There’s a specific kind of tired that shows up around October. The leg still kicks, but the flights are half a gear slower, the plant feels a little dull, and the easy practice kicks you crushed in August need real focus now. That’s not a motivation problem. It’s a programming problem — and it’s fixable, as long as you stop treating the season like a longer version of the offseason.
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The Season Is a Wave, Not a Ramp
In the offseason, more is usually better: more quality reps, more strength, more mobility. In-season, that logic inverts. Your season now has a hard rhythm built around game day, and every training decision either bends around that rhythm or fights it.
Think of it as a wave. Load builds through the practice week, peaks on game night, then dumps. Your job is to surf that wave — hard work early in the week, sharpening as Friday approaches, real recovery after. The kickers who break down in November are usually the ones who kept training like the wave didn’t exist.
Cut the Volume, Keep the Sharp Work
The first thing to go is rep count, and it should go further than feels comfortable. A game plus a full practice week already carries a heavy kicking load, and your body doesn’t distinguish between a Tuesday rep and a game rep — the leg just logs the total.
What stays: high-quality, game-relevant work. What goes: marathon sessions and extra kickoffs “to stay loose.” This is the whole logic behind managing your kick count across the season — the volume you don’t kick in September is exactly what’s left in your leg in November, and this is the time of year when those numbers get strict.
Maintenance Lifting: What Stays, What Goes
You will not get stronger in-season, and trying to is how legs go stale. The goal flips from building to protecting:
- Keep: hip flexor work, glute and hamstring maintenance, core rotation, mobility. Two short sessions a week. These are the muscles your swing lives on, and they detrain faster than you’d think.
- Trim: heavy squats and hinge work down to one moderate session a week, early in the week. Heavy the day before a game is a bad trade — you’ll feel it in the plant.
- Cut: anything that leaves you sore for more than a day. In-season soreness has to be paid for on Friday.
- Keep short and intense. A focused 25 minutes beats a sloppy hour. You’re signaling the body to keep what it has, not to rebuild.
The off-season is when you build the base, and I’ve laid that out in my complete leg strength training program for kickers. In-season, you’re just keeping the receipts from that work.
A Week That Bends Around Friday
| Day | Focus | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Quality technique + light lift | Low kick count, full-speed reps. Correct what film showed from the game. |
| Tuesday | Full practice volume | Your heaviest kicking day, including kickoffs if scheduled. |
| Wednesday | Medium day | Situational kicks only — hashes, wind, pressure games. Mobility after. |
| Thursday | Sharpen | Very low count, maximum quality. Walk-through speed. Mobility and early night. |
| Friday | Game | Short warm-up, execute, done. |
| Saturday | Recovery | Walk, stretch, flush the legs. No loading. |
| Sunday | Off or light mobility | Sleep, food, and a genuine rest day. |
Adjust for your schedule — some teams play Saturday, some practice double sessions early in the week. The shape matters more than the exact days: heavy early, sharp late, empty after.
Recovery You’ll Actually Do
In-season recovery isn’t a spa day; it’s the difference between week 4 legs and week 10 legs. Sleep first — it does more for accuracy than any gadget. Food and hydration second. Then the simple tools: light rolling, easy movement the day after games, and keeping the hips open daily so the swing doesn’t shorten as the season grinds. I put the full in-season recovery picture — cold plunges, sleep and leg fatigue — in my recovery guide for kickers.
One tool worth having in the bag: a basic foam roller. Nothing exotic — foam rollers on Amazon are inexpensive, and ten minutes on quads, glutes and hip flexors the night after a game is as good as the fancy versions for what a kicker actually needs.
Warning Signs You’re Doing Too Much
- Your ball flight gets flat and spinny before it gets weak — contact is the first thing load steals.
- Easy kicks feel like effort. When 30-yarders require attention they didn’t need in August, back off the volume, not the quality.
- Your warm-up takes longer to find the groove each week.
- Soreness that used to clear in a day now lingers three.
- You’re dreading Tuesday practice kicks. That’s data, not weakness — cut reps and talk to your coach.
Keep the Season Simple
If you remember nothing else: in-season, the goal is to arrive at every game with the same swing you had in week one, and to finish the year with it intact. Volume down, quality up, lifting on maintenance mode, recovery treated like part of the job. The injury-free season checklist is the companion piece to this plan if you want the prevention side in full.
For the technique and practice design behind all of this, my book covers the whole system in one place — the paperback is The Art of Kicking on Amazon and the ebook version is here on Gumroad. And when you sit down to plan your week, start from the wave: heavy early, sharp late, empty after. Your November self will notice the difference.
