Episode 330: Off-Season Part One – the Path To Take Your Performance to the Next Level
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A year ago, we at Purple Patch decided to completely reimagine our Off-Season training. We wanted to address the question of how to deliver a block of training for our athletes that is crucial for their long-term development and results, while also providing them with flexibility and a much-needed mental and physical break. We recognized the importance of taking a break after a strenuous season, while also understanding the necessity of consistent training for athletic performance.
As we approach the Off-Season once again, we want to offer insight into how we approach this important part of the athletic journey. This week, we are beginning a three-part series focusing on Off-Season training for athletes.
In this episode, we will revisit the value, importance, and role of the Off-Season, emphasizing the need to take a real break while also establishing a strong foundation for the upcoming year.
In the second episode, we will delve into the specifics of our approach at Purple Patch, building on the successes of last year while making necessary refinements. Lastly, we will hold a Q&A session in which IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon will address all of your questions about Off-Season training.
We want to stress the significance of this series to all athletes. Even if you typically take an unstructured break after your race season, we hope to persuade you to consider a different approach for your Off-Season training. It's essential for setting the stage for your next big event, and we hope to provide valuable insights that you can integrate into your training program.
We look forward to sharing this journey with you over the next few weeks and encourage you to participate by sending in your questions for the upcoming Q&A session.
If you have any thoughts, or questions, or want to learn about our services, feel free to reach out to us at info@purplepatchfitness.com for a complimentary consultation.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 09:06 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
09:12 - 17:33 - The Meat and Potatoes: Part 1 - Defining Off-Season
17:34 - 31:44 - Part 2 - Nailing Off-Season
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:03
I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the purple patch podcast. The mission of purple patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 00:31
And welcome to the purple patch podcast, as ever your host, Matt Dixon, and if we go back a year ago, we decided at purple patch to completely reimagine our off season that she began with a question that we had. We came together as a team of coaches, and we said, how do we deliver a block of training for our athletes that plays a critical role in their long term development, so far as an athlete and the results they're going to get, at the same time, how do we enable them to have a whole bunch of flexibility and a real mental and physical break from the rigors of hard work, particularly when their time-starved? And the truth is that two things can be true at the same time, and that's that in Off-Season, you want, you need, you deserve, a big break following a season that has been full of training and racing, at the same time, the magic word of performance is consistency, and you need to train at this part of the year. It plays a critical role in fostering big results for the year ahead. And so how do you achieve both of these? You want to nail the big break, mental and physical rejuvenation, and you want to commit to real structure so that you can catapult yourself to the next level. Well, here lies the conundrum of off season. And so we're going to dig in again this year, and a couple of weeks ago, I did an episode on the results of what we did at this time last year, we kicked off and reimagined off season, and we had some great results, and we find ourselves now, a year later, at that same point, we've still got a bunch of racing coming up, but we are getting ready as a group to go into that time. And so I want to start again, a three part series on Off- Season training. So for the next three weeks, this is all about the athletes. We're going to focus on the athletes and really help you guys lay down the bedrock. And today, I want to revisit off season, and I want to make sure that we understand and align the value, the importance, its role, and set the lens on how we should go about doing that. Get a real break at the same time, lay down the bedrock to catapult yourself for next year.In In the second episode we're going to go through, and we're going to do a deep dive into purple patch. Now last year we took that reimagined approach, we laid it on down, and as you heard a couple of weeks ago, we had a lot of success with it. This year we're going to evolve again. One of the purple patch sayings is, evolve or die. And so we're going to build off of the successes of last year, but tinker and refine it again, and I'm going to lay out what we're going to do for the off season ahead with our group of athletes. And hopefully you can draw on that, if you're not a purple patch athlete, and maybe integrate some of the stuff into your own program. And then finally, just as we did last year, which was a very popular episode, we're going to do it again, I'm going to hear from your questions that hopefully you feed me over the next couple of weeks or so, and we're going to do a thorough Q and A session, everything anchored around off season. So that is the landscape of our next three weeks. Now, before we get going, I want to identify or outline what's in it for you. Why do you need to care about this as an athlete? And you might be one of those athletes that just finishes race season and says, alright, I'm going to go and invest in my family, in my work, I'm going to turn my back, I'm going to go unstructured and quite happily, I'm going to come back to this sport and the real rigors of training when I'm ready to 16, 20, 24 weeks before my big event that I'm going to go and do next year, and my mission over the next couple of two or three weeks is to try and persuade you otherwise.
