Ask most athletes when they’re most likely to get hurt and they’ll say late in the season, when they’re tired and beaten up.
It’s a reasonable guess. It’s usually wrong.
The riskiest stretch of a spring season tends to be the beginning — tryouts, the first few weeks of practice, and the opening games. And the reason is straightforward once you see it.
The demand jumps overnight. The body’s capacity doesn’t.
Here’s what actually happens in that window, and what to do about it.
The Gap That Opens Over Winter
Whatever your sport, something changes between January and March.
The baseball player hasn’t thrown at intensity since last summer. The sprinter hasn’t run a full-effort 100 since the fall. The lacrosse midfielder has been in a weight room, or a gym, or nowhere at all. The soccer player has been indoors on turf.
Then the season starts, and within a week or two you’re doing tryouts, full practices, and sometimes games.
Two things recover at very different speeds:
Cardiovascular fitness comes back quickly. Two or three weeks of consistent work and your lungs feel fine.
Tissue capacity comes back slowly. Tendons, bone, and connective tissue adapt over weeks to months, not days.
That mismatch is the whole problem. Your engine will let you do considerably more than your chassis is currently ready for — and the first time you find out is usually when something goes.
Why Tryouts Are Their Own Risk
Tryouts compress everything that’s already risky into a few days.
Maximum effort. You’re being evaluated, so you’re not pacing yourself. Nobody jogs through a tryout.
Unfamiliar volume. Often more running, cutting and repetition in three days than in the previous three months.
Fatigue on top of intensity. Multiple sessions, sometimes multiple days running, with performance still expected on day three.
And a strong incentive to hide problems. Nobody reports a tight hamstring during a tryout. They push through it, because saying something feels like withdrawing.
That last one is worth naming out loud, because it’s the mechanism by which a minor issue becomes a season-ending one.
What to Do in the Six Weeks Before
If your season starts in six weeks, this is the window that matters. Here’s a realistic order of priorities.
Weeks 1 and 2: Build the base
Start running before you’re asked to. Not sprinting — general running volume, gradually increased, so that your legs have absorbed some mileage before the first practice.
Begin strength work if you’re not already doing it. Two sessions a week covering legs, hips, and the posterior chain.
And start eccentric hamstring work now. This deserves emphasis, and it’s the subject of our companion article — but the short version is that research indicates you need at least six weeks of consistent work to see meaningful gains in eccentric hamstring strength. Starting the week of tryouts is too late to matter.
Weeks 3 and 4: Add speed gradually
Introduce strides and controlled acceleration work before you’re asked to sprint flat out.
This is the single most common gap I see. Athletes arrive at tryouts having done conditioning but having never run at genuinely high speed since last season — and hamstring strains predominantly occur during high-speed running, specifically in the late-swing phase of the running cycle.
You cannot prepare for maximum-velocity sprinting with tempo runs. The tissue needs exposure to the actual speed.
Add change of direction work too, particularly for lacrosse, soccer and tennis.
Weeks 5 and 6: Sport-specific and sharpening
Now the specific demands — throwing volume for baseball and softball, jumping for track, stick work and cutting for lacrosse, serving for tennis.
Build throwing volume gradually and well before the first practice. Arriving at tryouts having thrown twice is how throwing arms get hurt.
And practice under fatigue. Doing your sport fresh tells you very little about how you’ll move on day three of tryouts.
If You’ve Got Two Weeks, Not Six
Realistically, many athletes read this too late. So here’s the triage version.
Prioritize speed exposure. If you do one thing, get some high-speed running in before you’re asked to sprint competitively. Build up over several sessions rather than one all-out effort.
Start the eccentric hamstring work anyway. Six weeks is better, but starting is better than not starting, and it continues to pay off during the season.
Show up honest. If you’re underprepared, know it. Pace yourself where you can, and don’t try to prove your fitness on day one.
And protect the first week. Athletes who make it through the opening fortnight intact usually have a considerably better season than those who arrive underprepared and get hurt establishing themselves.
The Multi-Sport Athlete’s Specific Problem
Worth flagging, because spring is where it bites.
If you played a winter sport, you may be going from the end of one competitive season directly into tryouts for another — no transition, no build, and accumulated fatigue from the season you just finished.
Practically: you’re not starting from zero, which is good. But you’re also not starting fresh, and the demands are different. Basketball fitness is not lacrosse fitness. Wrestling conditioning is not sprint conditioning.
Give yourself a transition week where you can, and be particularly attentive to anything that was already nagging at the end of your winter season. Carrying an existing problem into a new sport is one of the more reliable ways to lose the spring.
What to Watch For in Those First Weeks
Normal: general muscle soreness, fatigue, feeling out of shape. Improves week over week.
Not normal, and worth reporting:
Sharp, pinpoint pain on a bone that gets worse the longer you run. That pattern is the reverse of most soft tissue problems and warrants prompt assessment.
Any pain that changes how you move. Limping, favoring a side, altering your stride — even slightly.
A pop or sudden sharp pain with loss of function.
Pain at rest or at night.
Swelling, or a joint giving way.
Anything still bothering you after two weeks despite backing off.
And use the next-morning test throughout. Train, then check in 24 hours later. Back to baseline means the load was appropriate. Clearly worse means it wasn’t — reduce and rebuild.
For Parents and Coaches
The athlete probably won’t tell you. Roster spots are at stake, and reporting a niggle during tryouts feels like conceding. Watch for changes in movement rather than waiting for a report.
Watch the aggregate. School practice, club team, private lessons and open gyms all add up, and no single coach sees the total. Somebody has to hold the whole number.
And a niggle addressed in week two costs two weeks. The same niggle ignored through the season costs months. That framing works with athletes considerably better than being told to be careful.
Get Screened Before the Season, Not After
The most useful appointment isn’t the one after something tears. It’s the one in February, when there’s still time to do something about what we find.
Sports PT Centers offers a free discovery visit at no cost and no obligation. You’ll get an assessment of your strength, movement, and injury history, an honest read on where your vulnerabilities sit heading into this season, and a plan that fits around your schedule.
If you’re already carrying something, we’ll tell you plainly what it is and what it will take to be ready.
Book your free discovery visit today.