Off-Season Conditioning – How to approach it and what to do
For most footballers, there is somewhere around 2–3 months between the end of one season and the beginning of the next pre-season, and what you do with this period matters.
Do too little, and you arrive at pre-season badly underprepared - but not all that much better - do too much, and you can arrive in November already carrying hidden niggles and having completed a mini pre-season of your own – and by the Christmas break you are already hitting a wall.
So the goal of this off-season isn't to be at your absolute fittest when pre-season starts it is to set yourself up to arrive healthy, physically prepared and with enough conditioning underneath you that you can actually handle pre-season – and build from there. That and having 2 months to target a primary goal or 2 of yours unhindered by team training or games.
Start by getting your body right
Before worrying about kilometres, MAS percentages or running sessions, the first priority after the season should be getting your body back to normal.
Football seasons accumulate little issues: sore knees, tight calves, achilles irritation, groins that have been managed for six weeks, ankles etc. Let alone just the hidden accumulation of fatigue (and a fair bit of repetitiveness.)
For some (most in fact), a couple weeks of complete rest is ideal. This doesn’t mean absolutely nothing – 2-4 weeks of sitting around. Still doing things like mobility or stretching, walking, swimming at the beach, some light off-legs work like spinning the legs over on a bike, etc. Just not what you would normally consider ‘training’ in your normal regiment.
Off-legs conditioning
This early off-season period – even as the actual training starts to ramp up again - is also where I regularly use off-legs conditioning work in larger volumes in programming. Starting with off legs conditioning exclusively, before gradually bleeding in the running work, initially still relying on off legs for the longer duration efforts (3-6 minute intervals), before transitioning to entirely running generally only just before the end of the off season.
Watt bike, assault bike (my preferred option for players if available) rower, ski ergs, swimming or other low-impact conditioning allows you to develop aerobic power without adding more running stress to a body that has already spent months running, accelerating, decelerating and changing direction.
That doesn't mean spending eight weeks on a bike - it means using targeted off-legs work strategically while you restore the body and gradually reintroduce running.
Don't turn October Into January
One of the biggest mistakes I see is players finishing the season, taking a short break, and then immediately starting a massive running program. Long runs, extra conditioning, multiple hard sessions every week.
I totally understand the thinking – I used to think it when I was younger and still playing:
"I want to get really fit before pre-season."
But you don't need to peak for the first night of pre-season. And young guys reading this – believe me, your 2km time trial on night 1 at colts isn’t the be-all-end-all that sometimes it feels like it is.
If your club begins in November and your first competitive game isn't until March, there is still a lot of training ahead of you. You don't want to arrive in November having already spent eight weeks smashing yourself. Build enough conditioning to give yourself a platform. (This goes for strength and power work as well.)
In other words - Don't try to complete pre-season before pre-season starts.
Keep the Running Volume Sensible
Running itself is something you need to remain conditioned for. Certainly beginning off legs is a great way to approach the break, but the transition to more and more on-feet work is essential. But key is what it looks like. And endless kilometers is not the idea.
Progressing from strides (75-150m), at set tempos, rest times and repetition numbers is a far better way of doing it than heading out and pounding the pavement. Nothing wrong with the occasional longer run (if it is something you enjoy, and you feel good), but just that if time is of the essence and you are more interested in maximising limited time, and minimising wear and tear, the shorter efforts and controlled progression is a better way to approach it.
And how many times a week? Early, with off legs work a couple times per week, nothing wrong with there being none, before progressing to 1 or 2, up to a maximum of 3 in the later parts of off-season (November). Certainly not 5 days per week – especially when targeted strength development should be central to your plans. The 8 week off-season program layout in a recent article gives a good example of this progression.
Track or use targets
Tracking or using targets gives you an idea on how you are progressing and how well you are progressing. This is good – but for this discussion the REAL benefit is that tracking or using targets allows you to set tempo’s or work rates to keep within a certain bound. That is – you can work hard, consistently, without working too hard and hitting a wall.
These measures can be internal or external. The external is essentially the physical work completed (distance covered or speed covered over a distance), and internal is your body’s physical response to that work (breathing rate, heart rate, etc.) The 2 simplest measures available to you in your own training are distances and heart rate.
So for example – something that we use and are in the example 8 week progression are 4-minute repeats. 4 minutes of work at 8-8.5/10 effort, followed by 2 minutes of rest, repeat 4 times.