Matt Dixon 04:31
So of course, what's in it for you? What do you get out of it if you actually listen and apply some of my recommendations here? Well, here's the outcome of athletes that actually engage in off season, and I think it's going to be surprising, but I want to lead with this. Number one, when I see athletes actually commit to an off season, and when they do it, well, interestingly, they have better long term motivation. And that seems like a paradox, if you continue doing something, isn't there a risk of burnout? But there's a real reason for that, and we're going to unpack this a little bit, but it's an easier for someone to integrate a hobby, ultimately, what it is a very healthy hobby that's going to help you grow, help you develop physically and mentally, but if you successfully integrated at all parts of the year. So long term motivation tends to be high for people that actually engage in a really smart, structured off season, and we're going to unpack what that is, but that's one key component. A second big outcome, or positive that you get by appropriately dialing in your off season is a reduction of risk of injury. When people do this, they end up getting actually, less injuries over the course of the year. So those two things worth the pause on here. Two things, hang on, if I carry on doing this, I stay motivated and I get injured less. Well, that's really good. The third element is you become much more skilled at integrating into broader life. It becomes a part of your life because it's something that you're always doing. And the fourth big benefit, here's the big one that you always want to hear, you get faster. You get bigger and better results, and you get better results with enightened performance predictability, really good. Finally, number five is that it tends to be a catalyst to have a more positive impact on broader life. In other words, when you nail this, it improves your health and it improves your performance in life and work, if you do it well and along that journey, it also encapsulates you having more fun. So that's pretty compelling. So that's all in today's show. We are going to absolutely rock and roll, dial it in, and I promise you, taking a commitment of sort Off-Season is still going to enable you to turn your back on the sport, mentally recharge and have a break. We're going to dial into it. So today we're going to break down off season. That's the subject and the core of it. Then we're going to break down purple patch in next week's show, and then finally, a Q and A and guess what? You have a role to play on this guys. Questions. Remember, in two weeks time, I'm doing the Q and A session, and so if you would like me to answer any question around your off season, feel free to actually ping us and let me know. Info@purplepatchfitness.com, you can also leave a voicemail that we will play on the show, and that's on the podcast page of the purple patch website, purplepatchfitness.com. We will filter the best questions that we feel like are suitable for everybody to hear in our third episode on this and then finally, if you really want to dig deep onto this subject, if you really want to unpack it and nail it, remember, I am hosting a live interactive webinar that is completely free and open to everyone on September the 26th it's at 9am Pacific. You can attend live. You're going to get the opportunity to ask me any questions that you have around your off season. But also I'm going to dig in and really give you some of the granular details of some of the specific workouts and real focus points for you to get the most out of your off season. That's September the 26th it is open to everyone. Purple patch athletes can join. But of course, anyone that wants to improve as an athlete next year, I really recommend it. It's great. And if you can't attend live, we'll send you the recording afterwards. That's September the 26th. The link is in the show notes. You're good to go. It's a lot of fun, alrighty. Now, as ever, I'm bringing you all of the education ad free, and we are going to do it without a break. And so, as I always say in our most recent episodes, if you would like to continue the conversation with myself or the team at purplepatch and you'd like to connect with us for a live and free consultation on anything related to your performance, feel free to reach out directly, info@purplepatchfitness.com. You can also review all of our offerings at purplepatchfitness.com On with the show right now. It's ad free, as ever, just for you. I hope you enjoy it. Barry producer, it is time, my friend, for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 09:12
All right, it is the meat and potatoes, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking athletics. We're talking endurance sports, and we're going to be diving into off season. When most athletes finish their race season,
Matt Dixon 09:26
it's over. Finally, the last one like a monkey off the back, and the first thing they typically think of is having a break. I'm done. And you know what? That's appropriate, and that's smart. You should, you should have a break. After all, ultimately, we always talk about being present, focus, being committed, but we want to be effective with our focus. And if you are constantly always on without reprieve, you're just going to end up with clutter. And this applies to athletics, as we're talking about today. It also applies to life, getting out, turning your back on the things that are important to you, give you space and ultimately enable you to return with a fresh lens, rejuvenated energy and ready to give it vigor. And so it is important somewhere in the middle of your season, typically, for an athlete, to have a little rejuvenation, but at the end of the season, have a thorough clean out. And now this is important, a complete break, untethered to any performance lens. It shouldn't be more, though, than about 10 to 21 days at most, and I say that again somewhere around 10 to 21 days, just over a week to about three weeks. And so after that time, a week or two of absolutely glorious randomness and perhaps a little indulgence, then if you're doing it right, you have a fork in the road, and you are going to take that fork towards a wonderful, golden platform of opportunity, because that is the point after your break that you enter what I like to call Off-season. Off-Season is the opportunity for you to focus on things that you simply are not going to focus on and cannot focus on during the peak phase of training and racing.
