Offseason: What is it, and what should I be doing during it?

Whether you are a competitive triathlete, or just looking to maintain optimum health, your training needs to have what we call an “off-season.” This is a time to rest, refresh, plan and prepare for the next season. Give yourself both a physical and mental break. You may gain perspective on your prior training, or decide it’s time to switch things up completely. 

For multisport/endurance sports the end of the year/winter is considered offseason. This is the time between your last race of the year and the beginning of next year’s focused training plan. This can last anywhere from 3-4 months. 

Many driven individuals have a hard time taking time off, it’s seen as “I’m losing my fitness”, or some say, “I’m being lazy”. In actuality, the off-season is just the opposite. Time to allow your body the chance to recover from all the trauma (yes exercise to the extent we put it through is trauma), time to mentally recover, time to catch up with family and friends, and also time to plan for your next season.

Here are a few tips on how to make the most of your off-season.

1. REST: Easier said than done. It’s recommended to take as long as two weeks away from all workouts, followed by relatively light workouts to get you rolling. This leads me to the concept of periodization. Which is strategically planning your training calendar so you have various phases of training throughout the weeks and months of your in-season training. 

If you ended your season with major or minor injuries, rest is a good idea. This may be a good time to visit a physical therapist for help with your injuries, or a sports mobility coach for help with your mobility issues. 

2. Mix It Up: Cross-train. The occasional swim/bike or run doesn’t hurt, but the key is to break the routine of your in-season workouts. This is the best time to begin to incorporate weight training, especially heavy lifting and powerlifting into your routine.
   
   

3. Set Goals: There are two parts to goal setting, internally and externally driven. 

Internal: Look over your prior year’s performance, how pleased are you with your races and your injury status? You may realize that you want to dramatically improve your swim times, get fast on the bike, or that you have a nagging IT band issue that you need to address before hard training again. Or maybe this upcoming year is the year you jump up to a much longer distance, or a more competitive age group.

Improvements in your desired growth areas can become part of your goals for next season. Don’t forget to set a goal for how to take action on each line item goal. To become a better swimmer, maybe you need to join a local masters swim group, or even get one-on-one coaching to address that IT band issue. Perhaps you need to set a series of appointments with a therapist or rehab specialist.

External: Now let's look at the calendar. Find the races you are interested in participating in and place them on a calendar. Once on the calendar look to see how far apart they are spaced out. You may have some a few weeks apart, or others months apart. The important part now is to decide which ones are your “A” races, the ones you want to be in top shape for and maybe are hoping for a podium finish, or maybe an overall top finish. Then do the same with the rest of the races, labeling them B, C, and D of lesser importance or focus. Think about other likely family or work commitments too - it's not fun being in peak training mode right when you are taking your family on a trip to Europe. Whatever works for you, be intentional about your races so your training plan has a definition and focus.

4.Start Your Base Training

After a few weeks of resting your body, breaking out of old habits, and doing some cross-training, it’s time to begin base training. This base training is characterized by low-intensity but consistent training that allows your body to establish both a cardiovascular and muscular base of fitness before adding intensity and distance. That being said, now is the best time to be hitting the BIG weights, and working your power movements. Obviously, you need to build up to them, improving your mobility to get lower into your squat so you can engage the end-range muscle better and get a fuller range of strength. This practice of routine structured workouts will help your mental toughness later in the harder stages of training. 

Your off-season time is a great time to experiment with new techniques or training inputs. From looking at your nutrition and hydration options, to swimming or run form analysis, or maybe you haven't been up for power meter input yet. Now is the best time to start to play with these new modalities, instead of race week or even race day.

5.Find or Create a Plan

Some people like to wait until the offseason is over to start looking at the race/event calendar. I challenge you to look now. Use this time to see what events you might want to do, and see if they fit into your calendar, obviously working around family and work stuff. Once you have an idea of your events it’s time to sit down and look at whether these are feasible for you. Meaning, if you did these same events last year, but you never felt quite prepared, maybe you had too many events, or maybe you didn’t plan your training peak for the right time. These issues can cause some people stress. You don’t have to stress alone. Maybe this year it’s time for a coach. Coaches are there for more than just creating a program to follow. They provide feedback on your race calendar and can help you set up your plan of attack for the season/year. They can also help you figure out why last year you didn’t peak or peaked too soon. 

