A well planned off season can be the best investment for the next season. During the lead-up to your season “A” race the chances are you have focused on aerobic endurance and threshold training to increase durability. Family time and exercise variability has probably suffered, right? Off-season regeneration is critical for sustained improvement.
The off season is a critical time for re-generation and setting up the next season and beyond.
Consider the following:
- Family time: repay your family for their support and patience, spend some quality time, enjoy their company!
- Do something different or activities you stopped due to time constraints. Golf, hiking, yoga, gardening, anything remotely relaxing.
- Catch-up on chores and diy, no doubt you are behind on these!
- Use your fitness on short run races, sprint tris, park runs, summer season open water swims.
Before ramping up for the next season, another great investment is to build force and improve efficiency. Top athletes are highly efficient and have developed a great functional force baseline. These are had to develop during the race prep program.
Try build this into your pre-season:
- Do a strength block in the gym. Develop primary limb force to underpin power. This will build natural speed and increase injury resilience. I recommend a progression base maximal strength program (3 sets of 6 reps at maximum load. If you can do 10, increase load).
- Focus on technique, learn how to swim and run again. Drop swim and run squad, stop the long runs and speed and spend 6 to 8 weeks on pure technique. Do a Total Immersion swim program, find a specialist run/bike coach and focus on removing technique in-efficiencies.
If you do anything, make sure you change thing up, consistency is important during season, but off-season regeneration is the key to the next season!
