Back in my martial arts days, I must admit I wasn’t all too intelligent with my concept of proper training. I now know that trying to build mass while training Jiu Jitsu twice a day will probably just end in frustration. Doing massive sessions of road running to improve my cardio definitely will hinder mass building capabilities, but if you told me this four years ago, I probably would’ve just ignored you. Now, enter stage right, a stream of knowledge and chronic illness and my view of training programs, sessions, and sports inclusion has changed drastically. Today, we are switching gears away from sports for a little. You’ve decided to take up sports, your season is coming to an end, and you start thinking “I wonder if there is an off-season league”. Well today is all about that off-season and why it is extremely important to have it (whether you have a chronic disease or not, although it’s even MORE important if you do). So, let’s dive right into it shall we?
Let’s go back to my time in Jiu Jitsu for a second. In Jiu Jitsu, tournaments are held all year long. Now, that isn’t to say that there can’t be an off-season, however, it is a sport (much like Crossfit) where you determine your own off-season. Well, I didn’t get the memo. So I kept training and fighting, then more training and fighting. I gave myself usually a week off after my tournaments. After this week off, it was right back into the gym. You can probably imagine how that ended. First of all, I ended up missing more tournaments than I fought in because my body never got the time to heal from all the training camps and few matches I had. Second of all, I never really got better by leaps and bounds. I improved, but it was always very marginal, and really could I expect any less when I would just keep shoving new techniques in my face rather than take the time to solidify what I was working on? Probably not. I hope you can see where I’m heading with all of this.
I’ll just come out and say it. You need an off-season. It doesn’t matter what type of athlete you are, or how long the off-season is but you need some form of off-season. Also, my one week off after a tournament is not considered an off-season either. It needs to be a reasonable amount of time. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s tackle the question of “Why?” I will go through my experiences first, and then we will throw the whole chronic disease wrench into the mix.
So first things first, regardless of what sport you play, your body needs time to heal. I don’t care what sport you play, in-season training is tough. Group a bunch of practices into a week (whether that’s with your team or on your own), the time you spend in the gym, and then the games themselves and what you get is one banged up body. Of course, you could simply be a weekend warrior. In this case, you are less banged up, but I will be honest, there are other perks to off-seasons which we will get to later. Okay, back on topic. Anyway, chances are your body needs some downtime, otherwise you end up like I did and just a wreck for a bit. Plus, the coolest part of the human body is that after all that garbage you put your body through for a 3-4 month season (maybe even a 6-7 month season), it will rebound better and stronger than before. But you have to let it do this. This isn’t an excuse to get out of shape. It just means tone things down, listen to your body a little bit more, and let all those nagging little injuries heal up so you can come out next season like you’re on fire. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.
The second thing I encountered was this mental jam or fog. If you never give things time to sink in, they just won’t – bottom line. During peak season is usually a bad time to start introducing brand new techniques. Sports performance is all about muscle memory and confidence. Bring in a new technique and now you have to spend an extra three seconds remembering what you have to do. I did this for Jiu Jitsu, and after 3 years, I had learned maybe half the techniques I could’ve. Just hold off. This is easier to do when you know you have an off-season where you can focus on this stuff. Besides, the best part of the whole thing is that rather than ruin the surprise with a half-assed, partially focused trick shot that fails; you can practice the move or technique for your entire off-season and then wow your family, friends, and teammates with a well-executed, laser-precision zinger. It’s the best feeling in the world.
Okay, now for the uncharted territory. We aren’t quite at the chronic disease part of the whole thing but in my case it fits, so a little background. I have a fast metabolism, and add Ulcerative Colitis on to the whole thing and you get the perfect storm for never gaining a pound. So say I want to gain weight (which I do – both for health reasons and sports performance reasons). I can’t focus on this during my season because I have other priorities. I have to make sure I’m not sore, or too bogged down with food, to leap through the air and make that game-winning save if called upon. I don’t have the luxury of training and lifting for size during my in-season due to commitments to my sport. Thus in comes off-season. All of a sudden, when the season ends, I now have a chunk of time I don’t have to worry about making saves. I can focus 100% on gaining that mass I want to gain, or gaining speed if that was my goal, or whatever your gym goals are, because you have some lenience to be sore and take extra days off. You can eat that surplus of food and not worry about cramps or bloating during a game. Some sports require players to gain weight (or lose) as do some chronic illness (gain/lose weight) and off-season is a great time to focus on these goals before returning to your sport for the next season.
Here we go though. Now the chronic disease related goodies of off-season. This one strikes a personal chord for me because this could most likely be my whole off-season coming up. When you have chronic disease as an athlete, use that off-season to get in as great health as you can. Do what you need to so that you get there. For some of us, it’s that surgery we have been putting off, or those nasty meds with the unpleasant side effects. I will never say that sports should ever come in the way of your health, but if for whatever reason you decide to or are able to hold off on some time consuming medical intervention, off-season is the time for you to get that thing done. This one is kind of cool, because it ties together everything we’ve talked about thus far. Chronic disease requires you to heal your body, learn more about your body and how you may have to alter your sport to play, and lastly may require some physical activity based intervention to keep you healthy and off-season really gives you that timeframe to use focus and energy otherwise spent in game on yourself. Let’s finish up with my personal off-season plans and I will show you what I mean.
So my off-season this year is going to run from roughly the second week of April to most likely the second week of September. Indoor Soccer/Futsal is my sport of choice currently with an eventual move to outdoor (but not yet). So with my off-season around the corner, here is where I plan to take things. First of all, like I said, with Ulcerative Colitis my weight has had the habit of plummeting and I now look as though my parents never fed me as a child (not true FYI). So I want to gain weight. Like I said earlier, what I need to do to gain some lean muscle isn’t an option in season as I’m diving and jumping. That’s why this off-season I will be hitting the weights hard and eating like a glutton (healthy food of course) while I can. But things aren’t that easy, and surgery has been a looming threat for me for the last couple of months. Luckily for me, my off-season coincides with my summer break for school and provides me with a double whammy of benefits for having my surgery during this time. So, that’s also an option. Lastly, should all that not occur, I plan on spending my summer nights on the field learning new techniques for diving, improving my reaction time, learning better distribution skills and improving my gameplay all around. As I hope you can see, it may be off-season but really it’s still busy. It’s not free range time for me to pack on pounds of laziness and make things harder for the return of the season. Sport and physical activity are in my blood and I do what I can when I can to incorporate them in my life. The surgery thing kind of dampens my spirits, but sometimes we have to do what we have to do. Either way, my off-season will incorporate a little bit of everything I just wrote about. What do you have planned for your off-season?!