The off-season is an essential time for footballers to rebuild and enhance their physical performance. It’s the perfect opportunity to focus on making gains in areas that are often difficult to prioritise during the season, such as muscle hypertrophy, while also reducing injury risk.
How Much Rest After The Previous Season?
The amount of complete rest a footballer should take during the off-season depends on the length and intensity of the previous season, as well as their physical and mental condition. Typically, players benefit from 1-2 weeks of rest after their last match. This period allows the body to recover from accumulated fatigue, heal minor injuries, and reset mentally.
However, "rest" doesn’t necessarily mean inactivity—light activities such as walking, swimming, or yoga can help promote blood flow, speed up recovery and overcome mental staleness. After this initial phase, players should transition gradually into an S&C programme to avoid deconditioning. Starting too late or with overly intense sessions increases the risk of injuries and leaves insufficient time to build a solid fitness base for the season ahead. A structured, progressive approach ensures players return to training refreshed but not detrained.
Don't Do Too Much, Too Soon
A common mistake many players make during the off-season is trying to cram several weeks' worth of training into a short window just before team preseason starts. This "panic mode" approach often leads to rushed, overly intense sessions with little regard for progression or recovery.
The sudden spike in workload—going from weeks of rest to high-intensity training—places immense stress on the body, significantly increasing the risk of injuries like muscle strains, tendon overuse, and joint pain. Worse still, the quality of the training often suffers as players attempt to squeeze in strength, stamina, and speed work without a structured plan.
This hurried preparation doesn’t allow for the gradual adaptations necessary for sustained performance, leaving players underprepared and vulnerable to breakdowns early in the season. A slow, progressive approach throughout the off-season not only minimises injury risk but also ensures better long-term gains and readiness for preseason demands. The following is a breakdown of what to focus on.
Strength and Hypertrophy: The Building Blocks
A primary focus of off-season strength training should be hypertrophy—building muscle size. Larger muscles provide a greater cross-sectional area, which increases their potential to produce force. This is critical for footballers, as greater force production underpins improvements in both maximal strength and power.
Hypertrophy training, characterised by moderate-to-heavy loads (typically 60–75% of 1RM) and higher volume (6–12 repetitions), induces muscle growth by creating microtears in the muscle fibres. These tears repair and grow stronger through consistent training and proper recovery. While hypertrophy training can cause delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), this adaptation phase is crucial for laying the groundwork for strength and power development later.
Once hypertrophy training has been implemented, the focus can look towards increasing maximal strength. This involves progressively heavier loads (75–90% of 1RM) with lower repetitions (3–6 per set) to develop the neural adaptations required to lift more efficiently. The off-season is ideal for both of these types of training, as the soreness and fatigue it commonly generates can be targeted and managed without impacting match performance.
To be clear, youth footballers should only progress to lifting heavier weights once they have demonstrated full competence in fundamental movement patterns, such as squatting, hinging, and lunging, with proper stability and control, with both bodyweight and then progressively increased loads. Mastery of technique ensures that the player can safely handle heavier loads without risking injury or reinforcing poor mechanics.
For those not yet ready, alternative exercises, such as bodyweight variations, lighter resistance, or tempo-focused movements, can be used to trigger adaptations while building the foundational strength and coordination needed for future progression. Our Elite Football Athlete Programme is designed to guide youth footballers through this complete process with expert coaching and tailored plans to match their developmental stage.
This off-season hypertrophy and maximal strength centred training often explains why many professional footballers start the season looking noticeably more muscular. With fewer matches and a reduced focus on recovery for immediate performance, players can dedicate time to building muscle size, which underpins higher levels of strength, power and explosiveness for the months ahead.
This period allows them to accumulate the volume and intensity necessary for hypertrophy, however, as the season progresses, attention shifts towards maintaining strength, maximising power, increasing injury resilience and staying fresh for matches.
The reduced emphasis on hypertrophy, combined with the calorie demands of frequent games and training, often leads to a slight reduction in visible muscle mass. This cycle highlights the importance of the off-season as a window to build the physical foundation for the intense demands of the season to come.
