Year after year, college sports go in three basic cycles: pre-season, in-season and off-season. At Washington University, each varsity sport goes through a roughly one-month intensive pre-season before they play other collegiate teams in their respective sports.
According to a study done by Paul Murray of EMB Consultancy LLP, “Pre-season training is probably the most dangerous time of the year for injuries and the number of players suffering from serious injury rises significantly during this time.” In order to avoid season ending injuries during the pre-season, each varsity sport has sport-specific fitness programs in the off-season.
Each fall varsity athlete at the University had their own off-season conditioning program. Junior Scott Guthrie, a halfback on the football team, said that he followed a fairly intense lifting and running program that included agility work and occasional long sprints. Senior and captain of the women’s soccer team Meghan Marie Fowler-Finn played on a summer team in the Women’s Professional Soccer League (WPSL) that practiced every night and had games almost every weekend.
“In the morning I would follow the summer workout packet that our coach gave us and all my teammates did,” said Fowler-Flinn. “Three days of the week were lifting weights with a cardio workout such as biking, long distance running or elliptical. Three more days of the week were sprint workouts and one day was rest. Finally a couple days a week I practiced with a ball on my own on ball skills or shooting,” she added.
Senior Whitney Smith, a middle hitter on the volleyball team, took a less aggressive approach to conditioning, “I lifted and ran three times a week, and played volleyball a couple of times with some ex-Division I girls. Then we went out and ate nachos!”