Avoid in-season soreness: Top 3 strength training tips revealed

TRAINING BREAKDOWN

“It’s not strength training that’s the problem, it’s how you’re doing it.”

By Emma O’Toole

Hi team, I hope you’ve had a great Saturday and your training’s been good this week.

Every year around this time I hear it: “I’m in-season now, I don’t want to be sore before a big session or race.” So strength work gets thrown out, or watered down to lots of bodyweight squats and some clamshells. These are solid exercises, but not ones that are going to build or maintain the kind of strength you need to stay resilient and performing well in-season.

When your training load is already high, your strength work needs to be smart.

It’s not strength training that’s the problem, it’s how you’re doing it.

And the best part is that we don’t need a complete overhaul, you don’t need to spend hours that you don’t have lifting. Done right, strength work will support your training, keep you powerful and resilient and help reduce fatigue, not add to it.

So in today’s newsletter, I’m breaking down 3 ways to adapt your strength work for in-season training, so you stay strong, fresh, and ready to perform.

#1: Train for speed

It’s not always about going heavy.

In-season, focus on moving the weight fast, not slow and grindy. Think snappy, explosive reps rather than trying to grind your way through a squat.

That might mean you drop the weight to allow for more explosive movement. That’s not a step backwards, it’s smart programming because in-season you’re not lifting to set new PBs in your deadlift. You’re lifting to stay powerful, sharp, and mobile while you peak in your running and cycling.

#2: Focus on the “push” phase

The eccentric (lowering) part of a lift tends to cause the most soreness.

But the concentric (lifting) phase is where we generate power and you can train this specifically.

We can manipulate different exercises to focus on the concentric phase that’s essentially the lifting portion. This keeps your nervous system primed without beating up your muscles right before a race or key session.

A couple of examples:

Push squats: Starting seated on a box or bench and focusing solely on driving upward.

Partial or quarter squats: Reduce the range of motion slightly, especially during a taper or race week, to keep the system primed without overloading the muscles.

By adjusting the movement, you reduce muscle damage while still building neural drive and coordination both are essential for performance.

#3: Use RPE and Reps in Reserve

We’re used to pushing ourselves to the limit and it’s easy for us to take this ethos into our strength sessions and want to feel like we’re “doing something”.

However the whole point of S&C is to support your running and cycling. In-season your sessions should leave you feeling good, not bogged down and exhausted.

Using a monitoring scale that you're familiar with like RPE/Reps in reserve is a fantastic way to measure the intensity of your lifts by either scoring them out of 10 (10 being the hardest), or by asking yourself: “How many more repetitions could I perform with good technique using this weight?”

For example: 3 reps in reserve would be you choosing a weight where you could perform 3 more repetitions of a given exercise with solid technique and form.

Don’t fear the weight in-season! It’s not lifting heavy that leaves you feeling wiped, it’s doing too much of it. Both research and real-world coaching show the same thing: volume is what fatigues you, not load.

In-season strength training doesn’t have to be scary.

It doesn’t need to take over your week.

But it does need to stay in the plan, because your performance, your consistency, and how strong you feel day-to-day all depend on it.

So don’t let strength be the missing piece: Keep it simple. Keep it sharp. Keep it part of your routine.

Because when your body feels strong, so do you.

And that’s the edge that carries you through every training block, every race, every season.

If you’re looking to begin strength training, or are feeling a little disillusioned by the promises of huge performance and robustness gains that you’re not seeing at the moment (these are true I promise), please reply to this email and we can see how we can make strength training work for you.

Also, don’t forget to also check out our fantastic free community for ongoing support and help with your training.

Have a great rest of your Sunday!

Emma x

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