Optimizing Offseason Training: How the Ragin’ Cajuns Prep for the Football Season
The Ragin’ Cajuns football performance staff enters the heart of the offseason following spring camp, facing player performance and conditioning challenges common to other American Football programs nationwide. Their approach: optimized practice schedules designed to help players reach performance goals, backed by data.
Mastering the Offseason with Data-Informed Training
Offseason training is a delicate balance of building endurance, refining skills, and preventing injuries — all within strict NCAA guidelines. Under the leadership of Connor Neighbors, Director of Athlete Performance, the Ragin’ Cajuns utilize KINEXON post-session and historical data reports to optimize training, ensuring players are game-ready when the season begins.
Unlike in-season preparation, offseason training lacks a structured competition framework, making it imperative for coaches to simulate game conditions in a controlled environment. The ability to track and analyze key performance indicators such as training loads, sprint speeds, and acceleration/deceleration patterns gives the coaching staff an edge in preparing their athletes for peak performance while minimizing injury risks.
Ragin'Cajuns Offseason Load and Intensity Training Program
Maximizing Limited Training Time
With only eight hours of training allowed per week during offseason workouts, every session must be efficient and intentional. Coaches must find ways to expose players to game-like demands without increasing injury risks. This means carefully undulating practice intensity to increase physical demands while ensuring proper recovery gradually.
Incoming first-year students and transfers present another challenge, as they must quickly acclimate to the team’s rigorous performance standards. The disparity in fitness levels requires a strategic approach that balances individual training needs with the broader team objectives. This is where analytics becomes invaluable, allowing the coaching staff to customize training regimens based on each athlete’s current condition and progress.
“It’s a 60 – 40 split for players in shape and those who need extra conditioning when returning to summer camps,” Neighbors added about how he analyzes player readiness as players return to offseason training.
Strategic Training for Peak Performance
To ensure players reach peak performance before the season, the Ragin’ Cajuns implemented a three-tiered practice structure:
- White Practice: Low-intensity training to build workload.
- Black Practice: High-intensity, high-volume training simulating game conditions.
- Red Practice: A blend of white and black, focusing on fast-twitch movements and endurance.
This structured approach allows coaches to progressively increase player workload, ensuring athletes build endurance without overtraining. By tracking key performance metrics connected to speed, workload, and acceleration/deceleration, the staff fine-tunes training for each athlete, reducing injury risks and maximizing efficiency.
This meticulous monitoring ensures that players can sustain high-intensity efforts while maintaining clear decision-making, a key factor in in-game success.
“The goal is for athletes to reach 90% of their max load and total distance twice weekly. We want to see if a player can accel and decel at game speed with minimal rest without making a mental error.”
Better Training, Stronger Athletes
By leveraging real-time performance data, the Ragin’ Cajuns can identify when players need adjustments to their training loads. When a player’s data trends downward, the staff investigates potential causes, ranging from fatigue to improper recovery strategies.
This proactive approach allows real-time intervention, ensuring players stay on track and avoid setbacks. Whether through additional recovery sessions or modifying training loads, the staff ensures that each athlete maintains optimal conditioning leading into the season.
Another key component is setting benchmarks that align with the Ragin’ Cajuns’ aggressive playing style. “Quick accelerations to close gaps to make a tackle or change direction are critical in football,” said DJ Bennett, Assistant Director of Athletic Performance. By designing training sessions that mimic these demands, the team ensures players are physically and mentally prepared for the challenges ahead. “The metrics allow us to see what we’re doing and set the foundation, but create performance benchmarks to fit our playing style,“ Bennett added.
A well-structured offseason performance plan can be the difference between a team firing on all cylinders after the first whistle and taking the field unprepared. Take the next step and request a demo to learn more about KINEXON’s GPS tracking system, innovating coaching methods to drive player performance.
More stories
Building a Culture of Data-Driven Performance at Benfica
In elite sport, the goal is not just to measure, but to measure with purpose. At Benfica, performance monitoring begins with a question. What do we want to know? What outcome are we trying to influence? Data collection, then, is a means to an end: informed decision-making that improves the physical readiness, longevity, and consistency of athletes across multiple disciplines.
Unlocking a New Era in Sports Performance: What’s Ahead from KINEXON Sports in 2025
In elite team sports, performance is often decided by the smallest details – how efficiently an athlete sprints, how they handle fatigue, and how well a team manages training loads throughout the season. Coaches and performance staff need more than just numbers – they need meaningful insights, in real time, to make the right calls when it matters.
