Five Things You Should be Doing in This Off-Season

Winter is upon us. The days are shorter and it’s getting less and less appealing to get outside on the bike. The indoor trainer awaits, but do you have the motivation to stay focused on your goals and maintain some level of fitness though the months ahead? Here are five suggestions to make your off-season more rewarding and productive.

Take Some Time Off the Bike

You know you’re going to hate it when Strava tells you that you’re falling behind pace, your profile page shows a big gap in an otherwise consistent accumulation of training miles, and you stop getting those kudos. Moreover, a lot of cyclists have set an annual target milage or weekly time on the bike goals, and it’s hard to let these things go. The community aspect of Strava is a real thing, and when we’re not out there smashing the miles and uploading our achievements, it’s easy to feel disconnected from our cycling brothers and sisters. Easy too to feel that our hard-earned fitness is leaking away if we’re not putting in some kind of milage. There is some truth to that. Some level of fitness will be lost if we just stop cycling, just like if you get sick or injured during the racing season, there will be some lost ground to make up. However, most of these lost gains will come from your high-end power, and unlike getting side-lined during the racing season, this shouldn’t matter so much during the off-season. Your high-end power is the quickest to respond to a training stimulus once you get going again.

I advocate for taking a break from your cycling routine. With the racing season a long way off, and motivation waning, your rides are probably becoming more and more unproductive anyway. Sure you could reach that yearly target milage goal if you just keep going, but at what cost? Burning yourself out now might mean a sluggish start and lost opportunity when next year’s campaign really needs to kick off. It doesn’t have to be a long break. Perhaps 2-3 weeks of just doing something else. That’s enough to reset and recharge your motivation and hit the new training season with added enthusiasm.

Get to the Gym

Numerous studies have shown the benefits of weight training for competitive cyclists. Repetitive stimulation with heavy resistance exercise and a program that applies progressive overload to the target muscles over time will lead to hypertrophy – your muscles will become bigger and stronger. More importantly though, weight training can act to stimulate the nervous system to recruit more muscle fibers into action for any given load. This way our muscles become more efficient at the work we do. You don’t have to be a sprinter to realize the benefits of training in the gym – more muscle recruitment means more power at any level of effort.

While hitting the gym 3-4 times per week during the race season is obviously a recipe for soreness, fatigue, and poor on the bike performance during races and hard training efforts, concentrating on resistance training during the off season makes much more sense. Work with heavy weights – high repetitions of light loads essentially just replicates what you do when you’re out there pedaling. Squats, deadlifts, lunges, and other movements that work your quads /glutes and core muscles at a weight you can manage for 8-10 reps will best provide the stimulus. In addition, if you’re trying to lean out before next season and are on a weight-loss diet, adding in resistance training will help ensure you don’t lose too much muscle mass along with the fat you’re trying to drop.

Lose Some Weight

Power to weight ratio is perhaps the single most important metric when measuring your potential to be competitive on the bike. With many of us over-indulging during the winter months there’s often a panicked push to drop a few kilos as we emerge into Spring and the first race or the first competitive group ride is right around the corner. The body’s natural tendency to add insulation during the winter months, together with all the temptations of the holiday season almost always result in added weight during the winter months.

In many ways this is an ideal time to knuckle down into a weight-loss diet. Of course as endurance athletes we should be concerned about a healthy, nutritious diet at all times during the year. We need quality fuel to do what we do and we need quality nutrients to rebuild and maintain our bodies during periods of heavy activity. During the winter months however, for some athletes I would argue that it’s a good time to try to maintain a calorie deficit. This is the time of year that you are otherwise most vulnerable for weight gain and also the time of year where workouts can stay at a lower intensity where you don’t need to constantly worry that you’re not getting enough carbs to fuel your rides.

You should aim for a daily deficit of around 500 Kcals per day. Since each pound of body fat is equivalent to 3500 Kcals, this should result in a weight loss of about a pound a week – a healthy and sustainable target. Calorie deficit eating should be a temporary thing for endurance athletes, and you’ll need to get back to maintenance consumption when you’re ready to start high intensity training or racing again. Of course it goes without saying if you are one of the many athletes that have ever struggled with an eating disorder or body dysmorphia, you need to be very cautious in your approach to weight management.

Calculate your resting metabolic rate (RMR) and add on your best estimate for the energy you burn on a typical day just going about your life. Try to make this as accurate as possible. I like to use an app then to then track my calorie intake and keep to my target deficit. 10 weeks of this and you will have escaped the usual winter weight gain and enter the racing season with a competitive edge.

Ride at Zone 2

Traditionally the winter off season is a time for long endurance miles to build a good ‘base’. While it is true that concentrating on the lower end aerobic fitness this far out from racing is a good strategy, so many athletes spend hours suffering on long rides in crappy conditions and see little in the way of measurable gains. Especially when the conditions outside are grim, it’s important not to ‘waste’ your time and energy by just adding more junk miles. Make each ride count for something and you won’t feel like you are just suffering through the miles. Equally, don’t burn yourself out with hours of indoor training without purpose.

Zone 2 is not an easy spin. It’s not a recovery ride. The perceived effort should be at the top end of your ‘endurance’ zone. You should be able to hold a conversation at this effort, but it will be strained. While it’s true that these rides should ideally be longer than a quick hour after work, even shorter rides at the correct intensity can bring you gains. Working at Zone 2 brings positive adaptations including increased amounts of mitochondria in the muscle cells, as well as increases vascularization bringing more blood into the muscle fibers. Perhaps equally important though, working in this zone helps to push out the point at which the body relies more heavily on carbohydrates to fuel the effort. If you are able to ride longer and harder while still burning through fat as a fuel source, you’ll have the advantage of not having to consume high amounts of carbs during an event, saving your carbohydrate stores for when they’re really needed – bridging to a break, staying with a big surge, or sprinting for the line.

Make Some Plans

In the winter months generally the next year’s racing calendar is still taking shape, but some high-profile events are already scheduled and already selling out fast. This is a great time to assess what your goals will be for next year, and secure entry to your target events before they’re sold out. Next, get them in your training calendar so you can work up a plan to be at the top of your game for the most important stuff. Having definitive goals to work toward will help you stay motivated and focused on what you need to do to have a successful season when it finally comes around.

Working with a coach can take the guess work out of your off-season training. Perhaps more than at other times of the year, being held accountable can make all the difference between spending the winter months losing your fitness and motivation and accomplishing a rewarding, productive training block and being in the best shape possible for next season’s challenges.