The human body adapts to common stimuli over time.  In psychology, we call this habituation. In training, we combat this with periodization.  What is periodization?  It’s breaking a long period of training into different phases so that one’s muscles don’t habituate, which would stall progress.

The Phases

As an athlete, the period after completing a competitive season is known as the active recovery period.  This is the time when one doesn’t perform specified training, but rather keeps his or her body in motion by recreational activities, done at a low intensity.  Playing pick up basketball twice a week would be an appropriate activity for this phase.

Once active recovery is complete (generally just a couple of weeks, depending on season length), one moves into the hypertrophy phase.  In this phase the goal to replace the muscle size that was lost during the season.  The athlete needs to restore his body mass by resistance training at a high volume.

One ideal body mass is achieved, the strength phase is next.  This is typified by lower volume but higher intensity resistance training, designed to develop increased muscle strength, but not to pack on any more size.  Lifting for size and lifting for strength differ in the rep schemes and loads used.  Naturally, the strength phase will use lower rep sets with near-maximal loads.

Get As Big As You Need To BE

The final phase of the off-season is the competition phase, which takes all the size and strength the athlete has built and peaks it for maximum performance right as the season starts.  In powerlifting, this would mean training at 95-100% of one’s max lifting ability, yet for other sports this would vary.  The competition phase for high-velocity, low-load sports like tennis, baseball, softball, lacrosse, etc. would consist of high-velocity, low-load activities like plyometrics and other dynamic, ballistic exercises.

Then Make all that muscle DO things

Once your body peaks and the season starts, you enter a maintenance phase, in which you lift only to keep your off-season gains, which means not trying to build more strength.  Attempting to make gains in the weight room during the season would detract from in-game performance.  Game performance is the ultimate goal, after all, so nothing should be done during the season to negatively impact it.

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This model discussed above is the linear model of periodization, meaning that phase progression follows uniformly.  There are other methods as well, such as the undulating model, in which one might perform one day of each phase each week. The type of periodization used is subject to the athlete’s physical makeup, time constraints, abilities, etc.

The simplest way of thinking about periodization is this: Rest after your season, then get back to work.  Build muscle, make that muscle strong, then make that muscle move fast.  Once the season starts, maintain what you worked hard for, then repeat. Sensible, right?