Athletes at California Baptist University have to work hard during the sports season to sharpen their fitness and skill in order to give peak performance during their games, but finishing the season doesn’t mean a rest from conditioning.
The Lancers athletes have to stay in shape during the offseason because if they do not condition all year they will lose ground on all the performance gains they made during the regular season.
Ideally, Lancers athletes do not want to just maintain their performance but wish to come back stronger than the previous season.
Leanda Du Bruyn, senior graphic design major and runner on the cross country team, said that training during the offseason is an important part of being a runner.
“It’s just to maintain your fitness basically because if you don’t maintain it you have to start from scratch next year,” Du Bruyn said.
Du Bruyn said she focuses on running longer distances, cardiovascular conditioning, and various strengthening bodyweight movements.
“That’s (the offseason) a time where you can play around and do new strengthening exercises to see what works and what doesn’t,” Du Bruyn said.
Du Bruyn added she also does a 12-minute plank session every day, sometimes twice a day.
Du Bruyn went on say she has weight training Mondays and Wednesdays with her team, as well as spending time doing non-impact training in the pool.
Although all sports must condition during the offseason, all sports have different conditioning requirements,
Alex Wright, a freshman business administration major and guard on the men’s basketball team, said he goes to the gym to lift weights four to five times a week, as do his teammates.
“I practice in the offseason to put myself in the best position to compete come winter season,” Wright said.
Wright went on to say he also does ball workouts, dribbling exercises, and one-on-one matches.
Exercising is essential to Lancers in order to stay at the top of their game, but strength is not the only concern for athletes. Cardio is also a crucial part of conditioning.
“For cardio, we do running toward the end of the summer,” Wright said. “If I want to get even more cardio, I’ll play a five-on-five full court game,” Wright said.
Even sports that seem more sedentary on the surface require quite a bit of conditioning.
For example, the golf team trains their lower body in order to improve flexibility. They utilize more explosive workouts where they do the first half of the movement slow and then move quickly back to the starting position.
Working out during the offseason is hard work, but it gives the team an opportunity to bond with each other and develop more cohesion.
“Post-season helps me grow closer and know more things about my teammates,” said Ivan Monsalve, sophomore business administration major and golfer for CBU.
As a team, the golfers will go to the gym an additional two through six times a week to further improve flexibility and driving strength.
What student-athletes at CBU do to stay in shape during the offseason varies. To push oneself in any athletic pursuit requires dedication and hard work yearround.
