Are You an Athlete or an Addict? How to Plan Off-Season the Right Way

The biggest mistakes athletes make and how to avoid them.

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Most athletes cap off their season with a big race, whether it’s a late-season Ironman (like us at Ironman Arizona a few weeks ago) or a fall marathon.

But once that’s over and you find yourself looking at the last page on the calendar, what should you do now?

It’s time for an off-season.

Sounds self-explanatory right? You just take some time off. Hit snooze on your alarm, eat Christmas cookies, and sit around in your PJs all day.

Now, that’s not exactly what taking an off-season means.

But even so, doing nothing isn’t the biggest mistake athletes make…

The biggest mistake athletes make is not taking an off-season.

Does this sound familiar?

• “I can’t take time off because I don’t want to lose fitness.”

• “I need to stay motivated so I have to keep training.”

• “I don’t want to lose the gains I’ve made this year.”

After a year spent building fitness, many athletes will continue on their current path, doing exactly what they’ve been doing all year long.

They don’t adjust their training and keep right on rolling through winter, expecting that their fitness will keep going up forever.

Spoiler alert: It won’t.

If you don’t take some much-needed time off, it can result in a few things that you really don’t want to happen.

• Overtraining syndrome

• Your body may stop responding to training stimulus

• You might get sick, repeatedly

• You might get injured, possibly chronic

• You might suffer burn-out or depression

In addition to taking some time to rest, off-season should focus on building a strong foundation for the upcoming year.

I’ve always believed that the results we see during race season are thanks to the work we do during the off-season.

But it can be hard to figure out exactly what to do, or how much to do, during off-season, especially if you don’t have a coach.

So today we’re going to talk about how to approach off-season in order to start 2025 more rested (and more fit) than you are right now.

Including:

• An explanation of overtraining syndrome

• What happens if you don’t take an off-season (bad things…)

• How much time to take off training after racing

• How to structure your off-season

Read on for: Are You an Athlete or an Addict? How to Plan Off-Season the Right Way

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What’s Overtraining Syndrome?

Have you reached a plateau in your training? Putting in the work and not seeing any measurable results or improvement? Just finished a big year of racing?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you probably need an off-season.

But it’s so hard to do. As athletes, we like to be in control. Taking time away from training (to rest) feels like that control is being taken away.

I follow a lot of triathletes on social media. Some are my friends and some are complete strangers. Regardless, I’m always surprised to see the posts that pop up in December showing how people approach their “off-season.”

Here are a few examples:

• A beginner triathlete who does his first Ironman and 1 week later starts a “run 5 miles a day challenge” to stay motivated through the end of the year.

• A triathlete who races sprints, Olympics, a few 70.3, and doesn’t plan to take an off-season at all, just starts training for next year.

• A triathlete who races 3 Ironman and 1 Olympic over the course of 3 months while nursing an injury. (Not joking…)

I makes me cringe to see these posts, because it’s clear these athletes don’t understand how training + recovery works, or they’re getting bad advice.

1. Do not believe/trust everything you see on social media.

2. Just because a professional triathlete does it, that doesn’t mean you should, or can, do it. Are you a professional triathlete? With the exception of a select few of my subscribers (hi guys) the answer is probably no. Therefore, stop thinking you can train and recover like a pro.

3. “If you can’t take a few weeks off, you’re an addict, not an athlete.”- Campfire Endurance

So what happens if you continue on this path of too much racing and too much training for too long? Overtraining syndrome.

Overtraining syndrome is a medical condition that occurs when an athlete exceeds their body’s ability to recover due to repeated or strenuous physical activity. It’s more than just being sore and tired. It causes physical, mental, and emotional symptoms, and recovery can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months.

Symptoms can include: muscle pain, poor sleep, sickness, unexpected weight loss, insomnia, mood changes, tachycardia (high heartbeat), loss of motivation, extreme fatigue, depression, and bradycardia (slow heartbeat).

While the symptoms of overtraining are bad, the complications that can result are even worse, including muscle strain, tendinitis, cartilage tears, and joint injuries.

How common is it?

Studies estimate that 2/3 of elite runners and 1/3 of all runners experience overtraining syndrome at some point.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, sports that track performance based on races are more likely to cause overtraining syndrome. Those sports are: swimming, cycling, and running.

Crap. Triathletes are in TROUBLE.

So how do you fix overtraining syndrome? Depending on the severity, it might involve backing off high intensity exercise, reducing training volume by 50-70%, or complete rest.

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What happens if you don’t take off-season seriously? (bad things…)

I want to tell you a story.