How to plan your training in the off-season 

To ensure healthy, continuous year-on-year progression, athletes should learn how to plan their off-season training effectively to ensure they find the right balance between recovering and recharging from the last season and setting themselves up to build into the next season.

In order to do so, you need an off-season. But what is that? An off-season is when you take a break from regular training.

So before you dive into winter activities such as duathlon, mountain biking, trail running and cold-water swimming (if that’s your thing!), you take the opportunity to recharge your mind and body to regain balance after a busy season of racing. 

Some athletes find stopping the most challenging part; others find restarting requires a lot of discipline.

Either way, accepting that the off-season isn’t ‘not training’ but part of the training cycle can help both athletes use this time effectively and improve their performance in the upcoming season.

How long should your off-season last?

The off-season will likely last about six to twelve weeks, depending on the athlete and their aims. Though many athletes complain about how they feel as they restart training again, they should see this as an opportunity to make some substantial gains for the following year.

Working on the foundations of health, nutrition and recovery during this off-season period is also essential.

If the athlete can improve these areas, now is the time to do that and ensure they can take these key performance enablers into their next season as they add more training volume on top of them.

So how can we best manage our off-season time? Below are 10 simple ideas to follow to ensure a successful ‘off’ period that will help set you up for an even more successful ‘on’ (race) period

10 tips on how to plan your off-season training

Make these simple tweaks to your mindset and approach to the autumn and winter months of training, and you’ll be set up like a champ for the next race season… If you want, you can choose to race all-year long, but do the ‘off- season’ races for fun. 

1. Change the name

Off-season’ suggests that it’s not part of the training cycle, so instead, think about it as the ‘recovery and preparation phase.’ 

You still need to ‘execute’ this part of the plan, even though it may not contain any actual workouts to execute! 

Athletes usually fall into two categories – those who can’t stop due to the fear or insecurity of what happens if they do; and those who struggle to restart and over-indulge the ‘off’ part! 

Neither is beneficial, and both are detrimental to long-term improvement, but treating this period as part of the plan can limit those extreme approaches. 

2. Don’t train!

It still amazes me when athletes take time off but still go to their regular training or club sessions. 

You must break that routine to really benefit from the time out. For most athletes, two weeks of no swimming, cycling or running is ideal and helps the athlete slow the season’s momentum down.

It’s only a little less than a taper, so you’ll be fresher by the end and maybe even faster. 

Avoid your typical routine, instead have a lie-in, go for drinks with friends, do the opposite of what your athletic self would do. 

You can stay active (try gentle walking) but avoid your core sports. You need a clean break, like at the end of a relationship! 

3. Focus on the ‘exercise’

After a couple of weeks, re-introduce exercise to your routine. This can be your primary sports, but try other ones for cross-training – go to gym classes, dance, winter sports, or find a new skill. 

Exercise is about movement without a deliberate purpose – movement that recharges the soul and makes you feel more energised at the end than at the beginning. Coffee rides, social jogs etc., are perfect. 

4. Break the momentum of training

Many athletes can manage a higher training load because they generate momentum from their schedules. In the off-season, you want to remove that momentum and then gradually restart it. 

Be active, but do so for the joy of movement rather than because it says so in your ‘plan’ or you need to do it. Focus on what you feel like doing! 

5. Focus on form

Use the period after your break to improve your technique and areas that hold you back. 

This is an excellent time to work on any technical limiters you have. We’re looking for performance enhancements without seeing fitness gains. 

It doesn’t need to be all slow either; working on form at high intensity is just as helpful – e.g. mountain biking – and helps keep your system ready for hard work. 

6. Lose your fitness

Fitness, fatigue and form are all interlinked. You want to lose fitness, reduce fatigue and facilitate freshness. 

This enables you to have the capacity to work on limiters or focus on other areas of your life. 

It’s hard to improve your swimming stroke or running stride if you’re also tired from hard training. Reduce your load by about 30-50%. 

7. Embrace imperfection

As a triathlete, finding races for 12 months of the year is too easy. You can flow from triathlon into XC running, cyclocross, duathlons, TTs, and back to triathlons. 

Choosing when you want to peak also means accepting when you will ‘trough’. 

If you can accept racing events where you aren’t at your best, feel free to do a few of these events for fun or focus on a specific limiter; if you can’t, don’t! Your aim is to be fast for your A-race. Don’t jeopardise that. 

8. Personalise your off-season

The principles of shedding fatigue (mental and physical) and working on limiters will be true for everyone, but those who do more training or have busy lives may need longer to recover and relax. 

Move through the process as you’re ready. I like to ask athletes to recognise how tired they are. 

Numbers, miles or hours do not measure performance and progression at this point; it’s about state of mind. 

Also, consider the following season. If your main race is late, you may take longer so you don’t peak too early in the season. 

People may have different focuses based on their physiology or areas they want to improve for the following year, too. Focus on how you feel, not what you think you ‘should’ be doing. 

9. Reinvest in your other relationships

Training is a selfish act. We often neglect other areas of our life that also deserve our attention. 

Finishing your last race of the season and still spending half the weekend training won’t go down well and is unlikely to be sustainable. 

Use the reduced training time to re-balance your life away from training. 

10. Set yourself up for the following year

Performance is created from a basis of good health, nutrition and recovery. 

Get these levers right before adding significant training volume to your life, and you’re more likely to have a successful season. 

If you get ill soon after ‘finishing’ your season, start your official off-season after you’ve recovered from your illness; being sick isn’t recovering.

How to break down your training in the off-season

Here we outline an effective way to break that time down so you can effectively recover from the season you have had and prepare for the season ahead.

For the pre-season phase, consider balancing your training week around the areas you want to improve.

So if you want to improve your swimming, you may choose to do three swims a week and only one bike and one run with two strength sessions.

How this phase is made up depends on your normal training schedule and the area(s) you want to focus on improving and ensuring good recovery habits to lead into the next season.

A good end-of-season review will help you identify how you should prioritise this phase.

Subject to the conclusions of your review, you can adapt this off-season training plan to target certain areas.