Why Off-Season Training is Essential for Endurance Athletes
The off-season isn’t a break—it’s where the real work happens. Whether it’s dialing in your strength training, building an aerobic base, or finally tackling those nagging injuries, the off-season sets the tone for everything that follows. Treat it as an opportunity, not an afterthought, and you’ll step into race season with confidence, resilience, and a plan built for success. In this blog, we’ll discuss the importance of off-season training for endurance athletes and how to make it count!
After reading, if you still need help, you can contact us or get some free advice.
Key Areas of Focus During the Off-Season
The off-season isn’t just a break from training—it’s a vital period to build a stronger, more resilient foundation for the year ahead. For endurance athletes, this time of year offers the perfect opportunity to focus on the areas that often take a back seat during the competitive season. Here are the key elements to prioritize during this crucial phase:
Strength and Conditioning
For endurance athletes, strength training is often overlooked, but it can be a game changer. By enhancing neuromuscular coordination, strength and conditioning improve movement efficiency and reduce energy costs—allowing you to run faster or longer with the same effort. Building greater fatigue resistance by strengthening type II muscle fibers also delays that familiar “wall” during long events.
But perhaps most importantly, a targeted strength program reduces injury risk by fortifying connective tissues and improving joint stability. With stronger muscles and tendons, you’ll also increase your power, making endurance activities feel easier and more efficient.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are a few lifts we consider staples in off-season strength training:
- Back Squats or Front Squats
- Romanian Deadlifts or Trap Bar Deadlifts
- Pushups or Bench Pressing
- Chin Ups or Seated Rows
For more details on how to integrate these lifts into your training, check out our deep dive into why strength training is critical for endurance athletes. And if you’re looking for a structured plan, our $20 Strength Club provides three full-body strength sessions per week to cover all your off-season needs.
Developing Your Aerobic Base
The off-season is the perfect time to shift your focus to low-intensity, high-volume training—commonly known as building an aerobic base. By training at lower intensities, you improve your energy economy, making each step, stroke, or pedal more efficient. This type of training also minimizes wear and tear compared to high-intensity efforts, ensuring your body is primed for the structured training cycles ahead.
Curious about the benefits of aerobic base training, including the much-discussed “Zone 2” approach? Read our full breakdown on aerobic threshold, complete with sample workouts.
Tackling Injuries and Addressing Niggles
If you’ve been brushing off that nagging Achilles pain or hoping your knee discomfort will “just go away,” now is the time to address it. During the season, it’s easy to fall into the trap of reactive treatments—quick fixes like ice packs, kinesiotape, or injections. The off-season, however, allows you to take a proactive approach and truly resolve these issues.
Start with a comprehensive assessment by a trusted physical therapist—whether a chiropractor, physiotherapist, massage therapist, or osteopath. Ideally, this professional will have experience working with endurance athletes and can provide a detailed evaluation. Next, connect with a strength and conditioning coach or kinesiologist who can complement the work of your therapist.
Collaboration is key. Ensure both professionals communicate and develop a cohesive plan of attack for your chronic or nagging injury. This plan should work backward from your target race and include sub-goals for each season to keep you consistent and on track.
Cross-training can also play a significant role in this phase. Activities like cycling or elliptical training allow you to maintain fitness without overloading the injured area. By substituting similar but non-specific movement patterns, you stay active while promoting recovery.
The off-season is your chance to lay a stronger foundation—address weaknesses, build strength, and emerge more resilient than ever.
How to Create a Structured Off-Season Training Plan
A structured off-season plan sets the stage for a successful race season, helping you train smarter and more effectively while reducing the risk of burnout or injury. At the heart of this process is periodization—the art of structuring your training to align with your goals and optimize performance when it matters most.
Step 1: Map Out Your 1-5 Year Goals
Before diving into specific workouts, take a step back and map out your long-term vision. Where do you see yourself in one year? How about five? These goals act as a roadmap, helping you reverse engineer your training to build the fitness and skills you’ll need to achieve them.
Once you’ve defined your goals, plug your upcoming races into a calendar. Not sure how to approach this process? Our 90-minute Goal Setting Workshop is designed to help you plan your year with intention and clarity.
Step 2: Embrace Periodization
Periodization is the backbone of any effective training plan. It’s the process of dividing your training into distinct phases that gradually progress toward your peak performance. The key principle? Train unspecifically in the early phases and move toward race-specific training as your event approaches.
HHere’s how this might look for different athletes:
- Sprinters: Start with short accelerations and explosive drills, gradually extending your ability to sustain top speeds over longer distances as the season progresses.
- Ultramarathoners: Begin with speed-focused sessions to develop efficiency, then gradually extend your long runs and slow down the pace as you build endurance for multi-day events.
- 5k Runners: Focus on building a robust aerobic engine during the off-season, laying the groundwork for intense, race-specific speed workouts closer to the event.
No matter your discipline, the goal is the same: build a broad base early, and layer on specificity as the race season nears.
