Elevating Your Game: A Guide to Off-Season Training for College Athletes
By Richie Johnson
The aim of this article is to explain the best things to do while training for your sport while in the off-season. Training varies from sport to sport very drastically, so my goal is to show and explain the things that I have learned and studied to be the best and most effective way to grow yourself as a player of any game. Over the course of my college lacrosse career I have found that the most important things to get control over is your nutrition and diet, what supplements to take to boost your performance and recovery. What training should be done to get what you need from your sport and what habits you should have to be at the top of your game. If you apply what key sections are labeled here you will see more success in your training and performance, not only in your off season training, but also see your work that you put in pay off in your sport as you get into your season.
Nutrition
Nutrition is an important part of every person’s overall health, but it is of particular importance if you are involved in any training, in season or out of season. Obviously you want a balanced diet with lots of fresh foods but, what foods should you be eating? And what foods should you be eating for the type of training that you’re doing? The food that you put into your body should be different depending on the type of training you do and it will be different for every individual even if you have similar goals.
If what you are training for requires you to build muscle, increasing size and strength requires more calories than you might think. Your body needs the energy to do multiple training sessions a day and the calories needed to build, repair and grow your muscles are significantly more than the average person.
On the other hand, if the type of training you’re doing requires you to lose some weight or size, then the calories required might be less than training to gain weight. A common misconception is that if you want to lose weight, you don’t eat as much, while this is technically true, less calories are required. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t eat. The calories required to train the way that is needed to do this still requires a high intake, usually above the average person. You shouldn’t restrain good eating habits in hopes of “losing weight” while you’re in a training program, your body needs energy to train the way you are despite the desire to lose weight.
The best way to see how many calories you need is to go online and use a “calorie calculator”. Caloriecalculator.Net is a great website to use to calculate your personal nutritional needs, you input your age, height, weight and activity level. Based on these parameters it computes how many calories you should eat to increase, decrease and maintain your current body weight. This is a great baseline way to see the amount of calories required for you. Below is a picture of my current calorie recommendations as a college athlete while in season.
Oftentimes during your program you can “hit a wall,” where it seems like for a few weeks you’re not making any progress; this mostly happens while trying to lose weight, this is called a plateau. During this phase it is not uncommon to feel very discouraged, but there is a way to avoid this. Over time your body becomes accustomed to the amount of calories taken in, “Calorie Cycling” is a method used to break up the calories eaten over time. This way your body cannot regulate the new calorie consumption avoiding any plateaus.
Supplements
Often, it is recommended to use supplements in addition to your nutritional diet, even if you eat a wide variety of different foods. The right supplements at the right amount can be a boost to your training itself and also have massive benefits to recovery and development. It can be hard deciding on what supplements to take, there being so many makes it hard to tell what each one is or what they do and how they affect you. The aim of this section is to go over some of the more popular supplements and talk about how they are meant to be used and how they affect you. These supplements are recommended because of the positive effects of taking them, but not required for a better performance. Even without supplements you can accomplish many impressive physical feats, these supplements are just meant to assist in a small way.
First on the list is creatine. This may come as no surprise because of its massive popularity and controversy. Hopefully this will help eliminate some of the common misconceptions that are held to this popular supplement. Creatine is a compound that your body naturally makes, you can also get it from your diet by eating high protein meat. Creatine is proven to help your muscles build and store more glycogen in them, glycogen is important for helping your body during and recovery after intense exercise or training since it is fuel for your body. Athletes are commonly using their glycogen stores so it’s important to have a high storage and high amount of them. Second, creatine is known to reduce muscle soreness and damage after a workout because it helps muscle performance. It is also proven that those taking creatine are less prone to injuries from their training or sport and if they have an injury they have an increased recovery time. Creatine is recommended to be taken in two types of ways, one way is to consume 0.1kg of your body mass a day which is about 3–5g a day. The second way is to take a “loading phase.”
The goal of a loading phase is to try and consume as much creatine that your body can absorb, this way you get maximum benefits. “Creatine ‘loading’ may also be prescribed relative to body mass, for example, 0.3 g/kg/d for 5–7 days (i.e., 21 g/day for a 70 kg individual)”(https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-021-00412-w). The difference between these two strategies is time. If you want to see benefits in under 30 days then a loading phase might be smart; however, if you’re looking to take creatine long term then no need to take a loading phase.
