After a season of hard training and racing its good to build in some down time, let your batteries recharge a little and take a mental break from training. Doing so may allow you to come back stronger in the new year.
Have you had your down time this year?
Take a break from competing and hard training and you may be
surprised at the results. I can almost
guarantee that your mind body will thank you later. You may be able to use this to your advantage
as a platform to help launch your fitness beyond what you have seen in the
past. It’s both mentally and physically challenging for competitive athletes to
take time off the bike. Usually, their first thought is that they will lose a
fair portion of the fitness they gained during the racing season. You could
race CX in the “off-season”, but that’s a topic we won’t cover here! Of course
you will lose some fitness during the off season, but that will occur for the
most part only in the upper training zones.
With just a few Endurance/Tempo rides per week, you can maintain your
base fitness.
This is a great time to check off a few items on the To Do
List, get your mind and body to focus on other tasks. This rest period can last
a couple of weeks to maybe up to four weeks for those with higher mileage and
more racing in their legs. Also, this is a great time of year to assess your
strengths and weaknesses.
For one athlete, it’s been a long rewarding season with over
35 races, winning a Spring Stage Race, 10 podiums and finishing the season by
winning a Criterium Series. It was time for a much needed 2-3 week break
composed mostly of unstructured short recovery rides with a couple 90 minute
Endurance/Tempo workouts per week. During his off season, his CTL dropped
to 50 (from a high of 70) and FTP to 315 (from a high of 360 in May). The athlete was a little concerned that he
had lost too much fitness. However, the reduced training load each week allowed
the athlete to recharge his batteries.
His break from hard training was just long enough that he again looked
forward to structured workouts. It’s important to note, during the off season that
you reduce your caloric intake in order to limit weight gain. You just
aren’t burning near the calories you were when you were training hard and
racing.
Don’t minimize the importance of the re-build process during
the off season. It’s important to adjust your FTP during this time, so that you’re
not over-training during your re-build. Traditional LSD (Long Steady Distance
“rides”) or Endurance/Tempo workouts work well for some athletes. Most,
especially Master athletes will benefit from a shorter 8 minute FTP and 2-3
minute Vo2 max intervals every 7 - 10 days and longer group rides on the
weekends. Yes, those first few workouts aren’t going to feel as good as they
did in August, but after a couple weeks you’ll be back in the groove again. You
might suffer for a few weeks on the group rides, but that’s okay too. After an
adaptation period, you should see improvement on the climbs and your FTP should
be back on the rise.
By following
these basic guidelines and taking time off this bike and beginning the re-build
process, this particular athlete’s FTP is now 20 watts higher than the same
time in the previous year (340 vs. 320). He now has a spring board that
may help him get to the next fitness level.
Will this athlete
will be a “January Star”? Probably not,
since he has headroom for at least 20 additional watts according to his FTP of
360 in May, but then, many athletes purposely don’t train as hard during the
build phase since they have no desire to be a “January Star”. If you fall in
this camp, this might work to your advantage as it has for this athlete.
Earl Zimmerman is an Elite/Master Coach with Peaks Coaching Group to find out more about Earl and his coaching philosophy Click Here