Step 3: Track Volume and Intensity Progression
Monitoring your training progression is critical, and this is where tools like TrainingPeaks shine. By tracking metrics like training load, volume, and intensity, you can ensure your plan is both progressive and sustainable. For instance, during the off-season, you might steadily increase weekly mileage or gradually incorporate more challenging strength sessions.
Fluctuations in volume and intensity aren’t just inevitable—they’re essential to a well-designed training plan. Take this example from a triathlete’s program: each colored block represents swim, bike, or run volume.
Notice the natural ebb and flow over 4-6 week cycles. This pattern allows us to strategically build endurance in one modality while scaling back on another, depending on whether the athlete is in their off-season or in-season phase. Intermittent deload weeks are intentionally placed to reduce accumulated fatigue, giving the body a chance to adapt and come back stronger for the next block’s push.
This strategic approach not only targets weaknesses but also builds the resilience and capacity required to excel during the structured demands of race-season training.
Step 4: Prioritize Consistency, Recovery, and Progress Tracking
Consistency is the secret weapon of any successful endurance athlete. During the off-season, it’s less about hitting every workout perfectly and more about showing up regularly to create a solid foundation. Each session, no matter how small, contributes to your long-term fitness.
Equally important is recovery. The off-season provides the perfect time to fine-tune your recovery strategies, ensuring you’re reaping the benefits of each session. Consider incorporating active recovery days, mobility work, or even mental recovery practices to keep both your body and mind fresh.
Sometimes recovery calls for complete rest. Here’s an example from one of our endurance athletes: after an especially demanding race year, with additional races added to the calendar late in the season, her Integrated Support Team (IST) collectively recommended taking at least four weeks fully off running and training. This proactive approach allowed her body to reset and recover, ensuring she could come back stronger and ready to tackle more challenges.
Lastly, track your progress. By regularly reviewing your training data (like HRV, training volume, nutrition) and how you feel (RPE or rate of perceived exertion), you can make adjustments to stay on track with your goals. We love scanning our athletes’ training programs for smiley faces to get quick indications on how they’re feeling.
Off-Season Training Case Study
For an interesting example of an off-season program and progression of volume from Dave Proctor, the current world-record holder for land speed record (on foot) across Canada (beating the former record holder Al Howie by almost 7 days), head our full synopsis of Dave Proctor’s record-breaking run across Canada and what his physiology and volume progression was in the lead up to his event.
Why Off-Season Training with a Coach Can Transform Your Next Race Season
The off-season is a golden opportunity to set the stage for a strong, successful race season—but it’s also where many endurance athletes struggle. Without a clear plan, it’s easy to lose focus, fall into inconsistent habits, or waste time on ineffective training. That’s where endurance coaching can make all the difference.
Many athletes turn to random plans they’ve downloaded from the internet, but these often lead to frustration and missed potential. Why?
- Plans that are too aggressive leave athletes burned out or injured before the season even begins.
- Plans that are too easy fail to deliver meaningful progress, leaving you stagnant.
- Reusing outdated or mismatched plans doesn’t address your current fitness, goals, or the unique demands of your next race season.
The result? Missed opportunities for growth and a higher risk of setbacks.
With a coach guiding your off-season training, you gain access to a system built specifically for you—one that addresses your unique challenges and goals while setting you up for long-term success.
Here’s how:
- Personalized Plans: No more guesswork. Your coach designs a program tailored to your abilities, goals, and lifestyle, ensuring you’re building the right foundation.
- Accountability: Staying consistent can be tough, especially during the off-season. A coach keeps you motivated, on track, and moving forward.
- Expert Guidance: Avoid the trial-and-error approach. A coach provides proven strategies to optimize performance, balance intensity, and prevent injuries.
- Adaptability: Life happens. Whether it’s a schedule conflict or an unexpected niggle, your coach can adjust your plan to keep you progressing without setbacks.
- Confidence: With the right plan and support, you’ll feel physically and mentally prepared to take on your goals, knowing you’ve done the work that matters most.
The off-season is where the magic happens—if you train with intention and purpose. A coach doesn’t just guide your training; they ensure every step builds toward your success, helping you train smarter, not harder.
Interested in taking your off-season to the next level? Learn more about how Vital’s Endurance Coaching can help you create a plan that works for you and delivers the results you want.
Conclusion
The off-season is the cornerstone of success for endurance athletes. It’s the time to build earned fitness, develop strength and conditioning, and create a structured training plan that sets you up for long-term progress. By prioritizing this phase, you’re not just preparing for your next race—you’re laying the foundation to be a stronger, more resilient athlete.
Rather than seeing the off-season as downtime, embrace it as an opportunity to focus, refine, and grow. This is your chance to address weaknesses, prevent injuries, and set yourself up to perform at your best when it matters most.
More About The Author
Carla Robbins, Owner of Vital Strength and Physiology Inc
Carla’s journey into the world of endurance training, strength and conditioning, and exercise physiology began with her Undergraduate Degree in Exercise Physiology at the University of Calgary and continued into her graduation with a Master’s in Exercise Physiology in 2016. Between working for the Canadian Sports Institute to the creation of her company Vital Strength and Physiology Inc, Carla is driven by a desire to find better ways to address complex cases in professional and everyday athletes and individuals.