physical robustness.

Now let’s dive into each one!

Off-season goal 1

Recapture Mobility and Movement Quality

I don’t care who you coach or what level you play at, when a hooper has been through a full-season of basketball, their body does NOT feel great on the back end.

They’re a little banged up.

They’ve lost range of motion.

And they’ve typically spent less time in the gym, so their foundational movement patterns like squatting, lunging, etc. aren’t where they need to be.

So the first thing I try and do in the off-season is unlock my athletes and get them moving and feeling great again.

Think of it as wiping the slate clean, or rebuilding the foundation.

It doesn’t sound sexy or cool, but it’s one of those little steps athletes need to take to set the stage for the rest of the off-season.

On the flip side, athletes that take minimal time off or jump right into higher intensity lifting end up either dealing with a handful of issues:

1. They never get 100% healthy,
2. Their movement doesn’t get back to baseline, and/or
3. They don’t see the same degree of physical development later on as a result.

The bottom line? Don’t be afraid to take one step back early in the off-season to take three steps forward in the months to come.

Your athlete’s bodies will thank you!

Off-season goal 2

Develop Key Physical Qualities

Look, I’ve been doing this a LONG time, with athletes at virtually every level.

And if I could summarize 95% of the conversations I’ve had with basketball parents in one sentence, it would sound like this:

I know it sounds cliché, but the higher you go in sport, the faster and more intense the games become.

So once you have your athletes feeling good, it’s time to turn them into an absolute unit on the court.

In my R7 program design system, this is where those middle 3 R’s live:

• Reactive (R4) – Think speed, agility, quickness, and power/vertical jump
• Resistance (R5) – Think weight room, getting bigger and stronger, and
• Resiliency (R6) – Think conditioning and endurance, and being able to play the entire game without gassing out

Now this sounds simple on paper, but I can assure you, writing that actual program is a lot harder than it looks!

The biggest issue I see is when coaches realize they want to build all these physical qualities, and then throw everything at them in one program.

Next thing you know, you’ve got a Frankenstein workout that looks like this:

• 2 days at the track doing endless sprints to get faster.
• 3 days a week of high-intensity plyometrics to develop the bounce.
• 4-5 days a week of heavy lifting to get bigger and stronger.
• And the endless conditioning daily to “see whose got that dawg in ‘em”

Okay I’m getting a little carried away here, but hopefully you can catch the sarcasm I’m throwing at you!

For starters, when it comes to speed and agility work, I’m going to paraphrase arguably the #1 speed coach in the world today, Lee Taft:

Read that again my friend.

20 MINUTES.

Anything longer and you’re training conditioning – not speed.

But the bigger issue here is if you want to write a great program that gets real results, it’s all about trade-offs.

You can’t spend 10, 15, or up to 20 hours training your athletes.

So how can you get everything you need into 3-4, 60-75 minute sessions?

I can tell you it’s not easy, but you must hone in on what’s most important for THAT ATHLETE, and block everything else out.

Off-season goal 3

Build Physical Robustness

The final piece of the puzzle is developing physical robustness.

Or another way to think about it?

Giving your athlete the durability to increase their availability.

Because there’s nothing worse than your key players missing games!

When it comes to making an athlete physically robust, this can come in a couple of different ways:

1. Giving them the physical ability to compete (which we just discussed).
2. Bulletproofing key areas of the body. And
3. Developing the energy systems necessary to compete for 32-, 40- or up to 48+ minutes.

Now we’ve already discussed building physical qualities like speed, strength and power, so let’s circle back to the idea of bulletproofing.

(BTW - Random side quest story below the article if you’re interested!)

The goal of bulletproofing is to find those common areas where people get injured and make them more resilient.

For hoopers the two key areas I’m always thinking about are the knees and the feet/ankles/calves/Achilles.

Now keep in mind, I’m not trying using random tips and tricks or things I find on IG to “bulletproof” these areas.

Instead, a huge piece of my programming revolves around the fact I KNOW these areas can be troublesome, and we need to train them year-round to truly make an athlete more robust.

So whether it’s :

• Barefoot training to recapture foot motion and pressure…
• …isolation work for the quads and calves, or …
• …working to unlock the feet, ankles, knees and hips…

…these are “low-hanging fruit” activities that can make a huge impact on the health and performance of your athletes.

Last but not least, we can’t forget about conditioning.

Now I promise I’m going to create more content around conditioning and energy system training, because this is an area where many coaches are still living in the dark ages.

