In-Season Strength Training for Youth Athletes
Every August I get the same text from a dozen parents. Hockey's starting, or football, or club volleyball, and the kid has practice four nights a week now, so they're going to pause training until the season's over. I understand it. I also know what happens next, because I've watched it for thirteen years. The kid shows up in November weaker than he was in August, and the thing he spent all summer building is gone.
Here's what nobody tells parents about the sports season: it doesn't make kids stronger. It makes them tired. Practice is skill work and conditioning. Games are chaos. Neither one loads a kid's body the way a barbell does, and strength that isn't maintained fades in about three weeks. By mid-season the strongest kid on the team in August is just another kid, and the one who got hurt in week six is usually the one who stopped lifting.
The fix isn't training more. It's training less, on purpose. In-season strength work at Mighty Oak looks different from off-season work. Off-season, a kid comes three or four days a week and we build. In-season, a kid comes once or twice a week and we hold. The sessions are the same length and use the same tools, barbell, kettlebell, bodyweight, but the volume drops and the intensity stays. A handful of heavy, clean sets of the big lifts, some kettlebell work for the hips and shoulders, a bodyweight block, done. The goal is to leave the gym feeling better than when they walked in, not wrecked for Thursday's game.
That's the part parents are actually worried about, so let me say it plainly. We will not make your kid sore before a game. In-season training is scheduled around the sport, not on top of it. A kid who plays Saturday trains Tuesday, maybe Thursday if it's light. A kid with weeknight practices comes Saturday morning. We coach every one of these kids individually, so if a kid walks in Tuesday and says he's got a tournament Friday, the session changes. The sport comes first. The gym keeps the sport possible.
What you get for one or two hours a week is more than maintained strength. It's injury insurance. The research on youth athletes is consistent: strength training during the season reduces injury rates, and the biggest reductions show up in exactly the injuries parents fear most, the knees, the ankles, the shoulders. A kid who keeps deadlifting through hockey season has hamstrings that hold up in March. A pitcher who keeps rowing has a shoulder that lasts through the summer. The strength doesn't win the game. It keeps the kid on the field long enough to play in it.
The other thing it does is give a kid one place during the season that isn't about winning. Practice has a coach evaluating. Games have a scoreboard and a crowd. The gym has a journal, a bar, and a number that was theirs last week and is theirs to beat this week. Kids who are stressed about playing time or a bad game tend to get a lot out of an hour where the only opponent is themselves. We see it every season.
If your kid is a member, nothing changes except the schedule. Come once or twice a week instead of three or four, and tell us what the season looks like so we can plan around it. If your kid trains with one of our partner programs, like DuPage Stars Hockey or the Hinsdale South teams we coach, the in-season sessions are already built into that work.
And if your kid is new, the season is a fine time to start. The free first session is the same sixty minutes it always is, coached, with a training shirt to keep. We'll ask about the practice schedule before we ask about anything else.
Be strong to be useful.
— Coach Mike
Book a free first session: https://calendly.com/mightyoakathletic/youth-strength
