Have you spent this last year under-performing, feeling tired during most of your training and not responding to training as you would like or expect? Or perhaps you are an experienced endurance cyclist or runner battling cyclical fatigue or a masters athlete finding it hard to maintain performance? An off season might be just what you need to get back on track.
I often plan an off season for endurance athletes; this helps them recover from a season of racing and come back stronger building on the fitness gains from the year before. This approach works far better than battling through and suffering from a permanent latent fatigue that pervades season after season.
I have provided some samples of what an off season might look like in the body of this article so hopefully as you read through you can develop your own off-season using the frameworks and suggestions.
There is an established pattern in endurance sports of people having an amazing season where they seem unstoppable which is then never repeated. They never quite get the form and success they had in that first year; their functional threshold power and performances gradually get worse and worse.
Sadly it is the most dedicated athletes who often suffer burn out because in line with social media they see time off as a weakness and something to be avoided. They worry that time off will mean they ‘lose more than they gain’ as they fear a loss in the magical Functional Threshold Power or Pace.
Masters athletes in particular often find that their performances become less and less predictable as they experience cyclical fatigue throughout the seasons. Periods of good performance and training followed by periods of fatigue that compromise the quality of your training or stop you from training altogether which happen year on year can become an established and frustrating pattern.
Longevity and good performances season on season are not a happy accident; they come from carefully planned down time, allowing the body to recover and adapt and avoiding falling into the trap of non-functional over-reaching (NFO) or worse still Over-Training Syndrome.
If you train when you are too tired and under-recovered you will only make yourself more tired; this is a waste of training.
Off season does not necessarily mean ‘do nothing.’ Rather it’s a scaling back to a very basic, light easily manageable routine to help recovery. Depending on your overall training volume this might be as little as a third or even a quarter of what you do in some of the heavier training periods in your training cycle.
Some people like to do more frequent but very short workouts to maintain routine, where others prefer to have more complete rest days where they don't have to worry about training at all. Whatever you decide, it's usually better to have a very conservative plan that you know you can easily fulfil than an ambitious one which might not give you the rest and recovery you need.
An example of a week’s training for an ultra endurance cyclist in an ‘off season might look like this:
An example of a week’s training for an ultra endurance runner in an off season might look like this:
For people who use their sport for psychological wellness it's really important to get the balance right between maintaining a base routine of movement you need with recovery. In this case, or maybe just because you enjoy different sports it can be good to have a complete break from you main discipline and do some cross training for a few weeks or even over the winter season.
Cross Training for longevity is an established way to maintain base fitness yet allow some time off from a sport. The fatigue induced from one sport seems not to affect a chosen alternative and the switch provides the freshness you need so long as you don't overdo it.
Good examples of cross training include:
You can also simply shift the focus to these sports and reduce the volume of your main sport to one or two short sessions.
It’s usually better not to set strict time limits on down time at the end of a season but rather be open and flexible to come back when you are ready. For some people 3 weeks might feel like enough, others may need 8 weeks or more. I usually plan one block off after the usual break from the last race and then review how things are going before planning the next, deciding at that point whether to have another off block or to start base training.
For good results it’s best to plan your training year so that your off season falls at the end of your last race and you allow enough time for both some down time and a Base and Build Phase of periodization before your next big race.
It’s usually a good idea to have a system outside of training data which is a good indicator that you are recovering. This can include a mixture of numerical analysis and expert judgement (this includes your own judgement and that of a professional coach if you are working with one).
Our traffic light system can help form a basis of good expert judgement based on a mixture of data analysis and your own assessment. You can track and combine things like HRV with your own subjective feelings to rate each day as Green, Yellow or Red. Over time, with the use of AI, you can see patterns developing. A sign that you might be ready to start increasing training and coming out of your off season might for example be a week of consecutive green days (all else being equal).
For more information about overtraining you can check out our article: How Much Training is Too Much for Endurance Athletes?
The benefits of scaling back aren’t always seen in the numbers. In fact if you track any numbers in training you may be alarmed to see the fitness score dropping. However, numbers don’t always accurately reflect fatigue for several reasons:
A period of time of reduced training helps you to reset psychologically by giving you more space without performance pressure. It ensures that physiologically you have given your body time to recover from the high demands of a season, especially if you have done one or more ultra distance events. It also opens up time that you might not have during periods of harder training to spend with family and friends .
Perhaps most importantly, an off season sets you up for a good period of base winter training followed by a strong spring build without latent fatigue and a feeling of staleness.
Most people are pleasantly surprised with how fresh they feel when they get back into training and with how quickly they start to see good powers/pace in training.
If you want to have a strong season next year, a period of reduced training load or even some time off and a bit of cross training might be just what you need. Counterintuitively this can be a time when 1-1 coaching is the most helpful.
The main difference between non-functional overreaching (NFO) and overtraining as defined by British cycling is grammatical: non-functional overreaching describes a period of time where you work hard and generate fatigue but due to inadequate recovery fail to see the fitness gains you would expect and get worse. Overtraining is the verb to describe the process of non-functional overreaching. If you spend a long period of time in this condition you can develop overtraining syndrome where your performance and tolerance for exercise drops to a point you may have to take significant time off and will be unable to compete at your usual level; it is usually diagnosed by a sports doctor.
This article gives a comprehensive and in my opinion compelling description of the multi-faceted aspects of Non-Functional Overreaching and overtraining.
If you have done a season of very long ultra distance events you will typically find that speed is the last thing to return; so you will tolerate easy zone 2 exercise much sooner than speed. I tend to reintroduce speed gradually for ultra distance cyclists and runners either when I notice someone is reporting training as easy but pace and/power power are creeping up or by suggesting some ‘free runs’ where they run to feel and can ‘push on a bit’ or even do an unstructured fartleck if they feel good. Like most things it is largely personal: some people just like a good chunk of time where they can just enjoy some zone 2 exercise outside; others find this too boring and once they are ready we bring back in some speed. If you fall into the latter category it’s important to be careful to wait until you are ready; good readiness signs include your heart rate responding normally and not being unusually high or unresponsive, your perception of effort matches your power output/pace and you need a normal amount of recovery time.
A complete break means just that: a complete break. Weight training, whilst it might not necessarily contribute to your ‘fitness’ score creates wear and tear on your body as well as psychological stress. It can be good to spend some time in a very light period where you just focus on ironing out some imbalances with light rehabilitation/pre-habilitation exercise or core work (yoga, pilates).
For Masters Athletes in particular, after your off season, as you progress into your base period this can be a good time to focus on a good strength block, especially in winter when being in the gym can be much more appealing than cold dark roads/trails. Volume can be lower in this block and with less speed work to try and programme around the strength this is a perfect time to make some functional strength gains. Depending on volume and how much you like strength training you could do as much as 3 times per week in this block and look to do a minimum of twice per week to make significant gains.