Adjusting Training In The Playoffs Should your in-season training...
Pat Basil@pbasilstrength
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Oct 09, 2025
~1 min read
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Adjusting Training In The Playoffs
Should your in-season training for you playoff push?
Yes, but not as much as you'd think.
It comes down to two main factors:
- Volume
- Exercise Selection
This late in the season, we want just enough volume to trigger the stimulus they need to retain strength and mass. And we want to eliminate any lingering soreness or fatigue.
We do this by dropping volume to the bare minimum and prioritizing assistance exercises that cause the least soreness.
For example, if you usually do two to three sets of a certain exercise, you might drop it to one or two sets.
In the past I've swapped Back Extensions or Reverse Hypers for RDLs as my main posterior movement.
Make those adjustments in the last two to three weeks of the season to balance maintaining strength and accommodating the accumulated on-field workload.
For my advanced teams, I would drop the heavy effort work on our main lifts and use exclusively dynamic effort for the last 4-6 weeks of the season.
This kept the load on the bar down and gave them that last shot of explosive strength when we needed it most.
This is as close to "peaking" as team sports will get.
Remember, there's no magical trick or special exercise that will turn your team into champions overnight.
Freshness is the real secret weapon late in the year.
The key to that it trimming away as much applied stress as you can without removing the strength stimulus they need.
Should your in-season training for you playoff push?
Yes, but not as much as you'd think.
It comes down to two main factors:
- Volume
- Exercise Selection
This late in the season, we want just enough volume to trigger the stimulus they need to retain strength and mass. And we want to eliminate any lingering soreness or fatigue.
We do this by dropping volume to the bare minimum and prioritizing assistance exercises that cause the least soreness.
For example, if you usually do two to three sets of a certain exercise, you might drop it to one or two sets.
In the past I've swapped Back Extensions or Reverse Hypers for RDLs as my main posterior movement.
Make those adjustments in the last two to three weeks of the season to balance maintaining strength and accommodating the accumulated on-field workload.
For my advanced teams, I would drop the heavy effort work on our main lifts and use exclusively dynamic effort for the last 4-6 weeks of the season.
This kept the load on the bar down and gave them that last shot of explosive strength when we needed it most.
This is as close to "peaking" as team sports will get.
Remember, there's no magical trick or special exercise that will turn your team into champions overnight.
Freshness is the real secret weapon late in the year.
The key to that it trimming away as much applied stress as you can without removing the strength stimulus they need.