Can Strategic Detraining Boost Long-Term Performance?

Ever wondered why athletes strategically take a break from rigorous training? With Coach Cliff Pittman, we examine the necessity of allowing your body and mind ample recovery time from a full season of training. Cliff and Coach Adam Pulford discuss  how you can set up an effective three-to four-week detraining period that aligns with your lifestyle and training history. The conversation also covers aspects like monitoring cycling metrics, adjusting nutrition, and integrating active recovery and alternative activities into this period.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Having a period of less training, or detraining, is very important for long term performance gains and overall health.
• This time period should be longer than a recovery week (1wk) and probably less than 5wks, according to the literature.
• Transition to Base Period simply
• Use Frequency, Volume, and Intensity appropriately, by increasing each of them a little bit and going slowly to build back fitness and go beyond for the next season. 

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Guest
Cliff Pittman is the Coaching Development Director for CTS and an experienced CTS Ultrarunning Coach. In addition to the CTS Coaching Education Program, Cliff has an UESCA Ultrarunning Coach Certification, UESCA Sports Nutrition Certification, PNOE Metabolic Analysis Certification, and a Revo2lution Running Trainer Certification. After a decade of military service, he coached athletes for running, military special operations, and even life coaching before shifting his primary focus to ultra-endurance performance.

Links
Cliff's Instagram: https://instagram.com/coachcliffpittman

References from the episode:

- Detraining Research:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236590070_Detraining
https://www.fasttalklabs.com/fast-talk/what-happens-when-we-stop-training-with-dr-inigo-mujika/

- Articles:
  - Maintaining Physical Performance
  - Off-Season training and detraining

Host
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more than 13 years and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:07

From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now onto our show.

Speaker 1 0:48

Off season Transition phase, detraining or simply taking a break Whatever you want to call it, it's a thing and it's an important thing for every athlete. Time away from always having the pressure to perform at races, events or just hard interval sessions can take a toll on the mind and body. The benefits of detraining are there for time rich athletes as well as time crunched athletes, and to help explain how best to detrain, I've brought in ultra running coach and director of coaching at CTS, cliff Pittman. Cliff, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 1:25

Thanks, adam, appreciate you having me on. It's like the point out that you have this remarkable podcast voice, and so I'm going to bring something a little bit on the other end of the spectrum.

Speaker 1 1:36

Well, yeah, I can tell that your your comedy relief is spot on today, cliff, so thank you for bringing that to the party. My opening question, though, first is have you recovered from your bike ride that you had last week when we last talked?

Speaker 2 1:50

Oh, the one hour bike ride.

Speaker 1 1:52

Yeah, Okay. Well, you know you're on the right. I don't know how you guys recover from all that, but Thank you for for bringing the comedy here as well.

Speaker 2 2:02

Yeah, I have recovered, but I figured, if I was going to be speaking to this audience and having a chance of having a competent conversation, that I better go ride on a bike for at least one hour.

Speaker 1 2:14

Perfect, yeah, you are walking the talk, man. Well, cliff, for those who don't know you like I know you, can you please introduce yourself to our audience?

Speaker 2 2:24

Yeah, so I think we just covered it that I'm not a cyclist, I am a runner. You know I have a background in coaching, specifically within within ultra running, also worked with a lot of military athletes in our previous life. And, yeah, like you mentioned, I'm the director of coaching at CPSO, so I have the you know, wonderful opportunity to work with the coaches, like yourself, and learn a lot from you guys as well.

Speaker 1 2:50

Yeah, hurting, hurting the cattle coaches. It's not a small task, but Cliff does it well and he knows this thing from the coaching side of things. So, yeah, thank you again for coming on the podcast, and you are also a very time crunched person now that you've taken on that role at CTSO. So we'll, in the spirit of time crunchness, we will get the party going here on the podcast.

Speaker 2 3:12

Speaking of time crunch, I failed to mention I do have four kids, so that factors them too.

Speaker 1 3:17

There you go. That's the vice of it all. So let's get to it. Cliff, it's my opinion that all athletes need a break over the course of a year, even time crunched athletes. So two questions to you. Would you agree with that number one and two, why do we need that break?

Speaker 2 3:36

Yeah, absolutely so. I agree 100%. There's really multiple components here. You know, if we look at it from the physical aspect, just in day to day training, you know there's a stress and rest concept, right, overload and recovery, where we're applying stress to the body and then to the specific system and then we need ample time to recover from that. So we see that on a very micro scale, whether it's in a particular workout, like an interval, structured workout, day to day, where we keep our hard days, hard or easy, day to easy, block to block, where we have hard blocks, and then even recovery phases. And then today, like we're discussing, detraining under like an off season, where it's on a much more macro scale, where we take the foot off the gas pedal and then just allow our body and our mind to go through this reset.