There really aren’t any negative effects of creatine. Although issues that have been found like dehydration and muscle cramps the average person won’t even see these effects. Creatine is a safe and highly effective dietary supplement that all athletes should try to be taking.
Caffeine is another performance enhancing substance that many athletes use every day. Common knowledge says that caffeine is used to wake you up, but what does it actually do and how will it affect your body and your performance? Caffeine is a stimulant which means that it is a drug that increases your brain activity and nervous system. The main action of caffeine is to the brain, specifically on the adenosine receptors. This reaction helps stimulate your cardiac muscle and vascular system making them respond in different ways, “This vasodilation becomes counteracted by increased sympathetic tone via catecholamine release and positive cardiac inotropic and chronotropic effects, promoting vasoconstriction.” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519490/). Translation: some of your vascular blood vessels constrict but your heart can contract at an increased rate so these things offset each other. Some of the other effects that caffeine may have on you is an increase in respiratory drive due to your body sending more signals to your lungs to breathe and it improves renal blood flow so your kidneys can absorb blood faster.
You can see the effects of caffeine in 5–30 minutes depending on how much you take. It is recommended that you don’t take more than 400mg a day for the average person. The half life of caffeine is up to 5 hours so if you drink an energy drink in the morning that has 200mg of caffeine you will still have 100mg in your bloodstream by the afternoon. It has also been proven that if you wait at least 90 minutes after waking up to take your caffeine it will be more effective and you won’t need a second dose of caffeine throughout the day.
Just like any drug, there are downsides to caffeine; some are more mild than others. You can build up a tolerance to caffeine and even become addicted to it in a way. If you drink a lot of caffeine regularly and suddenly stop taking it. Your body can go through withdrawal, symptoms can include headaches, disorientation and irritability. Some more mild effects of taking caffeine are restlessness, fidgeting, increased urination and irregular heart rate. More severe caffeine reactions include seizures, psychosis and disorientation. Do not be intimidated by the negative effects; typically you only see the severe reactions if you take more than the recommended amount or if you take caffeine often and frequently.
In my opinion caffeine is an “artificial motivator” what I mean by this is that it can be used as a powerful stimulant that will give you some clear advantages in your performance in the weight room or in a game, but it is a drug that you can become dependent on and can be damaging to your body and to your attitude.
It’s important to remember that caffeine is not necessary to perform at your best.
Magnesium is a supplement that I take everyday. I think that for the physical problems I have it helps aid in recovery and helps my energy levels stay consistent throughout the day. Magnesium is a mineral in the body that we get from food “Magnesium is required for energy production… it also plays a role in the active transport of calcium and potassium ions across cell membranes, a process that is important to nerve impulse conduction, muscle contraction, and normal heart rhythm” (https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/). Magnesium has many other benefits particularly for people who have different health risks like hypertension, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes as well as others. Your body regulates the magnesium levels in your body so if there’s too much it will be released via urine or diarrhea and taking up to 5,000mg a day has been seen to be fatal. So taking the right amounts of magnesium is important.
I take 100mg a day as a 22 year old male and I can see the positive effects and don’t see any of the negatives; however, you should take the recommended amount of magnesium meant for you and see how it affects you.
BPN supplements is a great company that I love and get a lot of my supplements from. They have many more supplements than are on this list and I’d like to highlight a few and invite you to check them out. Nick Bare started BPN with the vision to fuel all types of athletes, particularly the “hybrid athlete” which is an athlete who is cross training for their sport and training to build muscle. Most BPN products seek to aid this style of training and performance output.
Starting with their Whey Protein Powder, a protein supplement supports recovery and helps build lean muscle mass. I think all athletes should have a protein supplement while they are trying to build muscle, however, you should get 80% of your protein from food and 20% from a supplement.
Next is a supplement called recover, this is a supplement that does exactly what it says. It’s best taken right after finishing a workout and helps your muscles recover faster. I like drinking this the day before a game and after every time I lift.