6.Check Your Gear

Your bike may have had a squeak or felt sluggish in the braking power, or your goggles are fogging up on all of your swims. Offseason can be a great time to do both maintenance and gear inventory. Doing this maintenance when you don’t have an urgent ride or race in just a few days away can be fun, and for sure much less stressful. You may even learn that you like certain parts of bike maintenance, and this can help save you time and stress during the season.

This time of year is also a good time to get discounts on all your gear as manufacturers are closing out on last year's models. Old models of gear work well, sometimes better than the first iteration on a new one where all the kinks have already been worked out. If you wait closer to the season there is a good chance that gear prices will go up as demand increases. Also really important:  make sure everything you use is in good working order. This goes for your bike, helmet, bike shoes, bike computer, running shoes, watch, glasses, wet suit, swimsuit and goggles. Perhaps your bike helmet is past its safety range and it’s time to replace it. Or maybe your tires were not as grippy or maybe too heavy for your liking, or just worn out, now is a good time to replace them.

This is the perfect time to make changes like going tubeless or switching to disk brakes. Switching in the offseason gives you time to learn some of the ins and outs of what these changes entail.

Use your offseason to recover from your prior racing/event season and also prepare for the next one. Just because it’s the offseason doesn’t mean you lose structure and discipline in your workouts, instead, it’s about consciously taking a break, and taking the time to evaluate and decide what routines to walk away from that don’t suit you, and replacing them with ones that help you thrive and enter your next season with proper goals for you, renewed health and even better base conditioning than last year.

Zone 2 Training For Endurance Sports

You have probably heard a lot lately about how Zone 2, or steady state training is bad for you. When I'm asked that question, I respond with "that depends". Ugh, I know terrible question, but it really does depend on what your goals are. If you are looking to improve your general health and fitness along with your strength and body composition, especially for women, then you bet Zone 2 is not going to be your main focus. However, anyone who has trained for a specific goal or event will have some form of structured training which is based on different training zones. Or more specifically heart rate training zones, and yes Zone 2 is the main one you'll be training in.

These Zones are numbered 1 through 5, and sometimes 5+. While training all the different zones is necessary for performance improvement, Zone 2 training is by far the most important part of the endurance training program. The purpose of each training zone is to elicit specific physiological and metabolic adaptations in order to improve performance, and it's important to know what physiological and metabolic adaptations occur while in each zone and how they can be improved in training. 

To understand this, first we need to have an understanding of basic physiology and muscle metabolism. Oh yeah I said it more Bio-Chem here. If you don't care to read about the wonderful world of bio-chem skip down to the section on How Do You Find Zone 2.

Energy Systems

Three energy systems contribute different amounts towards re-synthesizing the compound Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), the "energy currency" of our body. With the help of our mitochondria which processes ATP, this is how we get our muscles to make the contractions for movement. The main energy system we utilize depends on the intensity, type and duration of the exercise being performed, as well as the fuel sources available and the fitness levels of the individual. These systems are also dependent on whether we use oxygen (aerobic) or not (anaerobic). They are:

1. The ATP-CP System (Anaerobic): lasts up to about 10 seconds of very high intensity efforts. An example of this would be doing an explosive Olympic lift, or a 100 meter sprint. The ATP-CP system uses a stored molecule in the muscle called creatine phosphate (CP) to resynthesize ATP. It is the breakdown of this molecule that releases the energy needed to rejoin the ADP and free phosphate to form ATP. This system is anaerobic as it works without oxygen, and does not produce any waste products. This is Zone 5 & 5+

2. The Lactate System (Anaerobic): is the active system used from 30 seconds to 3 minutes of high intensity efforts. An example of this would be doing a set of HIITS, and anything up to about an 800 meter sprint. The Lactate system uses glucose to help create ATP. It breaks down the glucose molecule into pyruvic acid through anaerobic glycolysis (the splitting of sugars). Through this anaerobic glycolysis system chemical energy is released and used to synthesize two ATP molecules for every glucose molecule used.  This is Zone 4.