Speaker 1 4:28

And I think you know, on the physical end of things there's some metrics and aspects that we can measure and we'll get into a little bit today. On the mental side of things it's a little bit more abstract. We can't measure those stresses, we simply talk through them. But on the mental side of things, I mean, what do you find in your athletes that are being quote reset for an athlete between the ears when you take a period of detraining or some time away?

Speaker 2 4:59

A good training cycle let me talk about on the physical side, apply some good stress to elicit those adaptations that we're going for, ultimately increasing fitness and performance. That can be very psychologically demanding just the amount of time invested, the amount of intensity required in some of those workouts. And then there's a shift of responsibilities, because if you're investing a lot into that training process then ultimately there's going to be some sacrifices made. Sometimes that's family time with family, sometimes that's even on the work front, or maybe we're just neglecting some standard hobbies that we have in our life. And so I find that this structured E training or off season is really important on the mental side of things, just because athletes have the opportunity to find some semblance of balance in their life again and reinvest in a lot of those things that may have been neglected throughout the last training cycle.

Speaker 1 6:01

Yeah, and so I think the reality is is like there's no need to grind away 12 months out of the year on training, just like the hard end day out, trying to build everything. If you do it well and take an intentional time period to reset, it helps to find that balance, and it can help you move beyond where the fitness and the performance was in the year prior, and so that's what we're going to really talk about today. So, moving on here though, cliff, do you find that there's a difference between time crunched athletes and time rich athletes? Meaning, do the time rich athletes need a harder break or a longer break, or, in the time crunch, don't? Or are you given it to both of them?

Speaker 2 6:47

Yeah, I give it to both of them, but certainly the duration will depend a lot on training history. Yes, so the obvious answer is, if an athlete's training 20 plus hours a week, they're going to require a little bit longer time to decompress, detrain, reset than an athlete who's training maybe seven to 10 hours a week. But I think that it certainly depends too on lifestyle and other factors, and it's really important how we look at athletes holistically. That's what a good coach does, and so I think that there's a lot of nuances within between time crunched and time. Rich athletes will believe the way you described it there, where sometimes there can be a little bit of a crossover or maybe a little bit of balance where some might look very similar to the other. So I think that's a good answer, despite their their training history, just because of lifestyle factors.

Speaker 1 7:39

You know, for audience members. If you're looking for some, you know global overarching answer, the answer is yeah, take a break. But a lot of this varies. So I'd say we'll get into the weeds of it now and I'll first recap an episode I did last year, episode number 120. It's called detraining and in there I get fairly heavy on some of the research and and the data from mojica about how to set up a good and intentional detraining phase. I'm just gonna hit some bullet points and Then I'm gonna have Cliff just kind of riff off of that.

Speaker 1 8:19

So in that episode what I determined coach AP's recipe for detraining and both taking the research and in taking my athletes and observing what I do is it's a three to four week dedicated time period of detraining.

Speaker 1 8:35

I take one week completely off the bike and you just do nothing complete, get in away from all the training, maybe some light walking, but definitely chilling out, sleeping more and just being a human being. And then I have two weeks of shorter aerobic rides and then I'll incorporate in something else like hiking, yoga, walking, just very unstructured movement, and I decrease frequency, you know, for every athlete. So if you are used to riding six days per week, I'll knock it down to three or four, not in Incorporate some of that other stuff. Finally, in the fourth week I'll get frequency back up there, frequency of riding, and we're back to good habits with Sleep and food and all this kind of stuff of volume, still fairly low, intensities controlled, and then and then I'll start to Go into our base time period so that fourth week is like a, a transition within the transition phase of moving on to base. So that was my coach AP's recipe of how I do it. Cliff, do you do something similar with your runners, or is it more? Am I like wildly off baser?

Speaker 2 9:39

Yeah, I know it's actually like To the tee very, very textbook as how we would do it, the runners as well.

