Off Season Training Tips for Endurance Athletes Ep 41

Every endurance athlete remembers the moment when things finally click. Your swim feels smoother, your pacing makes sense, your fueling works, and suddenly the sport feels not only easier, but more fun. And for many athletes, that moment happens at training camp. That's exactly why we created the Endurance Edge Triathlon Training Camp happening April 22nd through 26th at Lake Jocassee in South Carolina. For 4 incredible days, you'll train in a small group with expert coaches, sports nutrition support, and sports psychology guidance, all designed to help you train smarter, race stronger, and finally connect the dots in your performance. We swim in crystal clear mountain water, ride beautiful and challenging roads, run scenic trails, and spend the rest of the time recovering, learning, laughing, and eating some seriously amazing chef-prepared food. Mm-hmm. Camp is intentionally small, just 20 athletes, so you get real coaching, true connection, and amazing breakthroughs. So if you want an experience that can transform your entire season, we invite you to join us. Head to theenduranceedge.com and click training camp and reserve your spot with just a $100 deposit. Come train hard, learn a ton, and leave stronger than you ever imagined.

I'll see you there.

Welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season and thank you so much for listening. I'm your host, Coach Christina Fiumara Newport, and today we are talking all about 5 tips for the off-season. So let's jump right in. This is a great opportunity to really first and foremost to step back and review your previous season. How did things go?

What did you achieve?