Matt Dixon 11:33
If I had to sum up off season, I would call it fun, flexible and critical for anyone that is on a performance journey. Fun, that sounds good, flexible, I love a little bit of that, but critical, really, really important. And unfortunately, way too many athletes make the number one golden mistake, and that's after their week or two of a complete structured break. They let that extend to week three, week four, week five, with promises of I'll stay active, but I want to invest on other parts of my life. But that randomness leads to an element of detraining, a lack of specificity and no development into the next season, they just regress back to their baseline, and then they re enter the next year having to rebuild, and it comes with its own catastrophe of performance results, and they don't yield the benefits. And so for off season, after your break, it's so important for you to hit that fun, hit that flexible, but dive into the critical aspects, I would say, and I've said this every single year for many years, the number one thing that you can do to set yourself up for a huge leap forward in your own personal performance in the coming year, the number one thing, it is the thing, really nailing off season. And so yet again, for another year, it is my call to action. Dial in your off season. And so let's define it.
Matt Dixon 13:20
Now, we can extend this concept to any performance in any arena, but we're going to focus around the typical athlete here. You have your last race of the year. You enjoy that break, you completely turn your back, you don't even think about the sport. You don't think about training. You don't think about performance. All you're doing is going through a period of decompression and downtime, and then it is the start of your new season. It is off season, and this critically important phase is going to last pretty long. It's not three or four weeks, it's actually a major part of the year. I see off season extending 12 to 18 weeks for some people. So, just like any phase of a performance journey, these weeks are going to be highly structured and they're going to be progressive. In other words, what occurs in your first 2, 3, 4, 5, weeks of Off-Season is going to evolve dramatically by the time it transitions to week 12, week 13, week 15, week 18, and so on. And so this isn't four months of just Yeah, it's Off-Season, and it's known, it's progressively building through some structured training, but it is that much of a runway. So let's discuss this.
Matt Dixon 14:45
We can't dig into the details of off season without addressing the common hesitancy and for lack of a better phrase, pushback from many athletes that declare themselves absolutely unable or unwilling to recommit to some structure. Look, I love the sport, but I just need to go and invest myself into work, into my family, all of the other components. I need to turn my back on it. I'll be back, but I need to invest in these other areas. That's the classic pushback that you get. But let's remember what I said this is a platform of opportunity. The truth is that many athletes are really desperate to turn their back on the sport at the end of the race season because they actually failed to nail their recipe throughout the season itself. There's the typical off season approach for many athletes - big completion of a race season, desperate for a break, they take a huge break, weeks, months, no structure, just as I talked about before, and then suddenly, oh, it's March. It's time to get going again. I've got a race in May, and I am ambitious. I'm committed. I want to be the best athlete that I can be, but physiologically, I'm behind the eight ball because I've just had multiple months of no structure. I'm playing catch up. And so what does that athlete do? They ramp the training, typically, too aggressively than their body can actually cope with. They often integrate too much training relative to life demands, because they're chasing the looming race date, and what occurs, they then go through multiple months of overtraining relative to life demands. They finish the race season again, and they're exhausted, mentally and physically, and they're desperate. They're almost forced into the break. And so the cycle continues year on year, until they end up quitting or they get really frustrated with the consistent injuries that tend to percolate through many of the seasons, and they just feel like the sport is too consuming relative to life. And suddenly, here's this English geezer saying, do it year round. But there is a sensible under the radar approach to this, I come back. It is your platform of opportunity, because you're empowered to break the mold. And if you decide to invest in yourself, and you take an experiment for one year, doing it a little bit different, maybe this year, and dare to evolve from your prior classical approach, that probably hasn't yielded the results that you want and certainly has been riddled with frustrations I am sure, maybe you evolve and do an experiment on yourself. Let me cement your thinking.
