# phase.fitness for athletes with a season

> Your sport supplies the volume; the gym's job is force, speed and the two or three exercises that keep you on the pitch. phase.fitness plans the off-season, the pre-season and the in-season week from your season dates and the document for your sport.

phase.fitness · Strength & physique · Updated 15 October 2026 · HTML version: https://www.phase.fitness/for/team-sport-athletes

## The short answer

phase.fitness plans sport preparation from one document per discipline — court sports, football, American football, racket sports, combat sports, athletics and more — with the off-season and pre-season phases laid back from the season dates you enter, and an in-season block where the gym holds two short, heavy, low-volume sessions placed around match day. Conditioning is what the sport's document prescribes: repeated sprints for field and court sports, round intervals for combat sports, never distance running on top of practice. The items that survive every cut — eccentric hamstrings, landing mechanics, the shoulder block — are in every week.

## How should athletes lift during the season?

Two short, heavy, low-volume sessions a week, placed around match day. phase.fitness lays the off-season and pre-season back from the season dates you enter, then holds strength in season rather than building it, and keeps eccentric hamstrings, landing mechanics and the shoulder block in every week, because they are the first things a busy calendar cuts.

## What conditioning should team-sport athletes do instead of long runs?

Repeated sprints with the work-to-rest ratio of your sport, or round intervals for combat sports. phase.fitness writes conditioning from the document for your discipline — basketball, volleyball, football, tennis and padel among them — and never adds distance running on top of practice.

## Your week, honestly

- **The gym program ignores the calendar.** It prescribes the same four sessions in a three-match week as in a rest week, and something has to give.
- **Conditioning is running.** The document for your sport says the limiting quality is repeated sprints or repeated jumps, and the plan sends you on a 40-minute jog.
- **Prevention is the first thing cut.** The eccentric hamstring work takes eight minutes and halves the injury that ends seasons; it goes because it is boring.

## What phase.fitness does about it

- **Season dates as input** — Enter the season start and end and the phases are laid back from them: foundation, strength, power, then the in-season week. (https://www.phase.fitness/ai-periodization)
- **One document per sport** — Basketball, volleyball, soccer, American football, tennis and padel, combat sports, sprinting — each with its phases, its bands and its in-season rule, published under Methodology. (https://www.phase.fitness/methodology)
- **Conditioning by sport** — Repeated-sprint sessions with the sport's work-to-rest ratio for field, court and racket sports; round intervals for fighters — from the conditioning engine, not a generic cardio plan.
- **The non-negotiables** — Eccentric hamstring work, landing mechanics, single-leg and calf exercises, the shoulder block — kept in every week, cut last, as each document prescribes.

## Programs to start from

- [Basketball strength and conditioning program](https://www.phase.fitness/training-programs/basketball-strength-and-conditioning-program) — phase.fitness builds basketball preparation in the order the court-sports document prescribes — landing before jumping, maximal force before power, repeated jumps before a single big one — and counts plyometric contacts against the volume the sport already supplies.
- [Soccer strength and conditioning program](https://www.phase.fitness/training-programs/soccer-strength-and-conditioning-program) — phase.fitness plans football around the fixture list: heavy and low-volume lifting because the sport already supplies the volume, an eccentric hamstring progression that is never cut, repeated sprints instead of long runs, and a week whose days are named by their distance from the match.
- [Volleyball strength and jump program](https://www.phase.fitness/training-programs/volleyball-training-program) — phase.fitness plans volleyball around the two numbers that decide a fifth set — how many jumps you can repeat, and how much of your jump is left — with landing competence before any jump volume and the hitting shoulder maintained every week.
- [Tennis and padel strength and conditioning program](https://www.phase.fitness/training-programs/tennis-and-padel-training-program) — phase.fitness plans tennis and padel as the racket-sports document describes them: power generated at the hips and transmitted through rotation, a body that is unilateral and asymmetric, movement measured in metres, and a shoulder that needs range first and control second.
- [Strength and conditioning for combat sports](https://www.phase.fitness/training-programs/combat-sports-strength-and-conditioning) — phase.fitness plans a fight camp the way the combat-sports document prescribes: skill training first and everything else around it, an aerobic base so power can repeat, strength kept heavy and short even at peak camp, and sparring counted as the conditioning it already is.

## The apps you already use

- **Hevy** — Strength routines are written to Hevy; logged workouts return to phase.fitness. Cardio and calisthenics do not travel here.
- **Garmin** — Write it here, train it on your Garmin: strength and cardio sessions are sent to Garmin Connect and appear on the watch, and the activities you finish come back to mark the plan done.
- **Strava** — Post to Strava: the sessions you finish in phase.fitness go to your Strava feed, only the ones you choose. Nothing is imported from Strava.

## The evidence

The knowledge-base documents this page is built from (The phase.fitness generator reads them for this case):

- [Vertical Power and Anaerobic Capacity for Court-Based Team Sports](https://www.phase.fitness/methodology/training-team-sports-court) — updated 2026-02-21
- [Physical Preparation for Association Football (Soccer)](https://www.phase.fitness/methodology/training-association-football) — updated 2026-10-09
- [Rotational Power and Repeated Change of Direction for Racket Sports](https://www.phase.fitness/methodology/training-racket-sports) — updated 2026-08-23

Read more in the knowledge base:

- [Training around injuries: modifying a program](https://www.phase.fitness/learn/posts/training-around-injuries-modifying-program)
- [Fatigue management in periodized programs](https://www.phase.fitness/learn/posts/fatigue-management-periodized-programs)
- [HRV as a training-readiness marker](https://www.phase.fitness/learn/posts/hrv-training-readiness-marker)

## Frequently asked questions

### Does phase.fitness know my sport?

The phase.fitness generator recognises 118 spellings of sports in several languages and resolves them to eighteen disciplines, each with its own document. If yours is not on the programs page, type it in: it is a page not yet written, not a sport phase.fitness cannot plan for.

### How does the in-season week work?

As the sport's document phase.fitness reads prescribes. For football the days are named by their distance from the match; for court sports the gym holds two short heavy sessions and plyometrics are cut in multi-match weeks. You flag the match days; the plan places the sessions.

### Can my coach use this for the team?

Coaching in phase.fitness — a roster, invitations, permissions granted by the athlete — exists behind a feature flag and is not open in production yet. Today each athlete plans their own program.

## The only app that plans strength, cardio and calisthenics together

For a team-sport athlete the calisthenics day is single-leg control and trunk stiffness under fatigue — pistol-squat steps, hollow and side holds — landing and braking mechanics trained as strength on a day that must not be hard.

Right now, phase.fitness is the only training app that writes strength, cardio and calisthenics into one periodized program — same calendar, same phases, same recovery budget.

You choose the mix. A calisthenics-only plan, a cardio-only block, strength plus cardio, or all three: the phases, the end-of-phase analysis and the sync work the same way with one modality or three.

**Why calisthenics is in the plan.** Bodyweight skill work is strength training in a different shape. Straight-arm work, levers and handstands build scapular control, tendon capacity and relative strength that barbell and machine work leave untouched, and they transfer because they are closed-chain, whole-body patterns. Treated as a modality rather than a warm-up, they get sets, holds and progressions like a squat does.

No exercise catalogue on the market contains a tuck front lever, so those sessions run in the phase.fitness built-in player; strength goes to Hevy, Liftosaur or a Garmin watch, cardio to Garmin and Intervals.icu.

Build your first program: https://www.phase.fitness/signup