The Offseason is generally referred to as a strategic part of an athlete’s annual training plan, which involves less exercise intensity, less duration, and typically an absence of racing. For many athletes, the offseason happens during the winter months, but it could be placed at any time during the year, and also depends largely on when the athlete’s most important race, the A Race, takes place.
The offseason is a very misunderstood part of endurance sports. Many athletes, especially No Data Athletes, do not see a reason to slow down this time, and so they don’t. A lot of athletes also confuse the offseason with being a full-on rest period, it is not. Athletes who follow a proper training plan understand that some level of training and activity are quite critical during this period in order to avoid a significant drop in the athlete’s fitness. Many athletes will substitute some of their core activities with strength and conditioning workouts, hiking, yoga, and other lower-intensity exercises.
Scientifically speaking, the offseason is designed to allow the athlete’s Acute Training Load (fatigue) to plummet for a specific amount of time. This happens as a result of decreased training duration and intensity, reducing overall training stress and thereby allowing the body to go through a cycle where less stress is induced on the body that it can typically handle. This ultimately results in the athlete’s Acute Training Load dropping below the athlete’s Chronic Training Load (fitness), resulting in a loss of fitness, but allowing the body to recuperate, recover and build up the foundation for the next season to come.
While a loss of fitness is often one of the key reasons why the offseason is ignored by the less knowledgeable athlete, this period is intentional and a purposeful degradation of an athlete’s fitness, often to the tune of 10-15%, must occur in order for this period to be effective.
How long is the offseason? It varies greatly but it can be calculated quite easily based on the athlete’s body metrics and data. For athletes who just went through a 9-month long training block, the offseason could be as long as 3 months, or even longer. For other athletes who generally do not induce more stress on their bodies than they can handle (thus remaining in Fitness Flatline mode), the offseason can be much shorter, as short as a 2-3 week period.