Matt Dixon 17:34
You've heard me say many times on this show, consistency is the magic word of performance, and I've also said off season is the most important part of the year if you want a huge breakthrough. These two things go hand in hand. Rather than going completely random and then accelerating up to an overconsumption of training relative to what your life can really handle. How about just going through a tsunami of under the radar training all the way through. Here's what we think about when nailing off season. You are well placed when you have taken your break, following the end of a race season, to have a more, and I'm not a fan of this word but I'm going to use it today, balanced approach. I want you to build a positive foundation produced in the Off-Season, and then when you do get the little heebie-jeebiesup, here comes my race in April or May, whenever it is you are under less pressure to have such an aggressive ramp. So in a little investment now, with a little bit of structure, you then have an opportunity to not ramp up as much. You just turn it up a little bit, and you are much better equipped to actually integrate that training into life. And the yield of that, just as I talked about as the outcome, is better consistency, because you have a little investment now and then you dial it up.
Matt Dixon 19:03
So let me give you some numbers, classic athlete, and let's just use random hours. Here you're training 14 hours a week, and it feels like a monkey on the back. You finish the race season, and you decide to go random, and maybe you stay pretty consistent with random exercise for 4, 5,6, 7, hours a week, and then suddenly, boom, it's back on. You're back to 14 hours. How about shifting the lens a little bit and maybe doing an off season where you do 6, 7, 8, hours of really structured exercise, and you've got capacity to grow. And then when race season starts to come up, you turn it up and dial it up and you move to 9, 10, 11, 12, hours, less training hours than you typically have, but you dial up effectively, then you're accumulating months and months and months, and it's going to yield a better integration and also probably better results. Really Important. This is the catalyst of how many, many people find harmony, but they also realize the benefits of not just improving in sport, but reaping the benefits of consistency that's going to amplify your health, your energy, your cognitive function and how you show up in other aspects of life.
Matt Dixon 20:17
So what does it look like when it comes to Off-Season? Well, let's break it down. The first thing is, when you enter Off-Season, you want to completely eradicate any thought of a racing mindset. I don't really want you to think about goals, getting ready for a race, driving fitness gains. Instead, expand your mindset. My mantra for Off-Season is always this. This is my opportunity as a coach to build the athlete in very global lens. Then once I've gone through and built athleticism, then as we go into the subsequent blocks of training, I can build the triathlete or insert the runner, the cyclist, the rower, whatever support you focus on. So off season is an opportunity to build the athlete, and let's think about the fundamentals. So I'm going to do a little bit of a teaser for next week's show here. At Purple Patch, we break Off-Season into three main words when we think about our training, and we're going to dig into these next week, into the next week's show.
Matt Dixon 21:27
The first is foundation. So I want you, as an athletic lens, I want you to build a great platform, a foundation. Now this isn't base training. This isn't going out and accumulating massive mileage. Instead, it is a foundation of strength, really, really good for our longevity, our health, our daily function, and also a platform of tissue resilience. So a foundation of strength. That's number one. Number two, I want you to develop tissue resilience, your tendons, muscles and ligaments getting primed that when I do throttle up the training, the body is able to absorb and adapt to any hard running, riding or swimming that I'm going to ask you to do. So that's a real physiological component. In Off-Season. I also, for an endurance athlete that does longer distance, I'm going to include a foundation of higher functional capacity. So I'm going to aim to improve their VO2 max. So I'm going to actually have them do a bunch of sprinting, high intensity work, raise their ceiling of potential. And I'm also going to build a reservoir of hormonal health, their capacity. So a big part of foundation in off season is to actually rejuvenate. And the reason for that is I want to rejuvenate, to get really, really vibrant mentally and physically, so that you can achieve positive adaptations from the hard work that is coming. I'm not an easy coach. It is demanding, but I want you to be fresh physiologically. And so it sounds like a paradox, but high intensity training and rejuvenation and strength and, of course, tissue resilience, and you can do that in a really smart, structured off season.
Matt Dixon 23:10
A second component that we think about is technique. This is a time when training stress is really low. You're doing less hours, and it's less demanding that you have the cognitive capacity to focus on the technical elements. What is my hand doing when I enter in the swim stroke? How do I gain purchase on the water? What's my posture like in running, my form, my foot speed? How am I sitting on the bike and pedaling the bike? Whatever your sport is when training load is low and it's less physically demanding, you have the capacity to engage in the technical elements. It's a wonderful opportunity for you to actually improve. Now, it's very, very difficult for any athlete to really focus on technique development when training demands are high, because when training demands are high, a lot of your mental energy is going into executing the session, and you're also coping with more fatigue. When training demands are lower, you are fresher, you're more vibrant, and you can actually nail down technical improvements from which then, as we start to dial up the training load, you face the battle to keep those really sticky technical developments a part of how you do things and in concert, you then become a better athlete. So technique is a wonderful timing off season, and you will never do it at any part of the year. Good luck improving your running form while you're doing track intervals. Just a thing that you might keep in mind.
