So, I’m currently walking around the office waddling like a duck (no, it’s not something that we do here at NextStepU!) due to the soreness in every part of my body. The cause, you may ask? My two least favorite words from March to May: spring season. If you decide to play a college sport these two words will most likely become the most dreaded words in your vocabulary. It’s a shortened period of time when your coach can run practices during the off-season. Depending on your school and division level you may only have one set of scrimmages at the end of this season. Therefore there are no games separating practices as they do during your actual season. To most athletes, at most colleges, this means one thing: running. Normally this is the case for my team, but this year the game was completely changed by Insanity.
I spoke of trying this out in my previous posts, but was scared off when I heard some testimonials from friends. Now, there is no escaping it! Every Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. (that hour is scary enough for me) half of our practice is used to complete one Insanity video. Let me tell you I’ve never hated someone so much as I hate Shaun T, the trainer on the videos. He and his workout crew bring you through many high level circuits at various speeds. Something as simple as jumping jacks are brought to the next level with more intense variations! Shaun T pushes you to work out muscles that you never even knew existed! Apparently for me, that’s a lot of them! So currently I’m cursing him and his new insane videos as I try to walk like a normal person, but I suppose I’ll thank him in a few days when I feel like a million bucks easily fitting into my skinny jeans!
Now that I have completely scared you off from playing a college sport because of this thing called spring season, let me tell you why it’s worth it! First, you probably already play all year round for your high school travel teams so this will seem no different during your first year. It only gets hard when you start to get use to such a long break between your regular season and spring season.
However this means that you once you finish your regular season you probably haven’t had a chance to see a lot of your team. Being back with everyone for a few days a week is a lot of fun! Second, this forces you to keep in great shape during the off season. It can be easy to push aside a workout with so much on your plate during a busy semester. Plus, you have 20-something other people helping to push you through a hard workout! For my team it’s funny to see each of us posting on Twitter how sore we are the next day with the hash tag #springseasonprobs. It seems to keep our team chemistry going strong since we can all relate to each other again on a daily basis! Lastly, it’s a time when you can work on the skills that you need or want to perfect for the next season. Coaches can focus more on basic skills, and hopefully fun drills, to help you keep in shape for your sport.
So, although I’m currently dreading those two words, I’m still playing the sport I love and being around teammates that make that sport so much more fun! Just remember, no one ever said college sports would be easy! They’re a give and take, but if you give everything you’ve got then the take will be much more rewarding (even if you have to deal with Shaun T once a week)!
—Krista is the writing intern at NextStepU Magazine. She currently plays Division III soccer at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY.
