Baseball Training From Offseason to In-Season: What to Build, Maintain, and Prioritize
The MLB postseason is underway. For most professional players, the offseason has already started. For the players still competing, it will start soon, regardless of how deep their postseason run goes. At the high school and college levels, fall baseball is also beginning to wind down. This is the point in the year when athletes start thinking about what they need to accomplish before the next season begins.
This naturally leads to questions about what an offseason program should look like. Most people start by asking how a baseball offseason should be periodized, how quickly training should become sport-specific, or whether the first phase should emphasize GPP, hypertrophy, strength, power, or speed before asking what the athlete in question actually needs. The better starting point is understanding where the athlete is right now and what is keeping them from being better at baseball.
Part of that process is looking back at the previous year. How did the athlete actually progress? What improved, what stalled, and what does the information from the season tell us should change? For that, use three simple questions to help start that evaluation:
Are you happy with your results?
What about your program do you think we need to keep going forward this offseason?
Is there anything we need to eliminate or further investigate before we begin
Those answers give us a much better starting point to calculate the plan of attack for the upcoming offseason.
The offseason gives a baseball player more freedom than any other part of the year to target and improve the deficiencies that are most limiting their performance. During the competitive season, nearly every training decision is shaped by practices, throwing, games, travel, recovery, and the need to perform. We have to consider what the previous 72 hours looked like, what the next 72 hours require, and how the athlete is responding to the total workload. The offseason gives us more room to create fatigue, recover, and drive meaningful adaptation. The calendar sets the window, but the athlete should determine the priorities.
Targeting Offseason Priority
At Newman HP, we start by building a broad picture of the athlete rather than relying on any single test or metric. Performance testing, training history, position demands, body composition, movement qualities, force-plate data, and what we see in training all help shape that picture. All of these factors feed into the first major question to ask when designing any program: “Who am I working with?”
One tool you can use to organize some of that information is our Super Athlete Composite Profiler. It looks across qualities such as relative back squat and power clean strength, countermovement jump height, 30-meter sprint, pro agility, VO2 max, body composition, Y-Balance, psychomotor vigilance, and Stroop performance. A framework like this can help any coach see where potential opportunities exist, but the value is not in simply finding the lowest score and making it the focus of training.
Those results still have to be interpreted through the demands of baseball, the athlete’s training history, stage of development, position, and the likely return from improving a particular quality. This is where concepts like Schaefer’s Law become useful. Improving a general physical quality can provide a large return when an athlete is below an important physical floor, but that return changes once the quality has been developed to an appropriate level.
Lower-body strength is a good example. An athlete who is not strong enough may benefit significantly from making strength a major offseason priority. Another athlete may already have sufficient strength, making further increases less valuable than improving how quickly that force can be expressed.
The standards also have to match the athlete and the level of sport. At Newman HP, we refer to the collection of physical qualities required to meet the demands of a sport as the athlete archetype. For Major League Baseball, producing around 6,000 watts in the countermovement jump is one component of that archetype. That does not mean every developing baseball player should be held to the same standard. The framework helps us understand where an athlete is relative to the demands they are preparing for, while the appropriate standards and training priorities change with their level of development. The goal is to create a hierarchy of opportunities, then use coaching judgment to decide the plan of attack.
Training Phases Change. The System Should Travel With You
We have covered the opportunity the offseason provides to make meaningful physical improvements. As competition gets closer and the season progresses, baseball-specific work begins to take more of the athlete’s available time and capacity. Physical qualities still need to be trained and improved, but the volume and emphasis have to fit those changing demands.
Training is also only one part of the athlete’s performance system. At the professional level, there are at least eight areas that can influence the player: team medical and training, performance training and testing, physical therapy, nutrition, sleep and travel, cognitive performance, private medical care, and family and the athlete’s inner circle. Different people may be responsible for each area, and those people can change as the athlete moves from the offseason to spring training, into the season, between organizations, or to a new city.
