Off Season Training For The OCR and Hybrid Athlete

You shouldn't train the same way year round. This blog post shares what you should be doing in the off season to maximize your race performance.

Off season training as an OCR or Hybrid athlete may not be something you have thought much about.

You might look at traditional athletes training programs and have heard of in season and off season training, but it is not often discussed with OCR and hybrid training.

One of the traps that many individuals fall into, is year round training the same way. This is understandable since there are often races year round. So how can you have an off season?

Off season doesn't necessarily mean no racing. It simply is a way to organize your training program so you can peak for certain events, improves areas of weakness, and avoid overtraining injuries.

I'm willing to bet, you have had some nagging injuries after months of training and racing hard, or feel like you are not seeing certain areas of your racing improve.

This is all too common, and a good off season training plan might be the fix. In this article I will cover a few key things to consider in your off training program.

First, we should probably define what your off season is. This gets a little tricky, since like I mentioned you might be racing all year long.

It is ok to have races in your off season period, but your training will be geared towards off season programming and not for your best performance. This way you can use your races more as training sessions and stick to your goals you are working on.

The adaptations we are looking for in the off season take several months to take effect, so I typically recommend 4-6 months of the year dedicated to off season training.

There are a few specific things you should be focusing on during this phase of training. Here are the key areas to pay attention to.

1. Build Your Aerobic Engine

During your in season program you are working on your threshold. This means at what percentage of your VO2 max can you maintain for long periods of time. But during the off season we want to build a bigger engine. Then you can work on red lining that engine.

Your want to maximize not only your VO2 max, but the key physiological adaptations that will ultimately build a higher VO2 max. Yes you can do this with intervals, but the first step is prioritizing lower intensity training. Lower intensity would include zones 1 and 2 work for around 60-70% of your max HR.

Lower intensity runs will have a complete different adaptation on the body. For example, we see specific adaptations of the heart. When you train at lower intensities, since your heart rate is as elevated, the chambers can fill with more blood. This leads to stretching of the ventricles (specifically left ventricle). Over time this allows for more blood to fill the heart and more blood to leave the heart with one beat.

We also see very specific mitochondrial adaptations at these lower intensities. Developing more mitochondria and bigger mitochondria is one of the key adaptations we are looking for with endurance performance.

2. Get Strong

You probably are including strength training year round, as you should. But the focus here is developing more pure strength of major movement patterns.

Just like we want a bigger engine that we can push harder later on, we want stronger muscles to improve our obstacle efficiency.

Many times I see the biggest reason people fail obstacles is simply that they are not strong enough yet to be successful.

Work on building as much strength as you can so that we can improve your obstacle efficiency later on.

3. Do Less Obstacle Specific Training

This is building off the last point. There is a time and place to work on obstacle skill, but it is not here. Instead go all in on your strength development.

Often times I see too much obstacle specific work that often leads to over training and injuries.

Take a break for that specific work on improve more general strength. Don't worry the obstacle work will come in later and you will see more success.

This doesn't mean you can never do this type of training, but it should be minimal.

4. Get Healthy

Do you have chronic injuries that seem to come up. Guess what. They probably will continue to come up until you do something about it.

Take the time to recovery and take care of your body. This could be backing off intensity (hence that's why we have an off season) or getting help.

The internet can be a great resource, but often times you need personal touch here. Find a medical professional that can accurately diagnose what is going on and the best way to get rid of it.

If you notice your issues come up with certain types of training, do your best to minimize that as well. For example, maybe running is bothering you. We will need to add that in, but you might want to take a break for now and do some cross training.

5. Get To Your Ideal Body Comp

There are many pieces of nutrition we can talk about, but the number one goal is to make sure you are at your ideal body comp. This is one of the biggest was to dramatically boost performance.

Imagine what running would feel like if you dropped the extra 10, 15, or 20lbs that you have accumulated.

If you are already at your ideal body comp, then this is a great time to experiment with different nutrition strategies to see how they best suite you.

Everyone responds different to nutrition, so it is important to take time to test it out and see how you do with it. Then you can find what to incorporate into your regular routine.

If you spent a few months per year, and designed your programming and nutrition with these 5 key ingredients, I promise you will be a different racer by the end of the year.

Need help putting some of this together. In my Fuel and Fire membership program I have specific done for you Off Season and In Season programs.

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Categories: : Off Season Training, Programming