February and July are not the same training year
Pre-season builds. In-season maintains. Off-season repairs. The app knows which one you are in from your sport’s real calendar, and the program changes shape accordingly.
One month free, then A$24.99/month. Cancel any time. iPhone and iPad.
What goes wrong without it
Almost every training app gives you the same program in January and in July. For anyone who plays a sport, that is the single biggest thing wrong with it.
Pre-season and in-season have opposite jobs. Pre-season is for building an engine and a strength base with volume you would never survive during a competition block. In-season is for arriving at every game fresh — which means less volume, not less weight. Carrying pre-season volume into March is how a season ends in round fourteen.
What the app actually does
Each sport carries its real Australian season calendar. AFL and league are pre-season November to February and in-season from March. Soccer, union and hockey run a winter competition off a short February build. Cricket and basketball are summer sports, so the build happens through the back half of winter.
From the date and your sport, Train Smart resolves your current phase — and the program changes:
- Pre-season: set volume scales to roughly 1.2×. Load builds week on week through the block.
- In-season: volume scales to roughly 0.7×, and prescribed weights hold rather than climb. Intensity stays; volume comes down to make room for the game.
- Off-season: back to baseline volume, general strength, and the niggles you have been ignoring.
If you are in a club squad, your coach’s block overrides the calendar guess — a coach who has declared the squad is in a build block wins over the month of the year.
The parts that matter
- Four-week blocks with a real deload
- Three weeks of accumulating load, one week back. The deload is scheduled, not optional, because it is the week the previous three become fitness.
- Blocks have a character
- A block is not just "the same week, heavier". Each sport-and-phase combination has its own block character across the year, so an off-season block and a late pre-season block genuinely train differently.
- Game day is protected
- The day before a game gets a primer — twenty minutes, explosive, no running and no heavy legs. It exists to switch the nervous system on without adding fatigue, which is why the prehab block is deliberately excluded from it.
- Sports with no season
- Boxing, MMA, dance and gymnastics have no calendar season, so they periodise around a base block rather than being treated as permanently off-season.
- Your team fixture, if you have one
- Point the app at your team’s calendar feed and the real draw drives the week — including the weeks where the game moves.
Is this you?
Anyone who plays in a competition season. This is the single feature that most separates a sport program from a gym program.
Season periodisation — questions
How does the app know what season I am in?
What if my league runs on a different calendar?
Why does the weight stop going up in-season?
Start training properly
Pick your sport, answer a few questions, and your first week is built before you leave the kitchen.
One month free, then A$24.99/month. Cancel any time. iPhone and iPad.