Speaker 2 9:47

I think the only nuance there is just, you know, when we factor in the individual Component to like we just discussed, just looking at the athlete holistically, you know, certainly have certain athletes that will Need some like very over Structure to their detraining phase to make sure that they are coloring within the lines, and then some, you know, you can just give them some very broad Parameters to work within. And generally I like the ladder Because I think that's kind of a good time frame for athletes to have a little bit of structure but Be able to kind of explore other modalities and kind of fill in the gaps. And so, you know, usually within that like Third, fourth week, especially second and third week probably, I'm just giving some parameters to work within. You know, go out, explore a different mode, whether it's running, you know, if you're a cyclist, maybe it's running, hiking, walking, swimming or for up to an hour and you know for the day that nerds out there, and then the OCD technical people.

Speaker 1 10:55

When we're talking detraining, we're talking a very intentional Fitness loss, okay, and that definition is coming from Bosque and mojica in their research and the definition is a Loss of performance adaptations which occur by a reduction or cessation of training. So yeah, to our listeners, we're telling you, take it down a notch, okay. And For a cyclist, and I'll be curious, cliff, when you're monitoring, like CTL and and some other metrics, on your end Maybe what you're aiming for. But on the cycling side of things, I'm if I and I never really prescribed this I more or less like Tell the athlete what to do and then look and see what happened.

Speaker 1 11:38

But I'm aiming for around 20 to 30 percent reduction in CTL over the three to four week time period. And that means if you're running as CTL of 75 right now Over three to four weeks, you're probably down in the 50 or 60 TSS per day for a CTL. So but then if you have a higher CTL, meaning you're like in the 120s right now, you can actually drop it a little bit lower, meaning you can go like 30 to 40 percent reduction and then you start building back up. So, cliff, do you look at some of those metrics or numbers similarly, or do you have another like thing that you're looking at?

Speaker 2 12:15

Yeah, very similarly, I would say that we're on the on the trail and ultra running side were a lot less sophisticated than you guys, and so you know we don't we don't offer, though You're tougher, and so you know we don't do a whole lot of prescribing based on CTL just because there's so many variables that can negatively influence CTL, With changing surfaces and different environments and such.

Speaker 1 12:39

But we definitely take the exact same approach with just a total volume and Duration measured in hours just kind of a recap of the detraining Technical stuff for audience members is yes, we want you to get less fit. Yes, we want you to do less. Yes, we want you to get away from your bike and your running shoes and all this kind of stuff and it's gonna be healthier in the long run.

Strategies for Transitioning Training Phases

Speaker 2 13:02

Yeah, and I'll just kind of add to that, adam Just that sounds scary, right Especially for those of us that are type A and performance oriented to intentionally take a step back and and get less fit, which is exactly what we're saying, to do like we want you to get less fit for a short period of time, and that sounds scary, but it's it's.

Speaker 2 13:20

We always have to like zoom out and and look at a much bigger picture and keep everything in the proper context and In training, if we go back to just overload and recovery, you know it's sometimes just three steps forward, it's one step back, four steps forward, one step back. And in this case it's like okay, we took four steps forward, now we're gonna take two or three steps back if that time where we need to do that and that's going to build it like they're gonna have a foundation and we can leverage that so that we can continue to take more and more steps forwards without your steps back, and so just got to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. It helps us get over the scariness of the concept 100% agree.

Speaker 1 14:01

It's a thousand percent scary for a lot of people who are super vested into this whole process and and are emotionally wrapped up in it, like, if you like being an endurance athlete, that's, that's it, and I. But I do think, just as you point out, cliff, you know a good coach will walk you through that. I think for a self-coach athlete it's a lot harder right to separate from those emotions and so cliff with your athletes. I mean, do you have kind of like the the do's and don'ts of Coach cliffs way to do this thing? And if you do, let's, let's hear them.

Speaker 2 14:31

Awesome. We'll start with the do's. You know, I think the the obvious one here is we just need to highlight and emphasize his rest. Like when we go into this training phase and I will call it a training phase we're being very intentional with something. It is an aspect of training and we need to prioritize rest over anything else. And so if you're, you know, waking up at four or five o'clock in the morning to fit your fit, your right in for the day, like that's time in the bank that you get to now Reinvest back into a little bit more sleep, or maybe it's a morning routine where you're spending, you know, with your spouse or reading a book. So that's the most important thing is that we need to be very intentional about rest here, because if we just fill in that training with other busyness and we're not sleeping enough, we've kind of defeated the whole purpose of this.

Speaker 2 15:24

The second thing to really emphasize is active recovery via cross training. This is a really good time to go out and explore some different sports. You know, for my runners I have everybody. I like to get them on the bike. That's. That's a big thing for for us. And you know, you can always jump in the pool and you can. You know, if yoga is your thing, do that, you know. But find something to kind of fill your time, stay active. Just make sure that it's active recovery, right? So it needs to be that extremely easy effort, short duration Cyclists. You guys can always come jump on the trails with us.

