As race season ends, the off-season becomes crucial for recovery, reflection, and building a solid foundation for next year’s performance. In this article, we explore essential off-season strategies for athletes, including balancing rest and activity, setting new goals, and refining nutrition. Whether you're coming off a successful season or seeking improvement, learn how to use the off-season to your advantage and set yourself up for a stronger 2025.
A while back, we posted an article What is the Off Season? Do Endurance Athletes Really Need One?. Over the years, this has been one of our most viewed blog posts by athletes all over the world. As we in the northern hemisphere start to transition into the Fall and Winter months, we thought we would whip up a new article that answers some of the questions we’ve received and that dives a bit deeper into the foundation of a cyclist’s annual training cycle.
Let’s take a look at the overall structure of your annual training plan: At WPA, we divide your year, or your Annual Training Plan, into these key phases...
As odd as it may sound, from a coaching perspective, winter is one of my favorite seasons. Athletes are typically coming off a brief window of recovery following a season of intense training and racing. The tail end of race season for many athletes is a time marked by physical and mental exhaustion, burn out, and feelings of either success or failure looking back at the season. Winter, however, is a fresh start. It’s the time of year where the successes or shortcomings of the previous season are behind us, and ahead lies the promise of new races, new results, and new opportunities.
24 HOURS, 1,440 MINUTES, 86,400 SECONDS: Those numbers make up a single day, and every one of us have to work within the confines of those limitations. So how is it that some people seem unphased by time? We have all seen those athletes that seem to balance training, work, family and everything else thrown at them with ease. The most common concerns I have heard from athletes over the years is the need…
As an athlete, I have trudged my way through many, many injuries: finger injuries, sprained ankles, broken bones, you name it… But, the injuries that were most common, and sadly the most preventable, were those due to my lack of mobility and flexibility: injuries such as hyperextensions, back issues, hip pain, and even minor muscle tweaks…All of these were due to my lack of mobility, not my lack of strength.
The subject of stretching and mobility has been a topic of great controversy in endurance sports. It’s no secret that in the sport of running for example, static stretching prior to activity has been linked to decrease in performance, in part because tight muscles and tendons act as more effective and stiffer springs, which is incredibly useful in some endurance and power sports such as running and cycling. It is with this theory that I prefer to prescribe a more dynamic based warm up, and a static stretch cool down…
For many of us who juggle multiple hats, trying to be superheroes to everyone else and still wanting to reach our fitness goals, mornings are sometimes the only time we can squeeze in our training session. Properly planned nutrition can help you maximize your training time to earn the most results.
In any given workout, our body can supply energy through a few avenues…
If you’ve been hanging around other endurance athletes for any bit of time, you may have heard them reference their “off season”. But what exactly is an off season? When is an off season? And most importantly, do endurance athletes need an off season?
As endurance athletes, our calendar is typically broken down into four seasons…
As an athlete, I have trudged my way through many, many injuries: finger injuries, sprained ankles, broken bones, you name it… But, the injuries that were most common, and sadly the most preventable, were those due to my lack of mobility and flexibility: injuries such as hyperextensions, back issues, hip pain, and even minor muscle tweaks…All of these were due to my lack of mobility, not my lack of strength.
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