I avoid certain things at all costs: making eye contact with my cat, pineapple upside-down cake (don’t ask), saying “looks like someone has a case of the Mondays,” cocaine, and getting drawn into social media drama and hijinks. Each comes with a cost and a benefit, one way or another. Take Dagny, my cat, for example. I love her, but when she stares at me for more than a moment, I can’t shake the feeling she’d murder me in a heartbeat if she had thumbs.
I’ve got reasons for the others too. As for the latter, I was recently pulled in by a fitness pro who tweeted about “lifting heavy” and sports, and about avoiding the former if you’re playing the latter.
The reaction in the replies was pretty entertaining. Some agreed, while others flashed their feathers—Triggered! A few coaches reacted as if creatine were steroids or someone didn’t squat deep enough. I rolled my eyes too, but the original post felt a bit vague—more about grabbing attention and driving clicks than offering substance.
What sports are we talking about? How skilled are the athletes? What counts as “heavy”? Is there a difference between in-season and off-season training? The big idea is that any athlete, at any level, should be prepared with a well-rounded strength and conditioning program.
Off-season training starts with recovery to help a long competitive season and to fix any deficits, then shifts to building strength, speed, movement, range of motion, and overall capacity. In-season training reduces training volume depending on playing time and schedule, with the aim of limiting loss of gains and reducing wear and tear. The key point is: reduce volume, not intensity.
From experience and that of many coaches, intensity (a percentage of 1RM) is often less taxing on the CNS than total volume. It makes sense to keep some high-intensity work in-season. As Vladimir Zatsiorsky notes, training with weights near 90% of 1RM is heavy but not maximal and helps recruit motor units, improve coordination, and boost potential for hypertrophy.
Power can even rise when the load isn’t maximal, because you move quicker with lighter weights. In other words: lifting lighter loads faster can be the best of both worlds. Strength, too, lingers. It doesn’t take a lot to maintain it, as Issurin points out: maximal strength has a residual window of about 30 ± 5 days, so a little maintenance every few weeks can sustain most gains.
Australian coach Nathan Kiely puts it plainly: maintaining neuromuscular strength in-season is critical, and a load that wouldn’t have built it in the first place won’t do enough to retain it. So, in practice, no competent coach chases PRs in-season; if you program correctly and tailor workouts to the sport’s demands, PRs tend to happen naturally. As a renowned coach once said, when an athlete hits a PR—especially in-season—I’d shut them down for the day.
Bottom line: when dosed intelligently, you can play sports and lift heavy. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Dan does offer a lot of excellent content, but not every tweet is a home run. And when money is involved, some posts are written with an angle.