Speaker 1 16:07

Yeah, we can, but we'll have some good doms right after we do. And that's kind of the point of you know, kind of take this thing easy at first, like for cyclists who want to go hiking. I got a realization of this when we took a trip to Alaska. I just jammed into it, I did not prepare for it at all, but we were doing like 4,000 foot of elevation gain hikes, which means you have to come down 4,000 foot. I couldn't walk man.

Speaker 2 16:31

Yeah, eccentric loading will destroy you.

Speaker 1 16:34

Blume me up in my prime, but to that point like if you're taking something new up, even if it is yoga for a cyclist, like we're kind of. We're hardened endurance athletes aerobically but our musculature is not well equipped for some of these new activities. So don't go crazy. Right, take your time and learn. But the other beneficial thing here is actually learning new activities. Meeting other people through this cross training modality and the process of learning new movement patterns is wildly important and healthy for your brain. So, as you do take something else up and maybe you carry that through right, maybe you carry a yoga practice through or maybe you do stay on the trails a little bit more just for some overall aerobic cross training year round. Either way, go slow if it's new during this detraining transition phase.

Speaker 2 17:26

Yeah, which kind of leads me to another good practice during this training phase is to go see a physical therapist if you don't have one in your corner already. Go get analyzed and spend a little bit of time with whether it be modality or mobility or, like you said, learning good movement patterns. You can learn a lot from a good assessment like that that you can now incorporate into all of your training going forward to just help you move better as a human being in general. That will certainly influence your performance in your particular sport.

Speaker 1 18:01

Yep, I will second that. And for anyone who say doesn't have a good PT in their area or they want to stay kind of remote based, I've done several podcasts with Erin Carson, who is CSCS like myself, and she's a strength coach up in Boulder who works with triathletes, runner, cyclists and Google Erin Carson, boulder, you'll find her. Go on the podcast and look for Erin Carson or her episodes and that'll walk you through how she does some of that. But her famous quote is I stopped training muscles long time ago, or I stopped training athletes long time ago. I now train movement patterns, so moving properly will actually help you out quite a bit.

Speaker 2 18:44

Yeah, always tell people after you get a coach in your corner, the next specialist you need to bring on board onto your team is a good PT. Another good practice is to adjust your nutrition and so, with this massive reduction in workload, your demands are just going to change. And so I always tell athletes, especially after big events, like hey, you know what, don't worry about it. Like right off the bat, like especially this first week, maybe even the first two weeks, like you just need to get caught up. Especially for my old runners that just maybe ran 100 miles, or these crazy people that are running 200 plus miles. You don't even need to think about nutrition, you just need to eat, and that's going to be like one of the best things you can do for your recovery.

Speaker 2 19:27

But at some point in the space, whether it's two weeks or five weeks, you know we do have to realize that our output is significantly dropped. So we need to kind of mash the demands a little bit, and that's whenever you can be a little bit more strategic, not only with just total energy intake but also just the macronutrient make-ups with. You know still need to be eating carbohydrates, but maybe your sources of carbohydrates can change a little bit. Maybe your total macronutrients can change a little bit. So I won't get too much and that's a little bit outside of my scope of practice, but it's something that you should be paying attention to.

Speaker 1 20:03

Yeah, and we've talked about that in the podcast before. I'm not scared to go there. Simply drop your carbohydrate intake down a little bit, folks and we've got some podcasts coming out on that, including well, we already had one with Kristen Armstrong, so you can check on that but decrease carbohydrate intake, increase fat, keep protein the same. That's a pretty good rule of thumb. And what Coach Cliff was saying change up carbohydrate sources. Like just explore different grains. Like, if you're always hitting pasta during the season, start looking at stuff like bulgur or oats or tefta, I think is another, like Egyptian grain. I mean, go to the grain section and just like grab some stuff you don't know how to pronounce, start trying it out, change it up.

Speaker 2 20:49

Love. It Tries to be vegetable stew.

Speaker 1 20:52

Yes, eat more plants. It's still an animal, don't get me wrong, but eat more of those. Yeah, cliff, one thing on the. I don't know if this is a do or don't and I don't know if we're getting into the don'ts right now, but if I've got that like door jam that needs some repair or like the birdhouse that needs to be put up, and I now have all this time period, should I just like jam into that nonstop? Where are we at with like the honey do list?