Matt Dixon 24:46
And then finally, skills. That's a third word. Wait, didn't I just talk about technique? Skills is different. When I think about skills, I'm thinking about mastering the art of your craft. I'll give you one specific example here. How do you actually manage terrain when you're riding your bicycle to get the best speed relative to any fitness that you have? There's a real art to this. How are you sitting on your bike? How are you shifting gears? The same with running when you're going uphills, what should that be like from a running form standpoint and an output? When you're running downhill, you've got gravity as your friend. How can you get best speed? So there is a craft to your challenging races that you do, and there is only one place that you can really emphasize this, and that's when training demands are lower, because you can get the skills develop it and then, when we ramp up training, you are better craftsmen. You've got the tools.
Matt Dixon 25:46
So the headline news is you can only really focus on these three elements when training demands are low, and that's off season, because under the banner of this, you have a whole bunch of freedom, flexibility. You can go and do other stuff that you love in your life, whether it's cross country skiing, whether it's hiking, whether it's salsa dancing, I don't mind, and you should have greater capacity to spend more time with your family and friends, be more present in work, but the training that you do do, whether it's 50% of your normal load, 75% of your load. It should never be 100% of your normal load. We want to ensure that you can focus on strength, tissue resilience, developing skills, developing technique. And when you do that, then you have the platform to accelerate. And guess what? It makes your whole journey more fun.
Matt Dixon 26:44
A nice way to think about off season when done right. It's a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle. Here's your jigsaw puzzle, the pieces of it. Number one, you want to have a break, we talked about that. Spend more time with your family, friends and other areas of life. Great. There's a piece. Number two, a flexible approach, more time for fun, activities, hiking, skiing, gravel, riding, whatever is your thing. Number three, really double down on strength and conditioning, strength mobility, balance, flexibility, all of that side of stuff. Number four, emphasizing upgrading your technique in your essential sports, focusing in triathlon, for example, swim, bike and run. How do you actually do them? And finally, improving the craft, your specific skills in your sports that are so so difficult to really refine when training demands are high. And when you do that and you do just enough training to produce baseline fitness and healthy tissue resilience, then you should enter the next phase of season, fresh, mentally excited, but physiologically ready. And when you do that, when you do that, you accelerate. The great news about Off-Season is it's not overly complicated to fit all of those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together to fit seamlessly, and it should leave you with something capacity. You should not be committed in terms of hours or effort as you are at the height of season. You should feel like you've got room to grow. You should feel like you have time left over, no matter how time-starved you are.
Matt Dixon 28:21
As I talked about, if your typical limit of training is 12 hours to 6, 7, 8, 10 hours at most. If you're training hours that you typically have are 25 hours, then just hold on to 15, 16, 18, but give yourself growth opportunity. What does success look like? Well, I tell you what, I might not be able to see it, but I can certainly smell it. What success smells like is that you shouldn't feel time challenges from your commitment to this sport. Friends and family should hardly notice your commitment, and it shouldn't take a huge mental toll. Done right? It will rejuvenate you, and it will and here's my promise, if you commit with me to a proper off season under the banner that we do, it's going to leave you more confident, more excited about your race goals. It's going to prevent burnout. It's going to dissolve any plateaus that you have to navigate, and it's going to set you up for success. And I want you to let that soak in. Don't quit on yourself on this one, invest in yourself instead.
Matt Dixon 29:31
Now next week, I'm going to get really detailed. I'm going to go in and I'm going to break down part two, everything we do at purple patch. And my mission for this is to pull back the curtain a little bit and say, Hey, this is how we achieve these pieces of the jigsaw. And hopefully you can draw on that and apply it to your own sporting journey. I hope that helps. Off-Season, it is one of the most challenging parts of the season to coach. It is also my very favorite part of the season. Alrighty. And for you guys that are still racing, keep charging, keep having fun. Don't worry, Off-Season will be there waiting for you. Don't panic. We'll take care of you. Alright, guys, have a good time. We'll see you next week. Take care.
Matt Dixon 30:13
Guys. Thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the purple patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there and you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe also share it with your friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show at the purple patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the purple patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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