The good and the bad of living in the North East

Living in the North East has its ups and downs when it comes to the golf season.  The good is that the cold and snow force players to have an off season (unless you are a snow bird).  The bad is that you want to squeak out as much of a golf season as you can before the weather turns bad.  

It is hard to come up with a time frame for training in the off season.  Do you start early and sacrifice missing out on the end of the season?  Just to develop more strength/flexibility/power for next year?  Or do you wait to start your training to get the most you can out of the current season?  How much time is best for an off season training schedule?  2, 3, 4 months?  

Here is my take on the situation and I want to know what others truly think.  I always make the most of the season that I have now because you never know what next year is going to bring.  You could injure yourself in the off season skiing and not be able to play the next season.  I always feel like 3-4 months is a good amount of time to develop a good base level of strength and then ample time to develop some power (for a beginner).  For more advanced players that allows plenty of enough time for both strength and power development.  The beginning of our season up here is mostly rain so there isnt much golf to be played.  I would rather chance a poor round at the beginning of the year because I am sore from a great workout vs. miss last year because I wanted to get an early jump on training.  So if you start your training in December and go until the beginning of April you get the best of both worlds.  A fun season with an off season full of working out.

What does everyone else think?