How to avoid the off-season blues
Hands down: I don’t enjoy the off-season very much. Whilst others crave rest days and a period of weeks of not following a training plan, I’m struggling to take it easy and let loose. The off-season is usually the time between your last race or event and the start of the new training block for new, upcoming challenges. For me that’s usually ~2 months between October and December depending on when the last race took place and when I need to start my training block for the new year.
So right now, I’m in my off-season until 1st Jan 2023 when FINALLY my preparation for my next big Ultra Trail Run challenge of 100 km and ~2,600 m elevation starts. I cannot wait to get back into my routine. I’m a sucker for a routine. Creating my training plan for the next 6 months all building up to the challenge, getting into a training rhythm during the week and on weekends, having dedicated training sessions and deload weeks, gosh I miss it! But let’s be real and honest: My body AND my mind deserve and need a break. It is truly necessary and the responsible thing to do because I don’t want to overload my body, get injured or burn out. Ultra trail running and triathlon are my passion and I want to do them as long as I live. So it’s absolutely crucial to dial it down a bit for a few weeks at the end of my athletic year so I can start fresh and energized and even more excited than before.
The first time I went into an off-season, I was completely unprepared and just thought: Ok, well, then I just train every now and then with less intensity and that’s it. For me personally, that didn’t go down well. I realized how much I love my routine and being on the trails. By not having any training plan at all and underestimating the British winter storms, I fell into a real blues and low mood. For weeks on end I was frustrated with myself and didn’t know what to do with myself since I wasn’t training every day and the weather made it impossible to run on the trails. Also, there was no challenge to think about so my mind was spiralling down too. I didn’t have anything else to compensate it with. After doing some proper research on what other athletes do in the off-season, I quickly I found that I’m not alone with this off-season blues. So I wrote down what others do to get some inspiration and then listened to myself what I could try out to overcome my off-season blues whilst still staying in shape.
“Listen to everyone, follow no one.” (Dean Karnazes)
Here are a few things I do to get out of my off-season blues whilst maintaining my aerobic capacity and preparing my body and mind for a rocket-start into the new training season:
Rearranging my vision board: As soon as the off-season starts, I re-arrange my vision board and take down the very race specific post-its and motivational pins. Instead, I put on pictures of my achievements in the last year and pictures of friends, nature and other beautiful postcards.
Focus on weight training: I go 3-4 times to the gym and do full-body strength sessions with a focus on compound exercises that strengthen the muscles I need to run ultra distances. It is crucial and actually the key to go from a marathon to an ultra distance. You need to have a strong body and not only aerobic capacity in order to go that long and far. The off-season is a perfect time to double-down on these strength sessions.
Mobility exercises: When running on trails, you need to have mobility especially in your ankles. The terrain I run on is mostly tricky, rocky and steep so improving my mobility will only enhance my trail running skills and prevent any injuries. Usually the mobility training comes short during a training block because it takes time but the off-season is perfect for these kind of exercises.
Not tracking my workouts in my very detailed spreadsheet: As mentioned above, I’m a sucker for my meticulously planned trainings and analyzing them. In order to let my mind rest too, I don’t plan or track my sessions during the off-season. I still record them on TrainingPeaks and Strava though.
Bouldering: Cross-training is so important as it helps to strengthen other muscles and prevents overusing the muscles I usually use while running. I personally find bouldering (= indoor rock climbing without a rope) perfect for that. It’s fun, it’s a full-body workout including flexibility training and you’re also training your mindset. How so? Because bouldering requires you to resolve the so called ‘boulder problems’. Sometimes you’ll climb your way up right away but most of the times you’ll need to find the right way and technique how to get to the top. This can take weeks! So it’s a great mindset training for not giving up, staying calm & collected and trying to find a solution.
Socialise more: I am an introvert and recharge when I’m on my own. So to be straight with you: I don’t like socializing in a larger group of people. I find it quite draining even when the people are super lovely. However, during off-season, I enjoy spending more time with friends, go to markets, cafés or restaurants. This is the time when I’m more spontaneous and meet people.
