Why Winter & Off-Season Training is Vital for Endurance Athletes - Coach Tip Tuesday

I wish we had a different name for The Off-Season.  Calling it what we do gives the impression that it’s meant to be a season when athletes should take time completely off from training or anything endurance sports related, which isn’t true.  Thus, its name implies that it is an unimportant phase of training, and nothing could be further from the truth than that.  

Some athletes may use the Off-Season as a time to take time off from any and all training-related activities.  But athletes who incorporate endurance sports as part of their lifestyle (rather than just as a one or two-off goal) can’t do this if they want to maintain their fitness, and they definitely cannot take such a long period of time off if they want to increase their fitness and see performance gains.

The Off-Season’s True Purpose

The Off-Season (or Maintenance Phase, as it’s “officially” known in the context of an Annual Training Plan) typically lasts four to eight weeks and it serves two incredibly important functions.  The first function is to allow athletes to off-load a bit of the training that they sustain and the fatigue that they have built up over the course of the main season.  (It’s very important to note that “off-load” does not mean “take completely off”.)  In short, athletes go through a period of planned detraining during the Off-Season.  

Detraining is the partial or complete loss of training-induced adaptations in response to an insufficient training stimulus.  Training cessation, on the other hand, is a complete stop of all training-related activities.  A lot of athletes mistakenly think that the Off-Season is time for training cessation, when it’s actually meant to be a time of planned detraining that results in the partial loss of the adaptations that resulted from the most recent season’s training.  In fact, utilizing the Off-Season as a period of training cessation is often the very worst thing an athlete can do when it comes to setting up their subsequent season (and seasons) for success.

Proper detraining is really important because it allows the body to become resensitized to the training volume and intensity that will be necessary to make performance and fitness gains in the future - both in the upcoming season and in seasons to come.  Studies have shown that there is a “Goldilocks” amount of detraining that athletes must incur in order to see gains in the future.  Too much detraining causes too far of a setback that they cannot recover from.  Too little causes stagnation, overuse, or burnout.

All endurance sports training is a planned manipulation of variables such as duration, intensity, and frequency in order to achieve desired adaptations which in turn lead to achieving a desired outcome.  In short, training is a manipulation of different stimuli in order to elicit desired adaptations.  The body needs different and varied stimuli in order to keep it guessing at what is coming next; it gets “bored” relatively easily, and when it is bored, it will not adapt.  Variability keeps it adapting to the stimulus that is imposed on it, and it’s these desired adaptations that we are ultimately seeking in endurance sports training.  Desensitizing the body to some stimulus allows it to be ready to “receive” imposed training and stimulus in the future.

The second key function of the Off-Season is to establish a good foundation of habits and behaviors that will set an athlete up for greater success in the upcoming seasons and beyond.  It’s not uncommon for athletes to drift away from good habits and behaviors over the course of a training and racing season.  As goal races loom near, as life unfolds in ways we don’t expect, and as we accumulate fatigue over the course of a season, keeping up with all of the important, foundational habits that set us up for success can seem overwhelming and/or unimportant.  It becomes easier to justify neglecting these things as the season wears on.  The Off-Season provides an important time to reconnect with and to reestablish these all-important good habits, perhaps even solidifying them a bit more so that they have more staying power in the coming season than they have in the past.

The number one correlation between the best athletes - both age-group and professional - is a successfully executed Off-Season.  Unfortunately, too few athletes recognize this truth, and they mismanage the Off-Season.  They either do too little or too much.  Then, in the coming season, they don’t fully achieve the goals that they set for themselves.  They wonder why.  Often, they point to factors that may have influenced their season’s outcome, but are not the true root cause.

Unfortunately, the passage of time is deceiving for athletes; because a decent amount of time has passed between the Off-Season and their A-Goal race, they don’t attribute their lack of success to something they did (or didn’t) do 8-9 months ago.  They think that the reason must be more acute, something closer, something that they can wrap their fingers (and head) around more clearly.

But what you do now impacts what you will be able to do later.   What you do in the Off-Season will (not might) have very real and profound impacts on the next season and the ones that follow it.  The good news is that this goes both ways.  If the Off-Season isn’t planned and executed well, it will have negative impacts on what you are able to do in the upcoming season.  But if it is executed well, then it can have tremendously positive impacts on what you are able to do in the upcoming season.

If you remain consistent, lay down a solid foundation of habits and behaviors, and embrace the truth that what you’re doing now is going to enable you to do more specific training later on, you will set yourself up to have the highest probability of reaching your goals in the upcoming season.

