The holiday training “blitz” - Good idea or good way to crash and burn?
At this time of the year I can almost guarantee that the majority of athletes that I coach, especially those for less than 1 year, will ask me some variation of the following question:
“I have time off and won’t be working over the holidays, do you think we could do a week or two with lots of training?”
They are always surprised when I come back with the answer that this is rarely a good idea. While it may make sense short term, that more training is always better than less training, it doesn’t make sense when we consider that usually a sharp and sudden increase in training volume usually requires (or in many cases forces) a dip in training volume later. So in the mid and long term this often hinders consistency and reduces overall training volume in the season.
A good metaphor for this is using a credit card to make purchases and accumulate points. Your ability to recover is the amount you can pay off each month, your credit limit is how much you can reasonably train in a month, and the points are fitness that you accumulate over time to do fun things with later. In order to maximise the amount of points we get, we want to use close to our full credit limit, and as long as it stays below what we can pay off each week, there is no problem. The same thing with fitness, we want to train as close to our volume limit as possible, and since this is below our ability to recover, we come back each week ready to do it again no problem.
The overall training effect is lower after doing a spike and recover versus maintaining a consistent level
But like a credit card, it is possible to go past your limit and have a “recovery debt” at the end of the week. And also like a credit card, you need to spend less the following weeks in order to pay off that debt plus this interest. This means that by the end of the period where the debt has been paid off, the total points accumulated is less, since recovery was used to pay the interest.
The athletes that end up making the most improvements and gaining the most fitness are those who train at 80-90% of their limit every week without failure and choose their moments carefully when they go past their limits. Athletes that are less consistent and frequently go past their limit end up accumulating less in the same time period.
This is often what happens with the winter break training block. An athlete will do a big week of training between christmas and new years, then either be forced to take a break at the beginning of january to recover from this training debt, or they will keep training like normal and by march they are burned out and take an even longer break. A secondary effect is breaking the athletes momentum at a time when they are probably really into training, hence why they want to train more over the holidays.
Does this mean that I always have to do the same amount of training every week?
The good news is that training stress is not always linear with training volume. I define training stress as the actual effect on the body driving to adapt, whereas training volume is the actual time spent training. We can use TSS as a loose metric to evaluate training stress and measuring time should be self explanatory. Logically high intensity interval sessions or unstructured max efforts cause more stress in the same amount of time than lower intensity endurance work. The same can be said for strength training manipulating weights versus sets and reps. So by changing the type of sessions we do, we can spend more or less time training and get to the same training stress.
2 sessions that are similar in length but the training stress (TSS) is very different)
This variation is probably less than you think, but increasing by 10-20% should be reasonable, as long as some extra recovery is planned the following week. This form of phasic training is often applied by starting a cycle with a reasonable volume or stress, then increasing it each week until slightly over reaching the limit and taking a recovery week after.
Variable training stress with 3 weeks of building from 85-105% of the maximum recoverable volume then taking a recovery week at 70%
This has two main advantages.
Firstly, since not all training causes the same stress equally, it can be hard to ensure that each week we come as close to our limit as possible. By starting with a comfortable training load and gradually increasing, the average weekly stress is in the right zone.
Secondly, by following this plan we can very gradually increase the amount of average weekly volume over a long period. We are talking about 10-20% a year, but it makes a difference!
So how can I use this extra time to benefit my athletic and training pursuits?
There are many things that you can do as an athlete when you have extra free time that can be just as beneficial (or sometimes more) than additional training. It is a good time to get ahead on planning or preparation, or doing things that we often put off.
Deep clean and take care of you equipment
It’s probably fair to say that at the end of the season you didn’t put away all your equipment at the end of last season in perfect condition, or some things you have been using that could use some attention. Even if you have no technical abilities, just giving your equipment a deep clean can go a long way. Whether it’s bikes, clothing, shoes, other equipment, even things you might not have thought of like your bike trainer, yoga mats, things you normally neglect. This can prolong the life of your equipment, but also help improve performance. If your equipment is in need of repair beyond your abilities, take it to an expert now. This way you will avoid the beginning or season delays and be sure to have your equipment when needed.
2. Planning ahead for events
A lot of athletes will already know what events they are planning to do in the following year but do not take advantage of how much information is available about events ahead of time. Thanks to social media it is possible to find course prevue videos, vlogs, race footage, and race reports from almost any event. It’s also possible to find the race bibles or guides from the previous years. By accumulating information from previous years and other people’s experiences, you can start to form a plan for race day. By knowing the number and distance between aid stations, the terrain, average weather, you can plan to buy any additional equipment, practise your fueling strategy, or plan for any necessary skills practise through the season.
It’s also a good time to start booking places to stay or any travel plans to be sure to get the best spots and avoid any unnecessary hassle come race day.
3. Doing less structured training to do more unstructured(ish) fun
Remember that not all training creates the same stress, so if you are absolutely set on spending more time training over the break, there is at least a way to do it intelligently. It can be an excellent mental break to remove all structured training and just do sports for a week. Do more things outside, go on adventures, try new things, old things, have fun with it.
Unfortunately this is not a complete free pass to do whatever you want, there are some limitations to follow to avoid your unstructured week going too far past your ability to recover. The first is to avoid doing more than 130-140% of your normal weekly training time, because even if endurance training causes less stress/ hour than most structured training, it still accumulates stress. The second is to avoid becoming overly zealous to the point that your unstructured fun actually becomes high intensity. You can either use heart rate to stay below 65-70% of max to remain mostly in the endurance zones. Breath rate can also be a good metric, ensuring that you are always able to talk and hold a conversation during these unstructured sessions is a good sign that you were in your endurance zone. This works out well because it allows you to be more social, which is often a parallel goal of this extra training.
4. Do the low stress things that you would normally skip when you are busy.
Pretty self explanatory, but if normally you skip mobility work, stretching, or anything else that doesn't actually cause a huge training load, you can take the extra time to do that. It’s also a great time to get in some body work with a massage, which transitions well to the final point.
Again, it is important to ensure that your recovery work does not creep up into a zone where it starts to cause actual training stress. The definition I like to use for recovery work is that the intensity is sufficiently low to not add additional training stress. So a yin yoga class is recovery, but hot power yoga probably isn’t; a 30-45 min easy spin below 50% of FTP might be recovery, but 60-90 min of 50% plus FTP isn’t; A short walk can be good for recovery, but a 5+km run, even at an easy pace isn’t. Frequently athletes will do recovery work at an intensity that is too elevated and they lose the (already questionable benefits) of that recovery activity.
5. Do more nothing
This is often forgotten, but doing nothing is an essential part of training. You don’t actually get fitter from training, you get fitter by recovering from training. We often consider the physical aspects of recovery, but not as much the mental aspects. Taking the extra time you have and just doing nothing can help you be mentally and physically prepared to maintain consistency through the rest of the season.
An alternative approach
It may actually be more beneficial to do a high volume block the week or two before the holiday break, if possible. Obviously the majority of athletes will have scheduling conflicts and constraints to add more volume, but even extending a couple of sessions by 10-15 min adds a significant amount of volume by the end of the week. If even that is impossible to add this extra time, replacing an easy session or two by additional intensity sessions. This will add more training stress without adding time. Either option may not be sustainable every week, but if there is more time available the following week to do nothing and recover, then it could be worth it to add that extra stress.
Maybe you will discover that you have been selling yourself short and could actually be doing more than you thought!
