The Offseason - Now What? - FastModel Sports

The season is over. Emotions of how it ended, either high or low have subsided and bodies are beginning to recover. Now what!?

Focus on injury prevention and recovery
Everyone ends the season a little beat up. Offseason is a wonderful time to tend to those little nagging injuries or the bigger ones. Strengthen weaknesses that could lead to potential injury and focus on form to further prevent injury. Now is typically a time to back off strength training a little so weight room workouts are shorter, which means there is extra time to focus on rehab and pre-hab. (Check out these 5 exercises to help prevent ACL injury)

Increase flexibility
This is the perfect time to limber up! Add in yoga once or twice a week. Make the foam roller your best friend. Find out where you are tightest and focus on that by stretching it daily.

Put together goals

Increase speed
Become a more efficient cutter
Add to your vertical jump
Become more powerful

Change up Nutrition
The basic principles don’t change, hydrate, eat well rounded meals, and snack on healthy snacks. But portions and frequency can lighten up a little. In season there are so many things you need to fuel up for. Hour and a half strengthening sessions, 3 hour practices, hour shooting or post workouts, even extra walkthroughs to get plays down. While we still workout hard during the offseason its cut in about half, thank you NCAA restrictions! There’s no need to eat as large of portions as you do during season.

Maintain conditioning
Switch from tough pounding conditioning to lower impact, a little more endurance training. I’m not saying get your players ready to go run marathons, but if you try to keep them in top “basketball shape” year round they will fall apart. They still play open gyms to keep the up and down the court shape there but their bodies will appreciate a little less focus anaerobic condition and a little bit more on aerobic.