Why the Off-Season is so Challenging to Manage

The Off-Season is tricky because you don’t “need” to train.  You don’t have A-Goal races looming, and A-Races are a major source of motivation for most athletes to train “seriously” (aka frequently and consistently).  Many, many athletes try to resist this truth, but the COVID-19 Pandemic - when all races were cancelled and many athletes stopped training entirely as a result - clearly showed us that most athletes are not as intrinsically motivated as they might wish or imagine themselves to be.  Most athletes are motivated by external things such as races.  And this is okay.  In fact, it’s more than okay.  It’s normal and totally acceptable.  If you fall into this bucket (and remember: it’s most probable that you do), it’s important to embrace this truth and work with it so we can leverage it to your advantage.

The Off-Season also falls during a season - Winter - when athletes generally have lower motivation to train.  For athletes living in colder climates, this is due to the fact that a lot of their training gets moved indoors versus outdoors, which can be boring (to say the least), and in turn is demotivating for obvious reasons.  The decrease in daylight and exposure to sunlight and outdoor elements can (and does) cause some people to experience Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is a type of depression that happens during certain seasons (Fall and Winter) of the year.  It is set off by shorter days and less daylight, which in turn causes chemical changes in the brain that lead to symptoms of depression, especially for people who live in higher latitudes.  Thankfully, exercise does significantly counteract these seasonal effects and the effects of depression.  Athletes who remain active through the Fall and Winter seasons (and therefore the Off-Season) often report better mental health outcomes than those who decide to stop training.

Finally, for our friends in the Northern Hemisphere, the Off-Season also overlaps with the holiday season.  For those of us who live in the United States, the holidays represent an even bigger chunk of time and an even bigger obstacle since we celebrate Thanksgiving in November.  Obligations, travel, family visits, and memories (perhaps sad ones) of holiday seasons past can all create a maelstrom that makes it challenging to train during this time of year.  

You Need to Want to Train in the Off-Season

Since the absence of looming A-Races means that you don’t “need” to train in the Off-Season and because there are significant seasonal motivational factors in play, you need to want to train if you are going to train successfully during this time of year.  The question you need to ask yourself is this: Do you want to?

Most athletes will naively answer with a resounding, “Yes!”  But they often respond this way without really thinking it through, and without truly understanding their “why” - their deep-rooted reason for setting endurance sports goals and engaging in endurance sports training.  The most important component to understanding if you want to train through the Off-Season is to understand what your why is.  To understand - truly understand - what your why is, you must know your authentic self and be setting goals that are in alignment with it.

Athletes also often imagine that inspiration and motivation to do something - such as training - will strike them randomly, like a lightning bolt coming down from the sky.  But this is an inaccurate imagining, to say the least.  Like so many things in both endurance sports and in life, intentional action is the catalyst for future actions.  In the context of this conversation, deciding that you want to train and then doing it is often the thing that will yield more motivation to train.  In essence, doing a given thing begets more desire to do said thing.  As I’ve said many times over the years: You don’t need to feel good to get going; you need to get going and give yourself a chance to feel good.  You need to decide what you want.  You need to decide to want to train in the Off-Season if you are going to do it.

The Power of the Off-Season

If you do decide to take this important (though admittedly sometimes challenging) step to train, you will be rewarded in the coming season and subsequent seasons with increased durability, resilience, mental strength, and mental health.  In other words: You will have a wide array of skills and tools at your disposal in the coming season to help you achieve the goals you set for yourself.

As I’ve touted for most of my career, consistency is one of the most important things an athlete can do for their training and performance.  Maintaining a training routine through the Off-Season represents a manifestation of consistency.  While consistency is important through the main season, it is important through all phases of training, even if race day (or anything similarly important to you) is many months or even years away.  Consistency is what sets the stage for your body (and mind) to be able to handle more specific training, which usually comes in the form of increased volume and/or intensity.  You will not be able to handle higher volume or intensity loads if you don’t have a solid foundation of consistency.

But there is balance here; just because consistency is important doesn’t mean that you need to train as hard, as much, or as specifically as you do during the main season.  Remember: One of the most important functions of the Off-Season is to get the body in a state where it is going to be resensitized to the specifics of training in the main season.  In other words: It is meant to prepare your body to be able to handle the load that is yet to come.  Stress + Rest = Growth.  The Off-Season serves as the rest component of this equation in the context of an Annual Training Plan.

The Bottom Line

The Off-Season may be off-putting to some, but athletes who want to maintain fitness and see performance gains should treat this time of year with reverence and seek to manage it well.  During this time of year, a lack of races, seasonal changes, and a lot of obligations can become convenient excuses to set workouts aside.  Ask yourself if you want to train at this time of year.  And if you do: Be sure you remind yourself of your why - the reason that you set goals and do endurance sports in the first place.  By deciding that you want to train and making a conscious choice to do so, you will make the Off-Season a much more pleasant time of year.