Power: Transforming Strength into Action
Power—the ability to generate force quickly—is the next step in the progression. A strong muscle is capable of producing force, but a powerful muscle can apply it rapidly. Power training converts the strength built in the gym into the explosive actions required on the pitch, such as accelerating, jumping, or striking the ball.
Power is typically trained with lighter loads moved at high speeds (30–60% of 1RM) or through bodyweight exercises with maximal intent. Importantly, the intent to move quickly should be present even when training with heavier weights. This ensures the nervous system is primed for explosive actions, even during maximal strength phases.
Stamina: Aerobic and Anaerobic Development
Stamina in football isn’t about running long distances—it’s about the ability to sustain repeated high-intensity efforts over a full match. This requires both aerobic and anaerobic fitness, which are best developed through variaties of interval training.
Aerobic Fitness: The aerobic system provides the base for recovery between sprints and other high-intensity efforts. Training this system involves longer intervals at moderate to high intensity, such as 3–5 minutes of running at 70–85% of maximum heart rate, interspersed with varying rest periods. This improves the body’s ability to efficiently deliver oxygen to working muscles, which supports recovery during matches.
Anaerobic Fitness: The anaerobic system is responsible for producing energy during short, intense bursts of activity. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is the most effective way to develop this system. For example, repeated sprints of 10–20 seconds at maximum effort, with 30–60 seconds of rest, mimic the demands of matchplay and improve the body’s ability to perform repeated high-intensity efforts.
Why Not Long Runs? While long-distance runs may improve overall endurance, they fail to replicate the specific energy and movement demands required for football. Additionally, excessive steady-state running can detract from explosive performance and increase the risk of overuse injuries. Interval training, on the other hand, improves both aerobic and anaerobic fitness while aligning more closely with the physical demands of the game.
Injury Resilience and Recovery
Building injury resilience is a key focus of off-season training. Strength training improves tendon and ligament health, while mobility and flexibility work ensure that joints move efficiently and remain stable under load. Addressing these areas consistently throughout the week reduces the risk of overuse injuries and muscle imbalances.
Warm-ups and cooldowns are integral to this process. Dynamic warm-ups prepare the body for intense training by increasing blood flow, enhancing muscle elasticity, and reinforcing movement patterns. Cooldowns, which include static stretches and foam rolling, help reduce stiffness and improve range of motion over time. These practices should be performed multiple times per week to create lasting benefits.
Recovery is equally important. DOMS is a natural result of effective hypertrophy and strength training, as it signals the muscles are adapting to new demands. While DOMS might be uncomfortable, it’s a sign of progress. Attempting to eliminate soreness with ice baths during the off-season can suppress inflammation and hinder muscle growth, making active recovery and gradual progression better strategies.
Balancing the Components
Combining strength, power, speed, and stamina training into a cohesive programme is a complex challenge. Each type of training impacts the body differently, and poorly planned sessions can interfere with one another. For example, speed sessions scheduled too close to endurance work can blunt adaptations in both areas.
Periodisation—the planned manipulation of training variables—is essential. Gradually increasing workloads across all components allows players to adapt safely and consistently.
The Acute-to-Chronic Workload Ratio (ACWR) is a widely used framework for managing training loads and reducing injury risk. It compares the short-term workload (e.g., training volume over the past week) to the long-term workload (e.g., average training volume over the past four weeks). Maintaining an ACWR between 0.8 and 1.3 is considered optimal, as it ensures that the body is adapting to progressive increases in workload without overloading or underloading.
Ratios above 1.5 significantly increase the risk of injury due to sudden spikes in training stress, while ratios below 0.8 may indicate insufficient stimulus for progress. Using the ACWR allows coaches and players to carefully monitor workload and ensure that increases in intensity, volume, or frequency are introduced safely and effectively.
A Long-Term Investment
Off-season training is a long-term investment in a player’s physical capabilities. Gains made during this period lay the foundation for success not just in preseason but throughout the entire year.
Consistency is key. Players who commit to a structured and progressive off-season programme will not only reduce injury risks but also outperform their peers who rush preparation. The off-season isn’t about cramming fitness into a short window—it’s about building a solid foundation that supports sustained performance and resilience.
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