Trying out new equipment: This is the perfect time to get some new equipment and try it out. Why? Well because A) during winter time the shops offer discounts, B) sometimes brands stop to produce your perfect fitting shoe, for example, so you’ll need to find another shoe model and you don’t want to end up trying out new shoes during your training block and risk blisters and C) let’s be honest: getting new training equipment is simply fun :)
Trying out new nutrition: I can’t emphasize it enough: Nutrition is the fourth discipline in triathlon and it also absolute key for ultra trail runs! Never ever try out anything new related to nutrition or hydration on race day! That’s one of the best tips I can give you. What I love to do is, research the nutrition that will be provided on my upcoming challenges, order some samples online and then try them out in the off-season to see how my body reacts to it. Sometimes I don’t like it all and sometimes I even find a new favourite food.
Creating new playlists: I don’t listen to music when I run on the trails. I want to connect with nature and hear all the beautiful natural sounds. But when I train in the gym, I do listen to music and I’ve got specific playlists for the different trainings sessions which match the BPM (beat per minutes). To avoid listening the same songs over and over, I take the time to create new playlists at the end of the year and try them out in the gym to see how I react to them. Yes, music does have an impact on your training. So just as with i.e. nutrition or new shoes, this time is perfect to try out new tunes to see which ones are best for my performance.
Yoga: During my training blocks I practice Yin Yoga regularly. The off-season, however, is my time to experiment with other Yoga styles. This time I tried out Aerial Yoga and I loved it! Even though I still felt sick 5 hours after the session because we did quite a lot upside down. But I’ll try it out again anyway so I get used to it.
Rowing: For instance, instead of running 2 hours in my Zone 2 on the treadmill in the gym, I split the two hours into 1 hour on the treadmill and another hour on the indoor rowing machine. I love the indoor rower because it’s a full-body workout.
Having a rough training idea: As mentioned above, I don’t create a training plan for the off-season and track my progress meticulously. But it’s important to have at least a rough idea of how many sessions per week I want to do and in what zones. For example, I’d plan my week ahead with 4 strength sessions, 2 mobility sessions, 4 zone 2 sessions and one threshold workout. On what day I actually do them or on what equipment is not of high importance during the off-season.
Changing the wrist band of my Garmin watch: I know, I know…you’ll be like: “WHAT on earth is she talking about!?” I can’t blame you for that ;) I’m not superficial but it just happens to be that the most comfortable training clothes that I wear during challenges have the same or at least fitting colours. And so does my wrist band of my Garmin watch. So what I do to get into race mode, I change the colour of my wrist band ~2-4 weeks before the challenge and afterwards back to a ‘neutral’ colour. Weird but true ;)
Avoid watching too many inspiring and motivational trail running and triathlon documentaries: The reason for this is simply that these kind of movies keep my mind occupied and I start visualizing my next challenge. It’s just as important to give the mind a break as it is for your body. So I’m always on the look-out for other kind of movies and series on Netflix. If you’re wondering what I mean with visualization, I’d recommend to read this article that I wrote. Visualization is a very powerful practice.
Creating my yearly trail running and triathlon photo-books: At the end of each year, I create photo-books of my trail runs and triathlon events. It’s a nice way to look back on the last season, reflect on it and simply re-live these amazing moments. It makes me fall in love with the process of training even more.
Dance more: Yep, I like to fool around and dance at home :) The closer I am to a race, the more I need to rest at home because of the training volume. But in the off-season, I’ve got extra energy to spend so I put on some good tunes and just dance for an hour at home which, by the way, is a fun workout too.
Hopefully this list provides you with a few ideas of what you could do to escape the off-season blues. And remember: “Listen to everyone, follow no one.” Just because these things work for me, doesn’t mean they’ll work for you. But as always, I hope this post contains some take-aways for you or at least you found it interesting and entertaining ;)