How to keep fit in the offseason: 5 rules for triathletes and runners

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

To prepare well for the competition in the new season, there are a few rules to follow. What to include in your training plan in the offseason to increase strength and improve your technique - Lifehacker gives advice from professional trainers.

Welcome to the off season. Praise yourself for another busy year and meet winter with a good plan of action.

“You may fear that you will never return to your previous fitness,” says Gordo Byrn, co-author of Going Long and head coach of Endurance Corner, “but you've found yourself in this situation before. If you've had a training breakthrough this year, you need to give yourself time to recover. That doesn't mean you leave your bike in the garage and spend three months on the couch eating chips. Now is the time to shift the focus to health promotion and move away from structured training.”

Not having a plan for the offseason is a common mistake. What you do in winter should reflect your goals for the spring.

If you are an intermediate athlete who plays sports for fun, in winter you can just relax and do nothing. But the athletes taking part in the competition cannot afford to rest until March.

The key to successful offseason training is finding the perfect balance between your ambitious training plan and your usual laziness. The following rules will help you harmoniously combine both.

Rule # 1. Don't run a marathon

If you plan to take part in a marathon to keep yourself motivated, it can be bad for your health and negatively affect racing in the new season.

“Between seasons, it’s a great time to concentrate on one of the three disciplines, but always remember that you’re doing this to get better at triathlon,” says Coach Matt Dixon of Purple Patch Fitness.

While many people decide to run a marathon in the offseason to become a better runner, it rarely really affects triathlon running performance. Running a long distance while you're mostly resting is a surefire way to get hurt or burned out.

Rule # 2. Focus on short, intense workouts

Trainer Patrick McCrann recommends replacing long aerobic training with another approach, short runs and cycling, that will increase your lactate threshold and power output.

“This is a high-level fitness, it is not easy to do it, so we suggest choosing such classes in the off-season. You can increase the volume of training and then, says McCrann. “You don’t have to do four-hour bike rides; instead, do a hard, intense workout and recover.”

McCrann calls his training plan OutSeason and this is one of the most important parts of the year for his athletes. This is a 20 week plan in which training takes only 6-8 hours per week (four cycling, three running, minimum swimming), and Monday and Friday are weekends.

The coach claims that a small amount of training allows athletes to focus on other aspects of their life: work, family, friends - areas that are difficult to achieve during the sports season.

The plan includes a lot of interval training to increase VO₂ max (maximum oxygen consumption) and exercises in the fourth and fifth cardio zones, aimed at increasing speed.

“It would take so long for your body to adapt to ride at 27 kilometers per hour that you had to quit your job,” McCrann says. - It's like lifting weights. If you lift 100 kilograms and want to increase that figure to 150 kilograms, you won't be doing bench press with 80 kilograms all winter.”

Plus, increasing your aerobic threshold and strength can boost your confidence in the next year. McCran calls this "building mental abs".

The 3,000 Endurance Nation athletes who made it through the offseason saw an average improvement of two and a half minutes on 10 kilometers, their half marathon time by 4 minutes 46 seconds, and functional performance by 50%.

Rule number 3. Gain weight

“You probably think it’s going to happen anyway, but deliberately increasing your body weight by 8-12% can significantly improve your performance,” says nutrition and performance coach Krista Austin, who works with Olympic athletes. level of training such as Laura Bennett and Meb Keflezighi.

If you find it difficult to gain and then lose weight, don't worry: you can use a weight vest with a similar hypergravity effect.

“Triathletes prefer to keep one weight,” Austin says. “However, research has shown that you can gain extra weight and adapt to exercise. And at this time, you may not pay much attention to your diet, which, in my opinion, provides psychological rest."

Let's say your weight for a competition is 64 kilograms. During the winter, you adapt to training with a weight of 68 kilograms. By training with this weight, you train your body to use more motoneurons and muscle fibers - as if more people began to work on an assembly line.

When your body returns to 64 kilograms again, the conveyor workers have less work to do, so they can do more before they get tired.

Muscles work the same way. When you lose 4 kilograms, you need less oxygen and you can run more kilometers.

Austin forces his athletes to consume more calories than they are used to, such as eating sundae before bed (no joke). They gain weight in a couple of months, during which the volume and intensity of training decreases, and by the beginning of the season Austin is simply eliminating excess calories from their diet.

Many of Austin's athletes feel the benefits of carrying a few extra pounds. Some people see an increase in power output, others sleep better (according to Austin, this is the best way to increase performance), and as a result, athletes prepare to compete with higher weight.

Rule # 4. Swim More

What do children do when they learn to swim? They swim a lot. Byrne advises athletes to set aside one week (or two if you have a higher level of fitness) and swim every day. You will be amazed at how quickly your performance improves with this training frequency.

“Swimming is often the weak point of triathletes. It's a technically challenging sport that requires a high frequency and a lot of training to really be successful, says Dixon. “During the racing season, it is difficult to find as much time as is necessary to achieve high results in swimming.”

According to Byrne, the best time to pump up your swimming skills are the months that are not suitable for cycling.

But McCrann proposes to shorten the swimming in winter to save time. For athletes with technical disabilities (and those who need more than 2 minutes to swim 90 meters), he advises to take one-to-one sessions with a coach, work on what you have learned for 4-6 weeks, and then move on to the next session.

Rule # 5. Go to the gym

If your goal is to burn calories, you can do cardio workout on an elliptical machine. Don't expect it to help you become a good runner. Swimming, cycling and running are always the best workouts for triathletes.

Other than the three core workouts, which workouts will provide the most benefits for triathletes? Try strength sports.

Numerous studies show that weight training can help you save energy while running and cycling.

A recent study in Norway found that eight weeks of strength training increased cyclists' performance by 1.4%. And a 2009 study in Brazil found that heavy weight training improved performance better than explosive strength training.

“In the winter, you can increase the volume and intensity of your strength training without worrying about how it will affect your fitness,” says physical therapist Bryan Hill. "Of course, you have to take into account that if you damage something in the gym, you will have to pay for it during the next race."