Running endless laps (or miles) with their athletes.

Performing random CrossFit challenges to see who’s “fit.”

Or training like a Navy Seal to test their mental toughness.

I could go on and on here, but just remember there are two types of conditioning:

1. General conditioning to build the foundation, and
2. Specific conditioning to train the specific energy systems, movements and tissues you use in basketball.

To summarize, the off-season is all about physical development.

So what changes when we move into the competitive calendar?

In-season

In-Season Training

Let’s take a quick moment to zoom out and ask ourselves an important question:

What’s the purpose of playing scheduled, competitive games?

Now I know there’s a time and place to talk about developing athletes or developing players, but at it’s core the goal of the competitive season is simple:

To win basketball games.

Period.

So what’s interesting to me is when I see so many stakeholders (especially S&C coaches) doing things that work against that simple goal.

They’re training their athletes hard and heavy every day in season.

Hoopers are taught to “push through” injuries in the weight room, because strong things don’t break.

Or maybe the worst offender? Maxing athletes out on squats or bench presses on game days, simply because it fits the strength coaches plan!

When I train athletes in-season, I have three goals – and hopefully you’ll see, they’re quite reasonable:

1. Maintain strength and explosive qualities,
2. Stay healthy and manage fatigue, and
3. Optimize performance for game-day!

Let’s dive into each.

In-season goal 1

Maintain Strength and Explosive Qualities

Earlier, we talked about the off-season being the ideal time to work on your game and body.

Quite simply, athletes have the time, energy and recoverability between sessions that allows for this physical development.

But when an athlete shifts to the competitive season, everything changes.

Their ability to recover from “extra” training (like the weight room) goes down, because their body’s primary focus is recovering from their sport!

Now this doesn’t mean the season starts and we bid our athletes adieu until the off-season hits.

But it does mean we put our ego in check and realize the most important thing is their performance throughout the season.

We shift from “Grind Mode” to “Maintenance Mode.”

In my case, I’ll try to sneak 1-2 strength/power sessions in during the season.

I place them as far away from the game as possible.

And I’ll often adjust the volume, intensity, and even the exercise selection to accommodate how their bodies are feeling.

So find ways to use the weight room to help your athletes maintain their speed, strength and power WITHOUT crushing them in the process.

I guarantee they’ll love it even more!

In-season goal 2

Stay Healthy and Manage Fatigue

If you’ve been in this game long enough, you realize that injuries are part of sports.

I hate writing that, but it’s the truth.

Now even though most people don’t think of strength coaches as the people who “get them right,” I think we as coaches need to shift how we think about ourselves.

One thing I’ve made a priority over the years is to find exercises/activities that help my athletes move and feel better in-season.

Maybe it’s a backwards sled dragging to unlock the back and build some quads.

Maybe it’s Spanish squats to get those cranky knees ready for the court.

Or maybe it’s just foam rolling the right muscles to unlock their body and help them feel great!

I think the days of the old-school strength coach are coming to an end.

It’s time to evolve not only yourself, but your approach to programming.

And finding ways to keep your athletes healthy and feeling good throughout the season is a sure-fire way to separate yourself from the pack!

In-season goal 3

Optimize Performance on Game-Day!

Remember our #1 goal of the competitive season?

To win basketball games.

So when I hear about my high school players being forced to chase back squat PR’s when they have a game that night, that pisses me off.

Now here’s the thing: I’m not even saying don’t train when you have a game!

But if you’re going to work out, consider a “Stim Day” instead.

Here’s how it might look:

• Extensive foam rolling, resets and readiness (R1-R3) to unlock your athletes and make sure they feel good.
• Pick 2-3 fast, explosive activities to prime the nervous system. Anything twitchy, fast and explosive might work here. And then
• Pick 2-3 “feel good” activities that focus on mobility and recapturing full range of motion.

The entire workout might take 25-30 minutes, but I can assure you – after a Stim Day your athletes will feel fresh and ready to dominate when they get on the court that night!

Summary

So there you have it friends: What I consider to be the biggest differences between off-season and in-season training.

Now if you’re interested in taking a deep dive into either of these, I’ve got you covered.

If you want to see how I design off-season workouts, be sure to check out my IFAST Basketball Off-Season workout.

Or if you want to see exactly how I design in-season training plans and programs, check out my Complete Guide to In-Season Program Design.

I hope they take your program design skills to the next level!