Off-season? What off-season!? Taking short, periodic breaks to rest and reset is fine, but taking huge, prolonged breaks during your off-season isn’t ideal. Even if done in a small way, continuing to train, maintain your level, and refine your skills is important in order to give yourself the best foundation possible going into the following season.
https://youtu.be/jbncnUTW8g0
About Will Jonathan
Will Jonathan is a sports mental coach from Fort Myers, Florida. His clients include athletes on the PGA Tour, the Web.com Tour, Major League Baseball, the UFC, the Primera Liga, the Olympics, and the NCAA, as well as providing numerous talks and presentations on the mental aspect of sport and peak performance to various sports programs and organizations across the country.
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The front page still quotes “Off-Season? What off-season!? Great athletes don’t take time off. If you want to compete at a high level and succeed in your sport, you have to skip your off-season and continue to train all year round.”
I watched the video. (2:34) “No such thing as an off season, you just don’t get to have one.” (3:20) You use Phelps swimming for 5 years without a break as an example. You say at the end of the video that somewhere someone is working harder (4:44). You don’t define short break anywhere. How long is that? A weekend? A week? A month?
You want to know what I see in these kids who take no real time… Read more »
Keep in mind, the concepts in the video aren’t just geared towards children. It’s geared toward athletes of all ages from youth to adult, so the scope from which it’s viewed from has to be a bit wider than just youth swimming. Also, I mention explicitly in the video that the concept of training through an off-season is geared towards athletes who are competing at a very high level or who have aspirations of doing so. It’s not for every single athlete in every single context.
Also, keep in mind that all I’m advocating for is athletes continuing to work on their sport in their off-season, and that can mean a myriad of different things. It doesn’t have to… Read more »
I’ve given some pretty specific examples, including at 4:44 you saying that somewhere someone is working harder than you in the off-season. If that isn’t advocating full throttle off season exercise I don’t know what to say.
You’ve given a similar answer to everyone in this thread. Knowing you’re likely a good guy with a goal of helping people, I think at some point you might be better off accepting the constructive criticism and changing the talk, versus having to explain to so many people why they may have heard you wrong. I think your audience is giving you great info to work with.
Guys, really? These comments about periodization, mental rest, etc. are ridiculous. He discusses all of that in the video. In the video, he talks about how short, periodic breaks are fine, in fact necessary. But, the idea that, as a top level athlete, you can take months-long prolonged time off simply because it’s your “off-season” and fail to give yourself a great foundation going into a subsequent season isn’t really ideal.
Also, training in the off-season doesn’t have to consist of all out, full throttle, blast-away training. It can be small things: Going for a run every morning, working out in the gym each evening, refining your technique, doing yoga, a million different things. In your off-season, take small, periodic… Read more »
That’s an interesting point, but he discussed all this in the video. In the video, he talks about how short, periodic breaks are fine, in fact necessary. But, the idea that, as a top level athlete, you can take months-long prolonged time off simply because it’s your “off-season” and fail to give yourself a great foundation going into a subsequent season isn’t really ideal.
Also, training in the off-season doesn’t have to consist of all out, full throttle, blast-away training. It can be small things: Going for a run every morning, working out in the gym each evening, refining your technique, doing yoga, a million different things. In your off-season, take small, periodic breaks, but continue to train in some… Read more »
You’re crazy my guy. All the best athletes in the World require rest. Mental and physical fatigue wear bodies and minds down. A poorly written article, I don’t intend on watching the video. Videos like this are taking the fun out of the sport. My best seasons in swimming have come from long periods of rest followed by intense months of training which I wouldn’t have had the energy nor motivation to commit to without a break prior.Being that you’re known for acting as a mental coach you should be fully aware of the limits and capabilities of the brain. A brain without rest gets overworked, and as the World saw with Phelps’ comeback, there’s a lot one can do… Read more »
I discuss all of that in the video. In the video, I talk about how short, periodic breaks are fine, in fact necessary. But, the idea that, as a top level athlete, you can take months-long prolonged time off simply because it’s your “off-season” and fail to give yourself a great foundation going into a subsequent season isn’t really ideal.
Also, training in the off-season doesn’t have to consist of all out, full throttle, blast-away training. It can be small things: Going for a run every morning, working out in the gym each evening, refining your technique, doing yoga, a million different things. In your off-season, take small, periodic breaks, but continue to train in some form so you can… Read more »
Hahaha. Another “you’re wrong” and “I didn’t watch the video”. This is insane. “I didn’t watch the video yet videos like this are taking the fun out of the sport”. How can you make those 2 sentences back to back?!