Keeping those areas connected is the role of a High Performance Director. Newman HP serves in that role for our athletes by managing the performance system around the player and helping information, priorities, and communication carry from one environment to the next. Training can evolve with the demands of the season while the understanding of the athlete and the reasoning behind those decisions remain connected.
That continuity becomes especially valuable when athletes encounter changes in coaches, environments, schedules, or organizations. Having an established system around the athlete allows those transitions to happen without rebuilding the entire performance process from scratch.
In-Season Training: What Changes and What Stays the Same
The hierarchy of individual needs remains important once the season begins. Each athlete still has qualities that deserve more attention than others, and those priorities should continue to guide the program.
What changes is the context around those priorities. Games, practices, throwing or hitting volume, travel, recovery, and current readiness all affect how much training stress can be applied and when it makes sense to apply it. We have to consider what the athlete has done over the previous few days, how they feel coming into training, and what the competition schedule requires over the next few days.
Some qualities may only require enough exposure to maintain what has already been developed, while others may still benefit from a developmental dose. The athlete’s priorities help determine what we want to train, while readiness and the competition schedule help determine how much we can productively do.
INOL, or Intensity + Number of Lifts, is one useful tool for estimating resistance-training stress. Developed by Hristo Hristov as an extension of Prilepin’s strength-training guidelines, INOL accounts for both the number of repetitions performed and the percentage of one-repetition maximum being used. Five sets of three at 85 percent, for example, produces an INOL of 1.0.
A practical INOL guide looks like this:
| Training Dose | Approximate INOL | Recovery Consideration |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance Volume | 0.30–0.40 | 0–1 day |
| Minimal Effective Volume | 0.40–0.90 | 1–4 days |
| Maximal Adaptive Volume | 0.90–1.20 | 2–5 days |
| Maximal Recoverable Volume | 1.20–1.50 | 3–6 days |
These ranges are practical coaching guidelines rather than fixed recovery timelines.
These ranges are coaching guidelines rather than fixed recovery timelines. Maintenance Volume is enough work to retain a quality. Minimal Effective Volume is the smallest dose likely to improve it. Maximal Adaptive Volume is the range where the athlete is likely getting a strong training effect. Maximal Recoverable Volume is the upper end of what the athlete can handle and still recover from. Exercise selection, total volume, training history, throwing workload, sleep, travel, soreness, and the athlete’s individual response all influence the actual cost of a session.
That is why the number has to be viewed alongside the athlete and the schedule. A higher training dose may fit well when there is adequate time before competition and the athlete is responding well. The same dose may make less sense when the athlete is carrying fatigue, has accumulated a large baseball workload, or has an important competitive exposure approaching.
In-season programming still starts with the athlete’s hierarchy of needs. The difference is that the dose has to be continually adjusted around readiness, recent workload, and what the competition schedule requires next.
Continue to test to Decide What the Athlete Needs Next
Training dose helps us determine how much stress to apply. Continued testing helps us determine whether the athlete’s priorities are changing. Force-plate testing is valuable because jump height or peak power alone does not tell us everything about how the athlete produced the result. Similar outcomes can be achieved through different movement strategies, force characteristics, and time available to produce force, and those strategies can change over time.
We have worked with an MLB pitcher who recorded more than 90 personal records in force-plate testing over an extended period. His performance continued to improve, but the strategy used to produce those performances changed along the way. That information helped provide context for what deserved attention next.
An athlete who has historically demonstrated good balance between limbs may begin shifting toward one side. Another athlete may begin taking longer to express peak power. Changes like these provide additional information about how the athlete is currently producing performance and can influence the next training priority.
Testing still has to be interpreted alongside training history, baseball workload, competition schedule, readiness, and the athlete’s overall hierarchy of needs. The value is having more information available when deciding what deserves emphasis next.
Keep the Process Connected Through the Year
Baseball training should stay connected across the full year. The offseason gives the biggest opportunity to build the qualities that matter most. As competition gets closer and the season begins, those priorities still matter, but the training dose has to fit the athlete’s readiness, recent workload, and competition schedule.
