In-Season Training Guide: How to Stay Game Ready and Explosive All Season

Most athletes treat the season like a break from training.

They stop lifting, stop sprinting, and rely only on games and practices to carry them through. At first, nothing seems wrong. They feel fresh. Fast. Explosive.

Then a few weeks go by.

The legs feel heavier. The pop isn’t the same. Speed starts to drop off. By the end of the season, they’re a completely different athlete than they were in Week 1.

That’s not bad luck. That’s what happens when you ignore in-season training. We are huge on athletes continuing to train in season, even if it’s just one day a week, to maintain their performance and development. But they need to understand the how and why.

Check out this article by Coach Jordon on why athletes need to train in season.

Why In-Season Training Is Non-Negotiable

You don’t maintain performance by accident. You maintain it through the right stimulus.

When athletes stop training in-season, they don’t “hold steady”—they regress. Strength is one of the fastest qualities to decline when it’s not trained, and power follows right behind it. The explosiveness that separates you early in the season slowly disappears if you don’t give your body a reason to keep it.

Games alone are not enough. Practices aren’t enough either. They create fatigue, but they don’t consistently provide the level of intensity needed to maintain max strength and true power output.

That’s why elite athletes continue in-season training. Not to build, not to chase PRs, but to hold the line.

The goal is simple: stay as close to your peak as possible for as long as possible.

What Most Coaches Get Wrong

The biggest issue with in-season training isn’t effort—it’s approach.

Some coaches shut everything down the moment the season starts. The fear is that lifting will make athletes tired, slow, or sore on game day. So, they remove the stimulus completely. What actually happens is the athlete slowly loses the qualities that made them good in the first place.

On the other end, some coaches never adjust. They run in-season training exactly like the offseason—high volume, constant fatigue, and too much stress stacked on top of games. That’s where burnout, nagging injuries, and flat performances show up.

The truth sits in the middle.

Fatigue doesn’t come from training—it comes from poorly managed training.

When structured correctly, in-season training should make you feel sharper, not worse.

What Happens If You Don’t Train In-Season

This is where a lot of athletes get exposed.

Early in the season, everyone looks good. Adrenaline is high, legs are fresh, and the work from the offseason is still there. But as the weeks stack up, fatigue accumulates and performance starts to drop.

Without in-season training, there’s nothing anchoring your strength or power. You’re just absorbing contact, running, and reacting—but not reinforcing the physical qualities underneath it all.

That’s why you see it every year. Athletes who were explosive early become average late. Their vertical drops. Their first step slows down. Their ability to produce force just isn’t the same.

It’s not because they’re out of shape. It’s because they stopped training.

The Real Goal of In-Season Training

You’re not trying to build a new athlete in-season. You already did that work.

Now your job is to maintain strength, maintain power, and manage fatigue so you can actually use those qualities when it matters.

Everything you do in-season should support performance on game day. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t belong.

That’s why the best in-season programs are simple, focused, and intentional.

How to Structure In-Season Training

When you strip everything down, in-season training comes down to controlling three variables:

• Volume
• Load
• Intensity

That’s it.

Volume is your biggest fatigue driver. If athletes are feeling run down, this is the first thing that needs to be adjusted. In-season, volume should be lower than the offseason. Fewer total sets, fewer exercises, and no wasted work.

Load is what keeps you strong. Even in-season, athletes need to touch moderately heavy weight. That doesn’t mean maxing out every week, but it does mean occasionally working up to around 80–85% on key lifts. Strength is a “use it or lose it” quality, and if you never challenge it, you won’t keep it.

Intensity is what maintains explosiveness. This is about intent and speed. Movements should be performed fast, with purpose, and with high quality. Whether it’s jumps or sprints, the focus is on staying powerful without adding unnecessary fatigue.

If you can manage those three things correctly, your program is already 90% of the way there.

Why Total Body Training Wins In-Season

One of the biggest mistakes athletes make is sticking to bodybuilding-style splits during the season.

A heavy leg day in-season doesn’t make sense when you have practices, games, and conditioning already loading your lower body. The same goes for isolating muscle groups and creating unnecessary soreness.

Total body training allows you to spread stress across the entire system instead of overloading one area. It also lets you maintain higher quality output in each movement because you’re not pre-fatigued.

A typical in-season week might include two to three total body sessions. Early in the week, you can push a little more. As you get closer to game day, the focus shifts to staying sharp and fresh.

The structure stays simple. A main strength movement, an upper push and pull, and a small amount of explosive work. That’s all you need.

Don’t Remove Speed and Plyometrics

If you want to stay explosive, you have to continue training explosiveness.

This doesn’t mean high volumes of jumps or conditioning circuits. It means small doses of high-quality, max-effort work. A few sets of jumps, short sprints, or reactive drills are enough to keep your nervous system firing.

The key is keeping the volume low and the intent high. You should walk away feeling sharp, not drained.

Auto-Regulation: Adjusting Week to Week

No in-season plan should be rigid.

Some weeks are heavier than others. Travel, game intensity, and overall stress all play a role in how an athlete responds. That’s why auto-regulation is critical.

If an athlete looks slow or fatigued, you scale back volume. If they’re feeling good, you can push intensity slightly. After a tough game, you adjust. During a lighter week, you take advantage.

The best programs aren’t just written—they’re coached and adjusted in real time.

Final Thoughts: Stay Ready or Fall Off

In-season training is what keeps you from falling off when the season gets long.

It’s the difference between the athlete who peaks early and fades, and the one who stays explosive when it matters most.

You don’t need more exercises. You don’t need more volume. You don’t need to chase numbers.

You need to stay consistent with what matters.

Manage your volume so you don’t burn out. Keep enough load in your program to maintain strength. Move with intent so your explosiveness doesn’t disappear.

Most athletes will lose performance as the season goes on. That’s the norm.

But it doesn’t have to be you.

If you approach in-season training the right way, you’ll still be strong, still be fast, and still be explosive when everyone else starts to fade.

Even better is the next offseason you can continue to build without having to start back from zero.