KINEXON Sports App Guide: Phase Index Widget
The Phase Index Widget is a powerful new feature in the KINEXON Sports App that provides coaches with deep insights into training drills. By displaying the normative range of key performance metrics for different drill types, it helps coaches understand typical versus high-end workload demands, compare phases across single sessions (POST) and historical data (DEVELOP), and design training sessions that optimize player development while preventing overtraining.
Revolutionizing Youth Football: Red Bull Wings Cup Meets KINEXON Sports
What if youth football wasn’t just about the score — but about the players who shape the game? That’s the bold vision behind Wings Cup 2025, hosted by RB Leipzig, and why KINEXON Sports proudly partnered with this first-of-its-kind event. From April 22 – 24, 2025, the tournament became the world’s first global youth football competition to feature live player and ball tracking — marking a new era in data-driven player development.
Trust, Autonomy, and the Art of Performance Management in the WNBA
In the high-performance landscape of professional basketball, the pursuit of championships is a given. Yet, true impact often stems from a deeper purpose — one that prioritizes sustained athlete development, both physically and mentally. This perspective underscores a broader definition of success: positively influencing performance on a day-to-day basis, beyond wins and losses.
From Court to Code: The Analytics Behind Athletic Success
In the high-stakes world of competitive basketball, small margins make the difference between winning and losing. This is where optimization becomes the cornerstone of athletic performance. The focus is not just on finding a magic formula, but on creating the conditions for athletes to consistently operate at their best.
Increasing Shooting Efficiency With Data-Informed Insights
As basketball training evolves, teams are embracing data-informed insights to augment shooting efficiency. With every shot carrying potential season-changing weight in competition, refining practice intensity and replicating in-game pressure are key to gaining a competitive edge.
Maximizing Performance During March Madness: Key Strategies & Load Metrics for Coaches
March Madness is one of the most intense and physically demanding periods in collegiate basketball. The congested schedule, high-pressure stakes, and minimal time for recovery require an evidence-based approach to reach and maintain peak performance while mitigating injury risk throughout the tournament.
Optimizing Performance and Reducing Injuries in Professional Basketball
The landscape of professional basketball is evolving rapidly, with teams placing a greater emphasis on performance optimization and injury prevention. In a highly competitive environment like the EuroLeague, where the ultimate goal is to win games and championships, maintaining peak player performance while minimizing injuries is a fundamental challenge.
The Perfect Training Week: How KINEXON Sports Supports Smarter Coaching Decisions
Every coach knows the feeling – standing on the sidelines before a game, confident that the team is fully prepared. The training week went well, the players were engaged, and everything felt right. And when the final whistle confirms the win, the inevitable question arises:
What made this week so effective? How can we replicate it?
How Texas A&M Women’s Basketball Used Data to Prevent Knee Injuries
Knee injuries are a major concern in women’s basketball, with ACL injuries accounting for a significant portion of these issues. Managing player workload is key to injury prevention, but achieving the right balance between training and recovery is challenging. The Texas A&M Women’s Basketball team faced this dilemma and turned to a data-driven approach to optimize player health and performance.
KINEXON Tracking Technologies Earn Top Marks in FIFA EPTS Performance Tests
When it comes to tracking technology in sports, precision is everything. And once again, KINEXON has proven why it’s a leader in the field. Our cutting-edge KINEXON PERFORM GPS Elite, GPS Pro, and LPS tracking systems recently underwent FIFA’s 2024 Electronic Performance and Tracking System (EPTS) performance tests — and the results were nothing short of outstanding.
Transforming Sports in 2025: Insights from KINEXON Sports for Coaches, Fans, and Referees
As sports technology evolves, 2025 promises to be a landmark year with KINEXON Sports at the forefront. Renowned for its innovations in real-time tracking and analytics, KINEXON Sports is revolutionizing the way athletes, coaches, fans, and referees experience the game.
From delivering game-changing insights to enhancing fan engagement and officiating precision, here’s what to expect from KINEXON Sports in 2025.
How Jump Count Analytics Drive Arizona State Volleyball’s Training and Match Success
Adjusting practice schedules is a fine line for coaches to walk to maximize player performance. Arizona State’s Jake Garrity, the Assistant Head Coach of Sports Performance/Sports Science for women’s volleyball, focuses on live jump count performance analytics to lay the foundation for when the coaching staff adjusts practice intensity.
5 Facts That (Probably) Nobody Knew About KINEXON Sports Teams
Ten years ago, KINEXON Sports embarked on a journey to revolutionize the game. What began as a bold idea in Munich’s iconic Allianz Arena has evolved into a global success story, empowering over 500 elite sports teams worldwide.
As we reflect on this incredible decade, here are five surprising facts about KINEXON Sports that showcase how far we’ve come — and where we’re headed next.