SEASON STRUCTURE

file SS-02 · filed September 2026 · current

The off-season block and what it is for

Skills are built in the weeks with no games in them, and that is a scheduling fact rather than a training philosophy.

The phrase off-season is misleading, because for most amateur players there is no stretch of the year with nothing in it. What there is, at two points in the calendar, is a block of weeks without competitive games. That block is where structural change to a player's game is possible, and outside it, mostly, it is not.

The reason is simple and has nothing to do with effort. Changing a movement pattern, whether a shooting mechanic, a footwork habit or a defensive stance, temporarily makes it worse. The new pattern is slower and less reliable than the old one until it is over-learned, and the period in between is measured in weeks. A player who begins that process three days before a game will revert to the old pattern under pressure, and will have gained nothing but confusion. A player who begins it with six clear weeks ahead can push through the worse-before-better stretch and come out the other side.

That gives the block its shape. It opens with the least game-like work, because that is when a decline in performance costs nothing: strength and movement quality, mobility where it is restricted, and the unglamorous business of making the body tolerate load. The middle of the block carries the technical work, in high repetition and without defenders, on the small number of things actually being changed. The end of the block reintroduces speed, contact and decision-making, so that the new pattern is tested under something resembling game conditions before a real game arrives.

The commonest mistake is to spend the block on what is already good. Skill work is enjoyable in proportion to competence, and left unsupervised most players spend their time doing the thing they do best. The second commonest mistake is the opposite one: attempting to rebuild four things at once, which guarantees that none of them is over-learned by the time games resume. Two genuine priorities is a realistic number for a block.

Volume needs the same discipline as content. The absence of games invites unlimited shooting, and unlimited shooting produces the exact overuse problems that then interrupt the season it was meant to prepare for. Load progresses gradually, and the block includes days that are deliberately light. This is particularly true for players who have just finished a compressed event season, whose bodies have absorbed a great deal of accumulated hard landing.

Finally, the block is the only part of the year with room for the boring foundation: conditioning that will not be built once games start, sleep habits that are impossible to change during a travel season, and the repetition of fundamentals that in-season practice never has time for. None of it is visible in any given week. All of it is visible in the fourth game of a weekend in July.