Discover Why Athletes Should Strength training year around.

It’s not always possible to go balls to the wall 7 times a week, 365 days a year. Although athletes are able to accomplish physical and mental feats that often surpass the general population, athletes need to keep recovery in mind if they want to optimize their performance and prevent injuries later on down the line.

An athlete’s training is often structured more so in ebbs and flows rather than in a linear/continuous fashion. For example, take the traditional schedule of a Major League Baseball player. They’ll play spring training games for approximately one month and then play 162 regular-season games throughout the months of April until October. If the players’ team happens to make the post-season, then their season will be extended by another month or so. They then enter the offseason period in November and return to play in late February or early March. 

Does this mean that the athlete should spend the entirety of their offseason away from training? If so, what are the consequences of doing so? And if not, how exactly can athletes incorporate rest and recovery into their training plans without any significant detriments to their performance with just minimal amounts of training? And could they perhaps even improve their performance in the process?

Well unfortunately, the answer isn’t so simple. The answer is extremely multifaceted; much of which is highly dependent on the goals that the athlete wishes to accomplish during this period of time. 

Goals

While it’s important for the athlete to be determined in defining exactly what their goals are and what they’d like to achieve (as well as what they’d like to avoid), it may take the guidance of a coach or other type of mentor in order to get a clearer picture of what these goals may look like. 

There are many types of goals that an athlete may hope to accomplish. And none of these goals are necessarily “right” or “wrong” on the surface. However, this is going to be highly dependent upon which sport we’re talking about, the aspirations of the athlete, the aims that the coach has for both the player and the team, and a myriad of other factors.

Maintenance of Performance Parameters

The most compelling and attractive reason for incorporating a minimal training routine simply involves keeping what you already have gained over seasons’ prior. I mean you wouldn’t want to lose what you worked so hard for to gain in the first place, right?

How difficult it’ll be to maintain specific skills and performance parameters of one’s sport is going to vary drastically between sports/activities in addition to differences between individuals themselves. The amount of scientific literature that’s available to help provide clarity as to whether or not maintenance of performance parameters is possible with minimal amounts of training is severely lacking, to say the least.  

Muscular Strength

Many sports require a sufficient amount of muscular strength in order to perform optimally (i.e., American football, hockey, rugby, etc.). Muscular strength is most commonly measured via the 1-repetition maximum (1RM) test, most commonly in the bench press, squat, and deadlift exercises. It should be emphasized that the importance of each exercise is dependent upon the specific sport in question. Getting into the nuances of why maximal strength in a specific exercise is important for any particular sport is outside the scope of this article, but it’s important to remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer here as it pertains to optimal sports performance for any one individual. 

If an athlete plans on adopting a minimal-dosage training plan for any length of time, then it’s important for them to focus on both the effort being exerted, as well as the load being used for training (Androulakis-Korakakis, Fisher, & Steele, 2020). For strength-minded individuals, it’s going to be vital that they keep the factors of effort and load as a priority over something like training volume, the latter of which can be thought of simply as:

Sets x Reps x Load (Weight) = Training Volume

For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to assume that we’re talking about trained athletes here, as untrained individuals experience significantly greater gains in 1RM strength than their trained counterparts primarily due to neural adaptations that develop due to the introduction of a novel training stimulus. 

A systematic review in 2020 suggests that performing a single set anywhere from 6-12 reps with a load of 70-85% 1RM at a frequency of 2-3x/week has the ability to actually produce significant increases in the 1RM of squat and bench press in men who have resistance training experience. However, there’s a lack of research that exists to see if this is possible in the deadlift exercise, trained women, or strength athletes of an elite-level training status (Androulakis-Korakakis, Fisher, & Steele, 2020).

Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy

Effort has been claimed to be an important factor for the maintenance and acquisition of gains in skeletal muscle size, or hypertrophy. In fact, previous studies have shown that significantly high amounts of effort have the ability to elicit gains in muscle size even with relatively light loads (Fisher, Steele, & Smith, 2017). But how practical is this when it comes to minimal training? 

When you think about it, training with lighter loads means that you’ll often have to train for longer amounts of time in order to “make up” for the lower loads that you’re using to train. This isn’t very practical, especially for those that wish to reduce their total training duration. However, this may be an attractive option for those who don’t wish to use very heavy loads all of the time and who’s focus primarily rests in muscle size as opposed to muscle strength. 

Aerobic Training

Decreases in aerobic training performance, often measured via the maximal oxygen consumption test, or VO2 max, develop rapidly with lack of an adequate training stimulus. After about 2-4 weeks, maximal cardiac output begins to fall due to a decline in stroke volume, which refers to the volume of blood that is pumped out of the left ventricle of the heart during each systolic cardiac contraction (Neufer, 1989). 

Although it isn’t as clear with aerobic training as to what the minimum effective training dose is, the scientific literature suggests that it may be around the 80-minute mark (Tremblay, Copeland, & Van Helder, 2005). The authors of this paper suggest that past the 80-minute mark, there appears to be a shift towards a more catabolic (muscle-wasting) hormonal environment. Therefore, there seems to be a law of diminishing returns at play here. 

So if an athlete is having any sort of trouble staying motivated even to train at a minimally effective dosage, the risk of rapid decline in aerobic training performance may convince them otherwise. 

Conclusion

While it’s important for athletes to rest up from a hard and brutal competitive season, it’s equally as crucial for them to make sure that their training efforts do not go to waste. As long as athletes meet the minimum effective training dosages as discussed here, they should have no problem returning stronger and better than ever by the time the next competitive season rolls around. 

References

Androulakis-Korakakis, P., Fisher, J. P., & Steele, J. (2020). The Minimum Effective Training Dose Required to Increase 1RM Strength in Resistance-Trained Men: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports medicine, 50(4), 751-765.

Fisher, J., Steele, J., & Smith, D. (2017). High- and Low-Load Resistance Training: Interpretation and Practical Application of Current Research Findings. Sports medicine, 47(3), 393–400.

Neufer, P. D. (1989). The effect of detraining and reduced training on the physiological adaptations to aerobic exercise training. Sports medicine, 8(5), 302-320.

Tremblay, M. S., Copeland, J. L., & Van Helder, W. (2005). Influence of exercise duration on post-exercise steroid hormone responses in trained males. European journal of applied physiology, 94(5-6), 505-513.