Why Spring Training is the Perfect Time to Re-Connect, Re-Store and Re-new!
We get it, isn’t it time to take a break? We are constantly receiving inquiries about this double decade long question regarding athlete volume and intensity, taking a break and how to plan for a successful off-season. The more and more science that’s out there, it really depends specifically on your athlete. There is no question that we are pushing our youth harder and longer than previous generations. From school to play to extracurriculars to sports to family and friends, there just doesn’t seem like there is enough time to fit it all in. Balance is key. Keeping fresh also helps. How do you do that? The first thing is communication. The best way to get an idea of the way your athlete feels is talk. It also helps them have an overview of his or her past workload coupled with a ratio of future workload. We like to think that most fatigue happens in the central nervous system but that’s just an adult myth. Most fatigue in sport settings is more local in the muscles than central in the CNS. The key is managing the volume of training and intensity. Ever watch athletes from different disciplines train daily? We were amazed when we cross sectioned across various sports, the actual training wasn’t all that intense. It was clearly more technical and deliberate in nature. So how does that all relate to my hockey athlete regarding Spring development training? It’s all about Re-Connecting, Restoring and Renewing.
In the hockey setting Spring is the perfect time post any tryout to re-connect. Re-connecting in a bunch of different ways. As an athlete, the two most important areas are with the body and the mind. During the season it’s tough to find downtime, to hone-in and focus on the needs of your body, movement, skill, and performance. It’s also hard to down-regulate. It’s tough not to dwell on mistakes in past games or get too fired up a few days before the next game, and all of these play a role. The Spring season is a perfect time to let some of that go and re-connect. Maybe it’s re-connecting with a coach. Maybe it’s re-connecting with a program that fuels the kinetic feel of your body, brain, movement, and skill. Maybe it’s re-connecting with a program that challenges technique vs intensity and offers a fresh perspective to down-regulate while training. For youth athletes the spring season is the best time to re-connect.
Over the course of a long season, a lack of technical training, expert coach feedback and deliberate practice is the norm. That’s why we recommend periodizing progressive sessions weekly during the season to help offset these numbing asymmetrical patterns to increase performance. But when you really think about it, I mean, if you are serious about your game, the Spring is the best time to RESTORE. The season is over, those who have Spring try-outs get completed and then we have all this time with no structured games, practices, schedules, coach and parent meetings and you can just focus on you. It’s the perfect time to get you back to baseline with proper volume, technique, and deliberate practice. Believe it guys, restoring is key, and the Spring season is the perfect time to work at it. It bridges the gap to rediscovering key patterns, down-regulating and building the confidence into your overall plan to increase performance. Spring is the best time to RESTORE.
And what’s all this renew stuff about? Well, it’s about becoming the new you. It’s about growth, progression, detail, and execution. It’s about understanding your strengths and weaknesses and working with an expert certified coach that can build deliberate practice while managing your volume and intensity. It’s about opening your mind to new possibilities, ranges of motion, flexes, and flow in your body. It’s it about reaching for new potential in technique, skill, and performance metrics in your game. All of this can still be achieved with a keen respect for volume and intensity after a long season. It can also be unbelievably down-regulating for your athlete (a good thing). We’ve had the privilege of working with the world’s best hockey athletes and the biggest thing they love about getting into training a couple of weeks after their season is just this: It’s new, it’s different, it’s fresh, it’s cool to get away from structured practices and the grind of the season, it feels great to down-regulate and focus on the little things specific to their game. Trust us guys, Spring is honestly the best time to RENEW.
So, why Spring training? We’d call it Spring training with a purpose that goes above and beyond the old adage of taking a specific number of weeks or months off after the season. You can do it by invigorating your athlete to the re-connection of his/her brain and body, you can do it by restoring and building confidence in his/her strengths and you can do it by renewing new patterns of movement skill and performance all while down-regulating. You can make play exciting again while managing volume and intensity bringing your athlete full circle to a great season and building them to be ready for an incredible off-season of growth!
