Why Do Footballers Get Injured Late in the Season?
- Murray Leyland
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Footballers get injured late in the season because the strength built in preseason quietly declines once games take over training time — and by finals, that decline collides with the toughest fixtures of the year. It isn't bad luck; it's a predictable drop in muscle strength that starts as early as round one. The fix is simple: at least one strength session a week, all season, to slow that decline.
We're midway through the season, and this is the point where footballers start to break down. You've seen it at your club. The calf that goes in round 14. The hamstring that pings at training three weeks out from finals.
Everyone shakes their head and calls it rotten luck and terrible timing, because these injuries always seem to land right when players are desperate to be fit.
Here's the thing: a lot of it isn't luck at all. It's maths, and it's been quietly adding up since round one.
Why does strength drop off during the football season?
Your strength slowly declines across the season — even if you keep training — and that decline speeds up the moment gym work and prevention exercises stop entirely.
Think of preseason as filling the tank. All that training, all those gym sessions, all that strength work builds you a reserve to carry into the year.
Then the season starts draining it. Games pile up, bodies get sore, weekends disappear, and the gym is the first thing to go. Who wants to squat on a Tuesday when Saturday's game is still in their legs?
But here's the part most players don't know:
Your strength slowly declines across a season even if you do keep training. Stop your gym work and preventative exercises entirely, and that decline speeds up.
Week by week your lower limb muscles give back what preseason built, and week by week your injury risk creeps up with it.
How do you keep your strength during the season?
The fix is smaller than you'd think: at least one gym session a week, all season long.
And let's be clear about the standard. This does not have to be your best gym session ever. You're not chasing new numbers mid-season. The whole job of this session is to stall the decline, to keep the tank from draining, so the player who runs out in the semi-final is close to the one who finished preseason.
What exercises should footballers do in-season?
Keep it dead simple: one exercise for your quads, one for your hamstrings, one for your calves.
That's it. Three exercises, once a week, and you can be in and out in half an hour. Those three cover the muscles doing the heavy lifting in every sprint, stop, jump, and tackle, and they're the ones we most need holding their strength deep into September.
If your club runs prevention exercises at training, they count too. The worst program is the one that stops in June.
When should I get a niggle looked at?
Call us as soon as a niggle is around two weeks old — not six — and everything changes. Please don't do the thing. You know the thing.
Every finals series, the phone rings in the last week: "Yeah, so I've had this niggly hamstring for six weeks... can I play the semi on the weekend?"
We will do absolutely everything we can to get you on that park. Getting players through big games is genuinely what we focus on, and it's what I spent my years as Head Physiotherapist at the Central Coast Mariners doing week in, week out. But six days is a rough hand to play against a six-week-old problem.
What should I do next?
If you're carrying a niggle right now, or you want a simple in-season program to hold your strength through to the last game of the year, get in early. That's the whole trick.
Book in with our team at Valley Physiotherapy across Thornton, Kurri Kurri, and Maitland, and let's make sure you're on the park when it matters most. And if you've got questions, reply to this email and I'll happily give you a hand.
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