And definitely you earn a high five because, well, you're pretty awesome. And we definitely don't give ourselves enough credit for how we do during the season. So this is a great opportunity to look back and say, well, did I get faster in any discipline or at any different distance? Did I work out and have a better la— life balance? Did you nail your fueling and hydration plan? Did you nail a certain race strategy? Have you gotten stronger depending on what your goals were? Did you get leaner or did you gain weight depending on what your goal was? Were you consistent with, say, your mobility or your yoga, or did you enjoy spending time with friends going out and running with them every Thursday morning? Did you avoid injury? Did you just get to the start line or to the finish line? So there's plenty of things that we. Deserve a high five for. So I hope that you'll take this opportunity to really look back and give yourself some credit. All right, second up. This is a great time, especially as a dietitian myself. This is a great time to turn and focus on nutrition. So let's look at your, or assess your nutritional status. So if you haven't already, definitely meet with a registered dietitian, one with whom you feel like you have a, a good connection with. Certainly you can book a free consult with us. But this is a good opportunity if you haven't already had a physical, get one of those done. And typically labs that they're gonna do in those, or that at least we like to see from a nutritional perspective, is getting your CBC, your CMP, your vitamin D, your B12, your folate, possibly an anemia panel if you've had issues with iron in the past, a fasting lipid panel, and little extra bonuses that we like to see and that we offer in our practice are genetic testing so that you have a better picture of how your body does with absorbing certain nutrients or needing to focus a little bit more on recovery or focusing a little bit more on anti-inflammatory measures or reducing oxidative stress. Similarly, we offer micronutrient testing, which is a great way to see, okay, so you're doing all these things in your diet, you're doing all these things from a supplement perspective, but are you actually holding on to some of those nutrients? So that's, that's one that we really like to do. We also have omega testing, omega-3 testing, we've got gut testing. So this is the time to really step back and focus on those kinds of things if you can. Also, some of those tests oftentimes take a while to come back, so now that we have a little bit more time in our schedule, hopefully, uh, this is a great time to do that. So similarly, if you want to focus on weight management, if you need to gain some weight, if you need to lose some weight, this is the time that you can get a little bit more nitty-gritty in that. We work with quite athletes who have insulin sensitivity or insulin resistance or, uh, PCOS, balancing your blood sugar, being, being able to be a little bit more consistent in the way that you are exercising to be able to balance your blood sugar. We also wanna make sure, are you getting enough calorie and macronutrients in your diet? So if you've ever heard the term periodization, you probably have heard periodization as it relates to your training. So now being in the off-season, You know, our volume is not quite as high, perhaps our intensity is not quite so high. Your nutrition should follow. So that means your caloric intake needs to be slightly adjusted. Your macronutrient intake in turn, uh, can follow, or we like to do what are called performance plates. So what your plate looks like in terms of how much it— protein does it have, how many fruits and vegetables, how many grains and starches, things like that. And then it's also a really great time to try some new recipes. Get a little creative possibly in the kitchen, try some things like that. So again, shameless plug, you can always reach out to us and book a free nutrition consult, or like I said, find a good reg— registered dietitian who can connect with your needs, um, in terms of what you're looking for. All right, so tip number 3, I like to call this one skills and drills. So this is a great opportunity whether you're a triathlete or a runner or a cyclist. This is a great opportunity to reduce some of your volume, especially since those activities are so, uh, they move in typically in one plane, right? So this is a great opportunity to step back from your volume and focus a little bit more on your form. How can we make you more efficient? How can we help you to do less work and go just as fast or not faster? So I like to say practice your skills with drills. So for example, with swimming, maybe you need to work on your hand entry. Maybe you need to work on your high elbow catch or the, uh, strength of your pull, or maybe rotation, or maybe, um, how balanced your body is, your kick. Maybe it's your breathing timing that you have to work on. So this is a good opportunity to get with a coach, have them do your underwater swim analysis if you can. And start practicing different drills and really, really truly hammer these in because the more muscle memory you can create before you're having to do 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 yards at a time, the better. Similarly, if you're a cyclist, this is a great time to work on your cadence, on your shifting skills, single leg drills. Even though it might be a little bit colder where you are, I also like this as a time to do certain drills, either in a parking lot or on a mountain bike in a field. Maybe it's working on your transitions and a flying mount or dismount. Maybe it's riding in close proximity and improving your skills, working or, um, cycling in groups, passing, communicating, using your hand signals, things like that. From a running perspective, there are tons of drills out there from agility drills to fast feet, trying to get your feet to land underneath your body, so where where exactly is that foot landing happening. So certainly get with a great physical therapist who can analyze your run analysis or a good coach who can do your run analysis. I see with a lot of our athletes, their shoulders are really rolled forward, especially if you're somebody who works at a desk all day in addition to running. So strengthening your upper back, working on how are your, are your shoulders not riding up by your ears? Can we get them to drop down? So there's all kinds of different drills that you can work on in skills, but this is the time to do it, to again, step back from more of your volume and really practice those skills. Okay, here is tip number 4. This is a great time. The off-season is a great time to work on your strength, stability, and mobility. I love athletes, especially my triathletes and runners, to pick up heavy things. This is a great time to do it. This is not like the little tiny dumbbell in your grandma's closet. Like, we're talking like, let's pick up some really heavy things. Maybe we work with a barbell. Maybe we work on our pull-up strength, because if we can increase our lat strength, then we can improve our pull in the water. If we can improve our ability for our glutes to get activated, then we're gonna be cycling better, then we're gonna be running better. and hopefully more injury-free or just avoiding injuries in, in general. So similarly, working on your stability. So a lot of us have not great stabilizing muscles, whether it be in our hips, our shoulders, our core. So this is a great opportunity to work on that too. If you don't already have a fantastic physical therapist or chiropractor or personal trainer, again, now is the time to get connected with them, really hone in on that stability. And even mobility. A few people out there, typically not a lot of archer athletes, but they exist who are a little bit hypermobile. So in that case, you're going to be wanting to work more on, on strength and stability. But more often than not, the athletes we work with are stiff. They are not particularly mobile. So this is a great time to work on stretching, to work on your foam rolling, maybe even trying a yoga class because I love yoga due to not only There's stretching, but there's also strengthening movements as well as breathing. Who doesn't need some extra breathwork these days? Amen to that. And some, just something different. There's always a pose that can be a little bit more challenging and pushing you at, maybe it's like balance. So again, let's work on our strength, our stability, and our mobility in the off-season. If that means that you have to sacrifice some swim, bikes, and runs, So be it. This is a great time to work on that. It will make you better at doing your swimming, biking, and run. Tip number 5, last one on the docket. This is one of my favorites. Do something different. If you're watching this on YouTube, you've got a little— I've got a little picture here of, um, some skiers. That's my personal favorite thing to do in the off-season. It's a great way to work on— there's your stability and mobility again, just generally trying something a little bit different. And the purpose of this is really just to keep things fresh. Keep it fun, avoiding burnout, challenging your body and mind in different ways. So maybe it's a different winter sport or maybe it's a different activity, an indoor activity. So it could be downhill skiing, it could be cross-country skiing, it could be rock climbing, it could be taking dance lessons, it could be going to a boxing class, it could be working on self-defense. In fact, with our triathlon team, For what we're doing through the off-season is strength training. We're doing our virtual mobility classes. We're working with some self-defense instructors doing Krav Maga, which is kind of fun and empowering, especially for a lot of the ladies in the group who may not feel necessarily comfortable if they're running on their own. How can we be a little bit more aware of our surroundings and empower us to just feel better? So definitely do something. Different. All right. So just to tie it all up together, let's have a little reminder of all the things that we wanna work on. So number 1, give yourself a high five. You're awesome. You deserve it. There are more things to the sport than just simply getting faster. So look at all the different seasons. And if you need somebody's help, again, this is where a good coach comes in to really dial in those things and make sure that you're recognizing your strengths and then possibly working on some of those points to improve on. Number 2, get your nutrition assessed. It's a great time to work on weight management. It's a great time to look at how can you improve your diet, maybe your supplement routine. Third, let's make sure you're getting out there and doing your strength and your mobility and stability. And similarly, we wanna make sure that we're doing something different, keeping it fresh, avoiding burnout, challenging yourself in new and different ways. It just makes you come back to racing, come back to swimming, biking, and running that much fresher. So again, just another little reminder, if you wanna work with us, you can always book a free consult online, theenduranceedge.com. We do triathlon coaching, endurance coaching, sports and wellness nutrition, metabolic and sweat testing. We've got micronutrient testing, gut testing, and we also have our group triathlon team, and you can be virtual for that. We have our social membership. So creating a community, that's really important to us.

So thanks again for listening.

Have a wonderful holiday season. Have a great off-season and we'll chat soon.

Thanks for listening to the Find Your Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And if you're interested in learning more about our endurance coaching, sports and wellness nutrition, metabolic and sweat testing, triathlon training team, or our triathlon training library, be sure to check us out at theenduranceedge.com. And don't forget to follow us on social media at the Endurance Edge. Thanks again, and we'll catch you next time.