Using an internal measure – your heart rate – a ball park would be to get as much of your heart rate at around that 80-85% of your max heart rate and holding it there (not redlining towards a max.)
Using the external measure – if you have a recent MAS number (which you can also get by completing a 5-6 minute all-out effort on a piece of cardio equipment like an assault bike or watt bike), you can set distances based off this. So lets say if you are running those 4 minute efforts, your MAS aim for an 8-8.5/10 effort would be 90% MAS. So you take your MAS (lets say it is 5 meters per second) and convert it to 90% = 4.5 meters per second. Now at 4.5 meters per second x 240 seconds (in 4 minutes). Meaning that in those 4 minute efforts, you are aiming to consistently hit 1080 meters in those 4-minute efforts. No more, no less.
Having certain targets to track will also allow you to focus on stride quality, pacing and tempos, and paying attention to how you are actually feeling RELATIVE to your work rate. In short, you will learn a lot about your body and how to listen to it in the process.
Your number one training mode is actually strength
Even if you don’t realise it – this is actually the number one focus – or more specifically the biggest bang for your buck with your training through the period. This is because strength work rarely gets touched on at local and junior football training (because of course we are playing footy and running.) Additionally, at this stage of the season, there are no games or team training, allowing you to well and truly get after it in the gym without the interference of contact and niggles as well heavy running loading (another reason to build up the running gradually and smartly).
But important here is that the strength work is about far more than ‘putting on size.’ This isn’t even really a primary aim – but rather a positive side effect (that will likely happen.) We cover this in far more detail elsewhere on this site – but the important point for this discussion is that this off season period – you have time and space to go after targeted strength work – which will lay a key foundation and contribute towards things like;
Jumping ability (+ landing well)
Strong body in contest and tackling
Changing directions powerfully
Running ability – yes – if you are stronger through the legs – it will directly translate to being better at the running element of your training – because literally every single step you take will not be as difficult, and you will be able to put more force into the floor with each step relative to the effort you put in.
So through the off season, yes conditioning is important – but in my strong opinion it is secondary in focus to the platform laid by this strength base.
Don't Forget to Run Fast
This is probably one of the most commonly neglected areas. Players hear "conditioning" and immediately think about getting tired; long intervals, repeat efforts, laps, MAS running. But somewhere within your week, you should still be exposing yourself to speed. And similar to the strength setup – this is the time to target this, you have time at your disposal – which is important – because true speed and acceleration work is quite ‘wasteful’ from a time point of view (which is why it is rarely done at team training). This is because the work to rest ratio is needs to be very heavy skewed to rest.
For example, a rolling 30-40m sprint executed at maximal speed and maximal intent, will require at least a 90-second effort before your next repletion, in order to be ready for another genuine maximal speed effort. And when going after speed, if it isn’t maximal, you aren’t really training speed anymore.
Small amounts can go a long way – and a gradual progression and build up over the break is important. A handful of high-quality accelerations or longer sprints, performed with good recovery, can maintain exposure to faster running without turning the session into another conditioning grind. And of course the strength work will contribute to the acceleration piece too. The article with the 8 week example layout gives a good indication on how to layer in the speed piece.
Don't Forget to kick a footy
Only a short point - but again - amazing how few do this.
This is important the older you get. By all means, take a break from footy's for a period, but bleed back in some kicking before you head out to team training. Not only to keep up a degree of touch, but also so you aren't going from 0 to 200 foot contacts 2-3x/week.
If you have a mate or 2 or 3 to train with, not only can you do more with your running intervals (from an accountability point of view) but it will open up other options as far as layering in some important foot contacts in the 3-4 weeks leading into night 1 of pre-season.
Check out side ideas;
Arrive Ready to Train – Not Already Peaked
And in summary, this is really the overall goal of the entire period. You want to arrive at the first few weeks of pre-season ready to build on a solid foundation of abilities, ready to build that next layer on (and physically ready to handle training free on niggles.).
But you don't need to be at peak match fitness - that is what the months ahead are for. Think of the period between seasons as building the foundations for pre-season, with perhaps 1 or 2 key areas to directly target (first 20m acceleration, or full body strength in the contest, etc).
Recover first. Maintain some conditioning. Use off-legs work where appropriate. Gradually build your running. Keep some speed in the program. Increase specificity as pre-season approaches.
Then arrive in November ready to build – rather than already needing another break.