Speaker 2 21:20

Yeah, that's an interesting one. I initially, you know, as I was thinking through this, had it on my do list, but I think it could fall into the don't list as well, right, because?

Speaker 1 21:30

Toes to line of both, I think.

Speaker 2 21:31

Yeah, I think we could fit into both categories here, because with anything else, with us endurance athletes, we can be excessive and so you know, at some point, if these honey do lists or these projects that you're taking on, if they are physically or mentally taxing, then may not be the best time to take these on. But certainly we can definitely reinvest a lot of that training time that we've had into some of these projects. My wife, she, always finds it funny that whenever I go through these periods which I'm currently in at the moment, it's like, well, my production around the house, with how much I'm helping with getting kids ready for school and cleaning and all of that like significantly, sky rockets, I got all this energy. I'm suddenly just wait, I'm a better husband of father. I do think it's a good time to be be intentional about those things because, especially in peak volume, those things can be neglected and our spouses may have to really pick up in our absence in those cases.

Speaker 1 22:39

Seasons for sure, and we kind of say toe the line. These are both do and don'ts. I think like if you just ran 100 miles on Sunday and then Monday you're gonna dive into the building, your deck or something, maybe pump the brakes there a little bit right and kind of like with the food and all this like take some time to unwind and then ease into that. And for all that stuff I would say now is a good time. Just don't be crazy with it, like I sometimes do too, which is like you start on something mid morning, you forget to eat lunch because you're just like no, I gotta get this thing done, and you should almost like treat it like a race itself and you just wanna get it done that day and you can finish it tomorrow. But hell, no, I'm just I'm not gonna. You know what I mean. So like bring some balance to all of this too.

Speaker 2 23:25

Yeah, I think we can just hit the common sense button, right. It's like, well, what is my purpose here? Like, why am I going through this period? Well, I need to recover and I need to bounce back from this race or this big training cycle. Then is this making me tired? Do I feel exhausted? Is this interfering with my joy? And if that's the case, I'm like stop, do something else.

Speaker 1 23:53

So how about your don'ts? What are on the don'ts list?

Speaker 2 23:57

Yeah, kind of in that same vein, excessive training, right? So we kind of touched on this a little bit, whether it be a honeydew list projects or all of a sudden we find this new sport and like, oh this is awesome, I love swimming. Well, don't just replace your normal training volume with a new sport. Don't go trash your quads on a massive downhill. Your quads aren't seasoned for that, as your example earlier. So I think excessive training is a big one. Just remember your purpose in this season is to recover and rest.

Speaker 2 24:35

I think another thing that I would really caution athletes to stay away from is just obsession over metrics, and I know, probably with the audience that we have right now, that's a big one, right Is I know cyclists love their metrics and I geek out on it too.

Strategic Detraining and Balancing Priorities

Speaker 2 24:52

I think it's cool, it's fun, but I think that there needs to be a time period where we are hyper focused on those things and in tune with metrics and data, and I think there needs to be a time period where we can step away from it and not be so dependent on it. And I'm probably a little bit too reliable on it to go for a run without my watch. I just that doesn't interest me, as a lot of people might suggest you should do, but I certainly won't be paying attention to my CPL going down. It's irrelevant. I understand that during this timeframe my resting heart rate or my HRV may be a little bit off. If I've all of a sudden cut my training load significantly low, my body's in a little bit of a shock right now. Not gonna obsess over that, I'm not gonna worry about that, I'm not gonna let it dictate what I do on a day to day basis. So I think it's good to just step back in all aspects of training and all aspects of life.

Speaker 1 25:53

You know, to all those cyclists that look at their what would be like a negative ramp rate daily, that's probably like the worst thing to look at.

Speaker 2 26:01

Yes.

Speaker 1 26:03

And in a practical bit, that I've been having some athletes and I even did this myself just to kind of prove it to some of these athletes. I was like here I do it too. If you have like a Wahoo or a Garmin or whatever, put your screen to time of day. If you wanna capture the data absolutely Because we wanna see accurately what some of these metrics were postpartum right, like after the fact but you don't have to look at this, it doesn't have to be in your face while you're doing it. You don't need to check in on heart rate to know and this is kind of to your point like learn your rate of perceived effort, and hopefully we're there by now. Just look at the. You have a time of day. Capture the data away, we go.

Speaker 2 26:40

Yeah, I think that's sound advice too, for even racing right. So I think a lot of times we can just obsess and that becomes a detrimental performance, and so I tell a lot of my athletes just to turn their watch to time of day.