3. The Aerobic System: this is the active system our body uses to sustain long duration low intensity efforts. Think 5k, 10k and up. This system needs oxygen to be present for the creation of ATP and will use one of three processes (Aerobic glycolysis, Krebs cycle or Electron transport chain feel free to look those up if you are curious) to create it. It's a slow process and thus is it used for lower intensity demands but can continue for long periods of time. This is Zone 1 & 2.

**Found this chart on a Google search, not my own. It gives a good visual of what I was talking about as far as how long each energy system lasts, and that there is some overlap between them.**

Physiological and Metabolic Adaptations of Zone 2 Training

Performing most of your training in Zone 2 will help you build endurance, durability and strength. In addition, these easy training sessions help you...

1. Increase the number and density of your mitochondria - as you know from reading earlier the mitochondria is where the muscle gets it's energy to cause muscle contractions.

2. Increased capillary pathways - means more oxygen carrying capacity, and more ability to keep going.

3. Increase Stroke volume - amount of blood pumped out per beat; more blood means more oxygen and longer duration exercise.

4. Increased Fat burning capability - your body can more easily access the fat and use it for energy.

5. Increased lactate clearance - the mitochondria had the ability to break down the lactate and reuse it.

6. Increased blood plasma - the liquid part of the blood that carries cells and proteins.

7. Allows you to increase your training volume without beating up your body.

How Do You Find You Zone 2

There are a couple ways to calculate your heart rate ranges. If you do not have a heart rate monitor or prefer not to use one, you will have to train by feel. Without the heart rate monitor, you should feel like you can breathe through your nose while you are exercising and you can carry on full sentences. However if you want to have a bit more data, you will need a heart rate monitor. 

One of the best ways to get started with heart rate training is to calculate your heart rate reserve (HRR). First start with gathering the following numbers:

1. Max Heart Rate: 220 - your age = MHR

2. Find your Resting Heart rate (RHR), this is taken immediately when you wake up, before sitting up.

3. Find your Hear Rate Reserve (HRR): Subtracting your Resting Heart Rate from your Max Heart Rate. 

4. Multiply HRR by the Zone percentage you want to calculate, Zone 2 = 65-75%

5. Add back in your RHR to each of the calculated numbers in #4 to get your range for Zone 2.

For the other zones, the ranges are: Zone 3 multiply by 75-85%; Zone 4 multiply by 85-95%; Zone 5 multiply by 95-100%; Zone 5+ anything higher than Zone 5.  

Here is an example: Let's say you are 43 years old, with a resting heart rate is 55 beats per minute.

MHR - RHR = HRR

(HRR x 65%) + RHR = Lower end Zone 2

(HRR x 75%) + RHR = Higher end Zone 2

220 - 43 = 177 MHR

177 - 55 = 122 HRR

122 x 65% = 79.3

122 x 75% = 91.5

79.3 + 55 = 134.3, Zone 2 low end

91.5 + 55 = 146.5, Zone 2 high end

According to this method this person's Zone 2 Heart Rate is 134 to 146 beats. This means in order for this person to train at a Zone 2 training threshold they would need to keep their heart rate in that range, preferably closer to the lower end. Now this isn't the most accurate way to get your zones, but it's the best way for someone new to heart rate training, or just new to training in general. If you are interested in the more advanced method of attaining your actual Zone 2 threshold please feel free to ask me for help.

What About Zone 3?

You may have noticed I did not mention Zone 3 in the energy systems above. The reason is that Zone 3 is this grey area in performance training. Your body uses a mix of Lactate and Aerobic systems, with no specific ratio of either. So when you hang out in the Zone 3 "Grey Zone" your body isn't getting the best adaptations it can due to the mixing of the systems. In this zone you aren't going fast enough to improve speed or power, and you aren't going slow enough to improve the cardiovascular benefits mentioned earlier, plus the recovery time from Zone 3 is much more than Zone 2. 

To wrap things up. Knowing what your heart rate training zones are will benefit you in many ways. It's not just for endurance athletes, but also those trying to keep a good health and fitness routine. So the next time you head out for your workout, make sure you know what the purpose of your training session is, and know what zone or zones you should be working out in. 

Give this a try and let's see how you feel doing your Zone 2 training with these new numbers.