The off season is seen as a period of rest that follows on from the last race of summer and can be a period of between two and six weeks in length. Conventional wisdom always seems to follow what elites do in the sport: coaches assume that every athlete is the same in terms of the stresses race season exerts.
Let’s look at an example of the elite athlete and then at the amateur athlete.
Elite athletes tend to get to that last race of the season spent, both physically and mentally. They push their bodies beyond normal levels in the pursuit of excellence and that, coupled with travelling and a lot of racing, brings a high level of stress for the body.
Taking into account that livelihood is dependent upon performance, not just turning up and racing, it is no surprise that come the end of the season most elite athletes need time away from the sport to relax and regroup before another season begins.
You only need to look at Twitter and note that post Hawaii there is a definite trend among elite athletes and it’s very simply: relax and party. The last thing on their mind is training!
For sure some athletes need that rest for physical reasons. Always pushing the body can lead to metabolic imbalances that need rest time to come back into balance. After all, the body will not adapt to training if it is not balanced.
But the main reason for a rest and time away from the sport is mental regeneration. Training is fun and we all love it and thrive on it. But as we go through race season we must get certain workouts in at certain times, even when we are tired and sore, in order to perform at our best. This takes a toll on our motivation and mental state, and it’s good to know that rest is coming!
It is always interesting to see athletes in this state, watch them going into final races of the season looking forward to a long break and not thinking about the sport—and then, after just one week of rest, they are bouncing off the walls ready to go again. It just goes to show that it’s really a mental state and not a physical one.
Amateur athletes span a whole spectrum of performances, from the newcomer to the almost pro level. In fact in triathlon there are many age groupers who are performing at pro level. I do no think that the level of an athlete is an indicator of needs in the off season, rather the level of pressure that athletes place on themselves to perform.
Some will compete at the very top of the sport and feel no pressure to race. They simply love to be out there exercising. Others will put a lot of pressure on themselves to perform.
When looking at the duration of an off season you need to be honest with yourself and it’s good to have an friend or coach assist you with their opinion! The athlete who always places a lot of pressure on themselves and wants to perform at their very best is unlikely to want to take a break. They will feel they’d be losing all their gains and would be falling behind their goals if they took a rest. If left to their own devices, these athletes would likely push on and never take time away from training.
Such athletes, though, tend to be tired constantly. If they are honest, they are always fatigued and not able to push as much as they would like to in their harder sessions (leading to more mental strain). A short mental break from the sport can be golden for this type of athlete—a two-week break may give six months of raging motivation, compared with six months of just soldiering on.
Athletes who feel no pressure and just love to be out there will probably not need a break at the end of the season. Taking time away from the sport would be like taking away oxygen to them, it’s such an integral part of their life.
WHEN TO MAKE A DECISION ABOUT OFF SEASON
As I mentioned above, with the elite athlete we tend to see them bouncing off the walls only one week after they felt a desperate need to rest and recover. That means that making a decision about off season at this time would be unwise as everything in the body is saying, Train, train, train!
Rather, sit down two or three weeks before your last race and you will get a much better answer from your body. It is in this time that you should decide upon a duration of time away, if any, from the sport to recover.
While a break from training may be important I think the next phase of training is critical. It’s also where most mistakes are made as athletes follow conventional wisdom by entering a base period of training.
GOODBYE BASE PERIOD
Periodisation is becoming a very outdated theory. The cornerstone of this theory is the base period, a long period of low intensity training, also known as long slow distance (LSD).
Proponents of this style of training will say that the longer the base the more stable your fitness and so the longer you will be able to maintain peak once higher intensity training and racing starts.
In triathlon I think we only need to look at results and racing within the pro ranks to see this way of thinking is outdated. The best triathletes in the world tend to race year-round—they are fit and training hard almost the entire year.
The performance level in our sport is rising all the time and to keep up with this change athletes are using all the available time to advance.
I can assure you that the Brownlee brothers, Gomez, Alexander and the like are not jogging around the park for six months a year before they start high intensity work! You can be sure they are looking at results from one year, determining what they need to do the next year to win before getting to work on that.
To achieve this level they need to be always improving, always making small brick-by-brick advances. This style of training is more effective and the results show it.
It is no question the ITU-style of racing is advancing at an incredible rate. Athletes have moved away from ITU to try Ironman 70.3 or Ironman racing, only to find that when they returned to ITU races they simply got left behind. The level is so high that if the training is not always specific to racing that style then you are not going to keep up. It has taken athletes more than a year of refocus on the ITU-style of racing to just get back into contention.
At ironguides we use the same approach to training for all our athletes. Our athletes want to be the best they can be and we know that this brick-by-brick approach to fitness and performance is the way to success. Because of it, our athletes achieving levels they never dreamed possible. And, most importantly they enjoy the process of getting there.
I recently had a chat with an athlete before his Ironman goal race. He has managed to train longer and harder, feels fitter and faster, and motivation to race is bubbling over. A perfect situation. Of course the BIG point he mentioned was that he had never before gone into a main race uninjured!
As a coach, I believe that consistency of training is without question the No. 1 goal and injury prevention is the most important element here. We have seen time and time again that our approach, this brick by brick approach, is key to avoiding injuries.
In summary we need to asses whether or not a period of rest is needed post season, and also how long is really needed.
Once back into training we get back to work on improving the athlete and making sure that they are getting the most productive use out of each session as they build toward their goals.
Alun “Woody” Woodward, Certified ironguides Coach – UK/Hungary