The process is ongoing: assess where the athlete is, build a plan, execute it, analyze the response, adjust the plan, and review the results to determine what needs to come next. Then repeat. As the year moves from offseason to in-season, that cycle stays the same even while the priorities and training dose change.
For athletes and coaches looking to start that process, the Newman HP Toolbox includes free performance tools designed to help evaluate performance and make more informed training decisions.
About the Author
Ben Kaiserman is a Senior Partner at Newman HP, where he works with professional and collegiate athletes across the MLB, NFL, PLL, NCAA, and professional lacrosse. Prior to joining Newman HP, he served as an H2F Strength and Conditioning Coach with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, working with tactical athletes in a high-performance military setting. He holds a Master's in Sports Administration from Tusculum University and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the NSCA. He previously served as Director of Sports Performance at Tusculum University and has also worked with athletes at UCLA, Yale, the University of Tennessee, and Sacramento State.
FAQ
What should a baseball player focus on during the offseason?
The primary focus should be the qualities most likely to improve that individual athlete's baseball performance. Testing and profiling can identify potential opportunities, but those results still have to be interpreted through the demands of baseball, the athlete's stage of development, training history, and coaching judgment.
Should pitchers completely stop throwing after the season?
There is no universal answer. A period away from throwing may be appropriate for one athlete and unnecessary for another. Season workload, injury history, current tolerance, skill needs, mental fatigue, and the goals of the upcoming offseason should all be considered before deciding whether a shutdown period makes sense.
How much should baseball players lift during the offseason?
The appropriate amount depends on what the athlete is trying to change. A maintenance dose and a developmental dose are not the same. When a physical quality is a major offseason priority, the athlete may need enough volume and intensity to create meaningful training stress and adaptation, along with enough time to recover from that work.
Can baseball players still train heavy during the season?
Yes. Heavy strength training can still have a place during the competitive season. The appropriate intensity, volume, frequency, and exercise selection depend on the athlete's needs and the surrounding demands from throwing, practices, games, travel, and recovery.
Should baseball players only maintain strength and power during the season?
No. Maintenance may be appropriate for certain qualities at certain points in the schedule, but athletes can continue improving during the competitive season. The difference is that physical development has to occur within a smaller recovery window because baseball performance takes priority.
How do you know what a baseball player should train in-season?
The athlete's offseason priorities provide useful context, but continued monitoring can help determine whether those priorities should remain the same. Force-plate data, other performance testing, training response, competition workload, recovery, and coaching observation can all contribute to the decision. The goal is to understand what the athlete needs now rather than assuming those needs remain unchanged throughout the season.
Are pitchers and position players' offseasons completely different?
No. Their skill demands are different, but much of the physical preparation process is similar. Both need adequate strength, power, speed, movement capacity, and the ability to express those qualities through baseball-specific skills. As competition gets closer, pitching, hitting, field work, and other position-specific demands naturally take a larger share of the athlete's available training resources.
References
Hristov, H. Intensity + Number of Lifts (INOL). Originally published through Powerlifting Watch, 2005. The framework extends Prilepin's table by combining training intensity and total repetitions into a practical measure of resistance-training stress.
Pareja-Blanco, F., et al. "Time Course of Recovery From Resistance Exercise With Different Set Configurations." Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2020.
Bartolomei, S., et al. "Comparison of the Recovery Response From High-Intensity and High-Volume Resistance Exercise in Trained Men." European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2017.
Bishop, C., et al. "The Importance of Recovery in Resistance Training Microcycle Construction." Journal of Human Kinetics, 2024.
Issurin, V. "Block Periodization Versus Traditional Training Theory: A Review." Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 2008.
McMaster, D. T., Gill, N., Cronin, J., & McGuigan, M. "The Development, Retention and Decay Rates of Strength and Power in Elite Rugby Union, Rugby League and American Football: A Systematic Review." Sports Medicine, 2013.
Lazarczuk, S. L., et al. "Mechanical, Material and Morphological Adaptations of Healthy Lower Limb Tendons to Mechanical Loading: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis." Sports Medicine, 2022.
