A good portion of athletes/coaches believe that training during their sport season will negatively affect performance. This is false. Athletes work hard for months just to let all the progress slip right through their fingertips when they need to be at their best. In-season training is a must for multiple reasons; it maintains/increases strength, agility, flexibility, power, recovery time/injury prevention, and speed.
Just by playing a sport doesn’t mean an athlete will maintain all the gains they made when training during the off-season. For one, in-season training is not as intense. One to two times per week for 30-45 minutes is all it will take to keep an athlete performing at a high level.
Athletes are more prone to injury during their season. Detraining will only make the risk of injury higher. They are not doing anything to retain the strength and stability they gained during their off-season program. It only takes a couple weeks for all the improvements they made to start declining. The “Use it or lose it” idea applies perfectly to this scenario.
To conclude, in-season training does not negatively affect an athletes performance, it actually improves it. By decreasing the volume and increasing the intensity athletes can be sure to see an improvement of performance in their sport.