Sponsored by:
With the final Canadian Spartan Race now behind us many of our athletes are now heading into their most crucial time of the year: offseason and winter training! Many athletes miss out on MASSIVE fitness gains by skipping their offseason and/or ceasing training until April-May. As we always say: these upcoming months are where the real work happens, not 6 weeks out from your race. In this blog we'll cover our definition of offseason (hint: just because the word "off" is in the name does not mean we stop training), why you should continue training over the coming months, and how to structure your training during your offseason and subsequent months.
HOW DO YOU DEFINE OFFSEASON?
After years of talking about this there still seems to be some confusion on what an offseason is. Whenever this word is brought up there is sure to be people who say things like "there's not such thing as an offseason," (or even as one person once put it: "there's no such thing as an offseason, just a more intense season"...uh, what?) or a myriad of other reasons why you shouldn't stop training. Let's clear this up right away: "offseason" does not mean you STOP training entirely. It is simply a period of reduced training volume and focus to allow an athlete to recover physically and mentally from a year of hard training. If it's simpler, just call it "post-season." When encountering someone who attempts to persuade you against programming an offseason (due to whichever reason not based in actual exercise physiology): run the other way. Now that we got that out of the way, how do you define what the offseason is? Everyone's definition is different. Here is ours:
WHAT?: We define "offseason" as the period of time immediately following the final event of the year. The purpose of an offseason is to allow the body and mind to rest, recover, and absorb all the training stimuli from the past year. Unfortunately there is only so much training we can absorb per calendar training year before we begin to plateau and struggle to make gains. By choosing to not ever reduce volume/intensity (i.e the "there's no such thing as an offseason!" people), we risk putting a limit on long term fitness improvements. Remember-the purpose of an offseason is to maintain fitness and exercise to remain active, not to train to gain new fitness as we normally would according to the in-season periodization model ("over-reaching and recovery" to gain new fitness). Considering keeping runs easy (zone 2-3 heart rate) and take this chance to try different, non sport specific exercises/movements aiming at maintaining baseline strength rather than setting PR's.
HOW?: Duration depends on how much training and racing stress you have accumulated. If you haven't raced or time trialed often, you can likely use 1-2 weeks of reduced volume and intensity (aerobic work only, heart rate zones 2-3). Volume reduction will depend on each individual. If you have done multiple events and time trials, you may need to plan for up to 4 weeks (even 6-8 for massive stress and/or burnout) of reduced volume intensity (our Ultra athletes who have done 2-3 + Ultra events may take longer than our non Ultra athletes to recover). After your offseason comes to an end, consider adding in small bouts of "strides" in the final weeks to slowly reintroduce structured speed work.
WHAT TO DO AFTER YOUR OFFSEASON?
The months immediately following your offseason (December-April) are where the real work happens. During these winter months athletes will start working on building up their running volume, building overall strength for their upcoming season, and will finally start building up their training intensity as race season draws near. The goal is that by April our athletes have a higher level of overall fitness than the previous year that we can now use to start building race specific fitness (i.e introducing race-specific workouts in order to enter their "peaking" phase). As you can see, the goal is to use these winter months to arrive at this point of higher fitness so that during the summer we are fine tuning an athlete's race specific skills and fitness rather than trying to build fitness in-season (which can be hard to do with frequent racing as tapering and recovery have to be taken into account).
As you can now see, "Offseason" does not mean you "stop training." By having these planned periods of volume/intensity reduction in your training calendar you can ensure long term yearly progressions. Enjoy the next few weeks of reduced focus so that you can attack the rest of your year (and goals) head on!
Need help programming your Offseason and the rest of your year? Click the below to check out our 1 on 1 personalized running and OCR training plans and we'll help you get the most out of the coming months:
Do you have questions about how to plan your Offseason? Send us an email: outlawocr@gmail.com