Honest question: Do the people who comment about kids taking longer breaks, playing other sports, etc know the financials of their team? Most clubs would love to push kids to take longer breaks or play other sports but financially that is impossible. Running a club team is in most cases is running a small business. If you own a donut shop you don’t tell your customers to have pancakes 3 months a year.
This makes me think about Schooling ever since his long break … Ik breaks don’t kill anybody but that must have had something to do with his recent slump.
To me it seemed like that plus he got a bit cocky after rio thinking he was invincible almost like what Le Clos did after London and look where that got him in 2 fly in rio
To be fair, both of his parents were diagnosed with cancer before Rio and I imagine that didn’t help
Anyway, it’s not like Chad didn’t go 50.5 in the 100 fly and 1:53.6 in the 200. 1:54.0 really wasn’t that far from a medal.
Schooling’s NCAA experience this year was interesting. My take on it is that his motivation was simply gone. He already had one foot out the door towards a professional career and the motivation to swim an NCAA Championship just wasn’t quite there anymore. This is why I always tell my athletes that learning how to cope with success is just as important as learning how to cope with failure. Sustaining motivation after you achieve success isn’t easy to do and I think that’s where Schooling struggled a bit.
But hey, again, that’s just my view, not having spoken with him directly about it.
How many people actually watched the video? Lol… he says short breaks are ok.
Obviously most swimmers can’t take months at a time off and keep swimming at a high level. He’s just saying in general you can’t take big breaks which is true. An Olympian taking a 4 month break once every 4 years is probably fine but I doubt they do that more than once in the 4 year window. Maybe Aaron Piersol was doing it but I doubt many swimmers are talented enough to pull that off.
The whole point of the video is kind of obvious though for swimmers so I’m struggling to find something that I could learn from it. Most serious swimmers do swim… Read more »
Exactly! The comments on this post are exactly what’s wrong w people on message boards. Why comment on a video if your comment starts with “I didn’t watch the video”??? I don’t know whether that’s funny or sad….
I agree mostly, although I’m not surprised with the comments given the title of the article. It’s kind of clickbaity since it is a very debatable topic. It becomes less debatable when he says breaks are occasionally ok in an article titled “there is no offseason.”
I can appreciate the criticism. I don’t agree that the title is clickbaity, but I will say that where I went wrong is in the wording of the summary I provided for the video. I did a poor job of conveying the real theme I was trying to outline and I think that’s what has caused some confusion. I’m used to writing articles, so doing video content is still a bit fresh for me. Great lesson learned!
I said clickbaity, whether it was intended by you or not, because taking breaks has been discussed heavily on swimswam. Swimmers are encouraged to take breaks if they are burnt out while they are crtiticized if they don’t perform well after taking a break. Because of the title, people are going to come into the article already with an opinion formed before reading or watching the video
Fairplay. In regards to burnout, an athlete can train all year round and avoid burnout. Avoiding burnout is a side-effect of a healthy training regimen and, most importantly, a healthy mental approach towards the sport. I have clients that train all year round year on year and never suffer from burnout.
I’m enjoying learning how to do video content and go about the process, so as I said, lesson learned!
Have you worked with endurance type athletes? Like distance swimmers/runners or triathletes for example? How do you approach the mental/physical aspect of burnout with them when they are required to complete grueling daily workouts in order to compete at a high level?
I work with NCAA Division 1 Swimmers, international swimmers, professional soccer players, etc. Yes, workouts can obviously be grueling, but that’s where taking care of the body and mind comes into the equation: Eating well, sleeping well, yoga, stretching, taking care of the body, etc. all help mitigate body burnout. In terms of the mental side, mental approach is everything. With my athletes, we focus on process and not results. We focus on execution and enjoyment, not outcomes. With the weight of expectation off their shoulders, they’re able to be more stress-free and the sport is vastly more enjoyable, making mental burnout a non-issue.
Again, as I discuss in the video, it goes without saying that breaks are needed.… Read more »
there’s a time for this but you also need to plan on time to get back in top form, and avoid getting injured. can’t rush back…..
What about the many Olympian’s who took several months off after Rio? Swimming isn’t everything. Enjoy the other facets of life too. Take a break. Nothing wrong with that.