How to optimize the Off-Season

With fall sport season concluded and winter sports deep into the season, many athletes will be entering their off-season and off-season training programs. In today’s blog, we will discuss a simple X-step process to optimize the off-season. The only tools needed are a notebook and pen.

1. Self-Reflection. The only way to improve is by understanding what you need to work on based on your performance in the past season. By being honest with yourself and self-reflecting on your performances, identify the parts of your game that you believe you need to improve on. After doing this, having a meeting with your coaches and support staff to reflect you have done some thinking and would like their opinion on your thoughts could be very beneficial as well.
2. Create a plan. After identifying the things that you would like to work on, the next step is to create a plan of development. When creating a plan, try to get as detailed as possible so that you can make the process very obvious and easy to understand. The more detailed and planned out, the less time you will spend trying to figure it out later, thus giving you more time to put your effort towards the action of development. Another important step to plan developing is studying others that have done what you have done. If you have a teammate a few years older than you, ask them about their developmental process to the game or lookup stories of professional athletes and their approaches.
3. Reflect, adjust, adapt. Now it is time to begin. As you go about your plan, be gentle with yourself. You may not be able to do everything perfect right away for whatever the reason may be. This is the time to adjust and adapt with the new information and data you are taking in. Sometimes it is logistical things like underestimating the travel time to training facilities or warm-up time, other times it might be trying to do too many things in one day. Whatever it may be, make sure to take your time to sit down and adjust your approach to your goals with the new “data” you have gained through your experience.

As you continue to progress through the off-season, make sure to run through the 3 steps periodically to ensure you understand your growth and are optimizing it.