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Off Season: a time of year when a particular activity, typically a sport, is not engaged in and as such can be broken down into the following areas:
Complete downtime. This is where no ultimate is played, where the other activities you’ve put aside to play Ultimate can be undertaken and the body can take a well earned break after a hard season. The length of this complete down time is up to the individual but I’d recommend anywhere from two to eight weeks. The benefits of complete downtime are huge. You get to show people you have a life outside Ultimate, your body is allowed time to repair those little niggles (you get a few weeks without ibuprofen) and best of all you’ll end up missing playing Ultimate.
Off Season. This is a great chance to prepare for the coming season. It’s a great time to keep ticking over with 1 or 2 skill/tactical based training sessions per week with the rest of the time spent on the following areas
- Strength Training. The benefits of an increase in strength are twofold: Being a stronger athlete allows you be a more powerful athlete; the energy demands of the top game can mean the body uses muscle tissue as fuel. This atrophy can lead to injury unless the muscle mass is large enough to sustain it.
- Functional Training. Developing proper athletic movement patterns is a great way to avoid potential injury.
- Rehab/Prehab. Whether it’s the tight hammy that needs to be looked at or the glute that has a tendency to go at vital times, now is the time to fix it (rehab) or to ensure it stays fixed (Prehab).
- Flexibility and Mobility. The off season is the perfect time to increase your flexibility and range of motion. An increase in both of these areas will not only help you recover quicker from training it will reduce the risk of picking up an injury.
Pre Season. This is where the fun starts. Conditioning, movement patterns and skills can all be trained hard in pre season with a solid off season base behind you. Lashing into pre season without a solid base is an injury waiting to happen.
Some Dos and Don’ts for off season training.
- Do get into a gym and increase your strength
- Do train like an athlete – get advice from a good gym instructor
- Do train your weaknesses harder than your strengths
- Do Stretch after every session
- Do increase ROM before each session
- Don’t train like a body builder – focus on movements not the gun show
- Don’t run (you’ll run enough during practice) – not even for warm-ups
- Don’t rely on other forms of fitness to carry over to Ultimate e.g. the best swimmers do not make the best runners and visa versa.
Example Timeline (2010/2011)
This is only an example but I believe there are 26 weeks between October and March (inc)
