I recently went for a 5 mile trail run with one of my clients. Both of us are in our off season and profess to be miserably out of shape. We started off at an arbitrary walk; in this shape I can’t even begin with a slow jog, and certainly not uphill. After leading the pace for a while I begged him to take the lead. I didn’t mention the reason was because my butt felt like it was jiggling like jello and I didn’t want him to have to stare at it. My steady diet of beer, fast food, and Thanksgiving pie had caught up with me.
If your goal is to reach a new peak in fitness this year, do you realize that the first, most important step is to get out of shape? If you have finished one season where you reached any sort of peak fitness it is imperative that you engage in adequate and extensive recovery. Yes, that means you have to lose fitness.
This is a basic premise of periodization. Fitness improves in cycles, and every cycle involves both an ebb and flow. In technical jargon you are ending one macrocycle and preparing for the next one. Just like you wouldn’t train long and hard 7 days per week, you also can’t do it 12 months per year. If you want to have some good days—or months—then you need to plan some down times also.
Another common off-season fear is that you will gain weight if you reduce exercise. If you are coming off of peak training super skinny race weight, then it is good to gain a little weight; muscle and fat. I may not be happy with the increasingly softer mid-section, but people no longer say my face looks like a concentration camp survivor. In any case you might be surprised; your off season weight gains will be minimal if you show a little extra discipline with your eating.
Client and I ran 5 mile trail loop. Actually we alternated between jogging and walking. I begged for mercy on the uphills, declaring walk breaks when the gradient steepened. Thankfully our time was limited and I had to leave in time for church, because I was ready to be done. Memories of fast 12 mile runs on these same trails seemed far away. If this had been my first off season I might be like many endurance athletes who get panicky: “I don’t want to lose what I have worked so hard to gain.”
I have horror stories...HORROR STORIES of people who have failed to do this and paid dearly. Newly minted endurance athletes are particularly susceptible. The endorphins and excitement of getting into really, really good shape is hard to set aside. The fear is "I don't want to lose what I've worked so hard to gain."
This paranoia--that you will irretrievably lose fitness if you allow yourself a recovery off season—is simply unfounded. Twenty years as an endurance athlete has shown me one very reliable truth: It is very predictable that you will get back to your best fitness, but it takes a major effort and effective strategy to surpass it. And that requires you to be well-rested before such an arduous campaign begins.
You don’t HAVE to take an off season in the winter. You might be running a marathon between December-February, and thus you should be firing on all cylinders right now. You might take a mini-off season after that half iron triathlon scheduled in May. But one thing is irrefutable; it is impossible to keep training hard year-round without consequences of burnout, diminished results, and injury.
How do you know if you have recovered? It should feel as if you have lost fitness. You should feel lazy and laborious when you start training. Do not worry that your times/paces/splits are slower. Remember, you have to lose fitness to gain fitness.
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