First off, you can’t race a car hard as possible non-stop without something eventually breaking down. The human body is much the same.

The time of year coming is an opportunity to focus on improving the functional movement patterns associated with your sport and general strength and conditioning. This should probably be the majority of the work done in the off-season. This work helps establish a base for the coming season.
Improving functional movement patterns like jumping, landing, decelerating, squatting, hinging at the hip, pushing, pulling, lateral movements, etc.

The conditioning work done to the aerobic system in the off-season provides the base for the higher-intensity demands to come in the pre-season and competitive seasons. The improvement of strength creates the potential to sprint faster, jump higher, and hit harder during the competitive season. (Not slow you down you old skoolers).

When strength training, the focus should be on functional movement patterns rather than on specific muscles. For example, you want to improve strength in fundamental movement patterns such as squatting, hip hinging (deadlifts), pushing, pulling, and core stability.
I’d be advising to avoid most gym machines and stick to free weights, bands, etc. Machines tend to take the ability to use stabilising muscles out of the movement, unless your gym has purpose built machines obviously.

I could go on but I will leave it at that. Just make sure you have a good plan in place, keep your mobility throughout with plenty of stretching, what could possibly happen only you improve!?

If you don’t agree argue with the lads at the top of the game Padraig Maher, Conor Whelan (last season’s strength and conditioning made him the player he was this year), Diarmuid Connolly, etc. Certainly wasn’t a few squats or burpees in pre-season that made them look or perform like that!!