The last supplement that I recommend is their strong joints. I have very bad knees, after practice and weights I get bad pain and swelling. The strong joints however help a lot in keeping the inflammation down and therefore the pain away. It’s truly a life saver for me. If you want to check out more from BPN, here’s the link. (https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutrition?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=9719308714&utm_content=695633093252&utm_term=97588006937&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlcaWtJDMhQMVaU1HAR0BAg16EAAYASAAEgLcl_D_BwE)
Do not take any supplement that you don’t feel comfortable taking and make sure what you are taking has been tested and is safe to take.
Training and Practice
Training and practice should be different based on what you are training towards. Football players should train differently than cross country runners. Each sport requires different specifications to be successful and your in-season training should look different than your out of season training. The use of a trainer or strength coach is someone that can make a huge difference on your training program. At SVU we are lucky to have strength coaches that make our programs for us which makes our lives as athletes really easy. The use of a strength coach or trainer makes it so your program is relevant, useful and most importantly consistent. It doesn’t make sense for a football player to work on their distance running and it wouldn’t make sense for a cross country runner to work on getting their weight room numbers through the roof; for these athletes working on those things wouldn’t be relevant to what they want to train for.
Athletic coaches will also be up to date on what exercises are the most effective. For example, many people believe that training single leg exercises like lunges is more effective for an athlete than double leg exercises like squatting, depending on what sport or even position you play in a sport should make a difference on what and how to train. The last benefit that a strength coach will do for your program is make sure that it is consistent. A consistent program is so important no matter what you are training for. Being consistent leads to growth and progression. So the more consistent you are, the better you will be at something, stronger, faster, more effective.It may not be seen over a short period, but over a month or two of consistent work you will see progression. Another level of consistency that’s very important is the amount of reps you do at one excessive and with how much weight this is a formula that a professional would be very useful for especially if you’re serious about why you are training. These are all great benefits for why you would want a trainer or a coach, but I’m not saying you can’t be successful without one. There are 1000s of great workouts and programs online that could be perfect for you and what you wanna train for, these are just the benefits of a strength and conditioning coach.
What habits should be built in the offseason that will get you better prepared for your sport?
Be around people who are going to help you reach your goals; the people who support you are going to help you stay consistent and accountable. Set goals for yourself and for your team. This winter break my team made group chats with about 5 players in each. In each group we motivate each other and hold each other accountable when someone misses a workout.
If you need to watch film for your sport do it, this is a great time to learn about the game without having any pressure on memorizing plays or scouting reports.
Work on the very basics of the sport, for example for lacrosse it’s important to pass and catch with your stick in the summer, this way you never get rusty. It’s also important to work on the basics of any sport because that’s the baseline to being a really successful player. You can never get too good at the basics. This could also be a good opportunity to work on footwork or skills that your sport requires. Picking up a new skill and adding that to your game can be crucial to helping your game.
Recover and rehabilitate your nagging injuries you may have gotten in the season. You should focus on getting healthy and then getting stronger,, not the other way around. Often after a long season it could be smart to take a week or even two off any training just to give your body a rest from hard intense training.
Sleep is something that everyone needs, but it is so important to you as a college student athlete. Sleep is important to your recovery and energy levels throughout the day. Sleep is where your body recovers and rebuilds, if you don’t sleep 8–10 hours it’s hard to get the full recovery you need to get to work the next day. It is also important to focus and concentrate throughout the day. It’s proven that effective sleep will give you natural focus and longer concentration in the day.
Active recovery is a tool and recovery skill that gets looked over, however, this skill is so important to your body’s recovery. Active recovery can look like many different things. It can be extra work that you put into your sport, it can be a walk or even a light lift or stretch. Active recovery is a recreational activity that you do after an intense workout to help your muscles flush that lactic acid and helps your body recover. For example, after most games my lacrosse team goes to the weight room to do a light lift. This way we get the blood moving a few hours after our game and allow our bodies to get acclimated to the intense exercise of a game.
I hope this has given you some insight that you can put into your off-season training, the diet habits you form, the supplements you take, training you do and other beneficial habits you form will pay dividends to you and your athletics career.
Additional sources:
https://www.kehoe-france.com/blog/how-do-school-athletics-help-students-achieve-in-the-classroom/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8224733/
https://www.racmn.com/blog/the-importance-of-strength-and-conditioning-for-specialized-athletes
https://us.myprotein.com/thezone/supplements/five-best-supplements-for-college-athletes/
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/magnesium
https://www.ibji.com/blog/sports-medicine/student-athlete-off-season-training/
