Preseason is easy to plan. Two or three lifting days, long practices, no games. Then the schedule starts, and by November the weight room is the first thing that disappears from the week. “We have a game Saturday, let’s not lift.” “We have a game Wednesday, let’s not lift.” By January the players have not touched a barbell in a month and nobody can explain why they look slower.
Strength in season is not a luxury. It is what keeps the preseason work alive. The good news is that it takes a lot less time than people think.
Why bother lifting during the season
Stronger athletes jump higher, sprint faster and change direction better, and there is reasonable evidence that strength is linked to a lower injury risk (Suchomel et al., 2016). Basketball asks for all of that for six or seven months in a row. If strength drops across the season, so does everything that depends on it.
The mistake is thinking that keeping strength requires the same work as building it. It does not.
How little is enough
Two studies are worth knowing.
In professional soccer players, after 10 weeks of preseason strength training twice a week, one group (7 players) kept training once a week in season and the other (7 players) trained once every two weeks, with the same exercises, sets and loads. Over the first 12 weeks of the season, the once-a-week group kept their gains in strength and 40 m sprint. The once-every-two-weeks group lost strength and sprint speed (Rønnestad et al., 2011). Small groups, and soccer, so read it as a signal.
In a longer trial with 70 adults who were not athletes, after 16 weeks of resistance training three times a week, a maintenance dose cut to one-third or even one-ninth of the original still preserved the muscle growth in the young participants (20 to 35 years old), though not in the older ones (60 to 75) (Bickel et al., 2011).
Taken together, our reading is practical: one well-planned session per week looks like a workable minimum for the first months of the season. Two is better when the calendar allows it. In the soccer study, a session every second week was not enough. The session “when we can” tends to end up there.
Our rule: fewer sets, not lighter weights.
What the session looks like
Short, heavy and with few exercises. We aim for 30-40 minutes in the weight room. The table is our staff’s template, not a protocol tested in a trial.
| Block | Example | Dose |
|---|---|---|
| Activation | Band walks, calf raises, a few jumps | 5-8 min |
| Main lower body | Trap bar deadlift, split squat or squat | 3-4 sets of 3-5 reps, heavy, 1-2 reps in reserve |
| Power | Jump squat, med ball throw or a few box jumps | 3 sets of 3-4, fast and fresh |
| Upper body | Push and pull, one exercise each | 3 sets of 5-8 |
| Robustness | Nordic or a hamstring exercise, adductor work, calf or tibialis | 2 sets |
A few rules that keep it safe:
- Intensity stays, volume goes. Our rule is fewer sets, not lighter weights. It is staff practice, not a trial result.
- No new exercises in season. New movements cause soreness. Soreness the day before a game is how you lose the head coach’s trust.
- Leave reps in the tank. In season there is no grinding out the last rep.
- The power block goes early, while players are fresh, never at the end.
Where it goes in the week
The game schedule decides. Three typical weeks:
One game a week (Saturday). Heavy session on Monday or Tuesday, as far from the game as possible. A second, shorter session on Wednesday or Thursday with less volume and more speed.
Two games a week (Wednesday and Saturday). One session, short, the day after the first game for players with few minutes, or two days before the second game for everybody. Sometimes it is only 20 minutes. That is still worth doing.
Heavy travel weeks. A hotel gym or bands in the room: split squats, single-leg RDLs, Nordics with a partner, isometrics. Not ideal, but it keeps the stimulus.
What about the day after a game?
Lifting heavy the morning after a game is not a great idea for players who played a lot: they are tired and sore, and the quality is poor. For players who played few minutes, the day after can be the best day to lift. Use the minutes played to decide, not the calendar.
Common objections
“They get sore and play worse.” Only if the session is new, long or done to failure. A routine session with known exercises and reps in reserve should not leave them sore after a few weeks.
“We do not have time.” Thirty minutes once a week is less than a film session. If the weight room is not in the plan, it does not happen.
“Our players are too tired.” Then reduce the volume, not the intensity, and check what else is going on in their week. Load is everything, not just basketball.
The short version
- One heavy session per week looks like a workable minimum. In the soccer study, one every two weeks was not enough.
- Keep the loads heavy and cut the number of sets.
- Plan around the games, and give different doses to starters and bench players.
- Same exercises all season, no grinding, power first.
References
- Suchomel TJ, Nimphius S, Stone MH. The importance of muscular strength in athletic performance. Sports Med. 2016;46(10):1419-1449. PubMed 26838985
- Rønnestad BR, Nymark BS, Raastad T. Effects of in-season strength maintenance training frequency in professional soccer players. J Strength Cond Res. 2011;25(10):2653-2660. PubMed 21873897
- Bickel CS, Cross JM, Bamman MM. Exercise dosing to retain resistance training adaptations in young and older adults. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2011;43(7):1177-1187. PubMed 21131862
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PFB Performance Team
Strength & conditioning and rehab specialists in professional basketball. Published 19 October 2026 · last reviewed 19 October 2026.