Speaker 1 26:53

Cliff, what if one of your athletes said cool, four weeks, I don't have to do anything, Peace out.

Speaker 2 27:00

Yeah, so that's not the worst case scenario. I think that's probably a better alternative than what we just talked about. I think that's better than going out and over training in this space. I think that we can probably be a little bit more strategic, though. I think we can better utilize our time.

Speaker 2 27:22

While we're intentionally taking a step back and intentionally detraining, we still want to hold onto some of that right and we still want to make sure that we position ourselves well for the next training cycle, and so by going out and doing something, having some level of consistency is gonna position as well for the future. But I would say too that there's certain circumstances that is a need or maybe a net gain. Then I think that that should be on the table and should be discussed between the coach and the athlete and all invested parties. Like, maybe this is where the family has a little bit more say than usual on the training process. If your relationships have suffered because of your training, that might be a really good indication that you probably should take a little bit more aggressive detraining phase and invest in some of the things that matter the most.

Speaker 1 28:23

Yeah, I'll take a decreased CTL if that means I have an increased relationship, for sure.

Speaker 2 28:29

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 28:31

How do your athletes, how do your audience know if it's been long enough of a detraining phase?

Speaker 2 28:39

Sure. So we discussed some of the timelines and timeframes that align or congruent with just the physical aspects of not detraining too much. But I think that our intuition should be a major decision maker here. Excitability, right, like are we actually excited to go get on the bike again? Are we excited to set new goals, are we excited to see what the next year of training's gonna look like? And are we excited about going out and hammering some hard intervals?

Transitioning From Detraining to Base Training

Speaker 2 29:17

And if we can like yeah, I'm ready to go, then that's a really good indication that okay, I think if we're, you know, within certain boundaries, those physical boundaries that we discussed that's a good. That intuition is a really good indication that it's time to get going again. Occasionally gonna have the one-offs where athletes are like, yeah, just crushed my a-race for the year and Like, two days later I'm ready to go and we might need to put a little bit of a yield sign up, but For the most part, the mind and the body is really good about Providing us the the right feedback as to when we're ready to get back in the training.

Speaker 1 30:02

Yeah, and I'm gonna go a little off script here, just a quick delineation. But I think we all had those athletes that you know had either an injury or time away, like a bunch of travel for work, and maybe we never had the season that we wanted to right. So if you've got an athlete coming into this kind of like time period October, november, north America and they're like, hey, you know, I, I missed a whole month of training here and there, right, like, do I really need a detraining phase? What would you say if one of your athletes ask me, ask you that?

Speaker 2 30:41

yeah. So, like like any good coach, I'll say it depends, right. So certainly depends on all the all the factors when we're looking at an athlete as a human being. But I would say that if the relationships haven't suffered, if they're in a really good place, if they didn't go through a whole lot of, if they're good mental place and they didn't go through a whole lot of training stress because of all the mistraining, then maybe this is a good opportunity to keep the training load up a little bit and kind of transition right into the next season.

Speaker 1 31:13

But certainly depends on a lot of different factors and really I I somewhat get excited, especially if it's a time crunched athlete coming into, like this time period, if we can keep on training in some regard, because really what we're talking about is moving on to a base period, right, and so I want to talk about how to move on and how to transition into base now. But if I have an athlete in that spot, I essentially get a longer runway for base, which I would argue is better for all endurance athletes. So Even if you are like as an audience member listening to this, be like, oh, is it bad to do my base training now? Do I need a break? No, no, just do base training now. But, cliff, how would you transition someone from a detraining into a base training period?

Speaker 2 32:01

Yeah, so. So base training is kind of an interesting topic on the on the trail and ultra running side, because base training can essentially be a race specific phase for us when our Our intensity is so low. But yeah, so transition me back with some some normalcy of like Normal volume or rubber development. You know we really need to look at the three tools that we have in order to drive adaptations Frequency, volume and intensity and we need to be able to to leverage and utilize those tools. So the first thing we want to do is just take care of the frequency. We want to get back up to an optimal Days of training in the specific modality that we're training for. So in this instance, you know getting back on the bike, so you train six days a week and that's normal for you, getting back up to six days a week. The next would be to conservatively improve or increase the volume to an ideal level and In getting back up to those, you know zone two rides, spending a little bit more time in the saddle, extending out the, the weekend long ride and such, and then with the, the intensity piece, you can probably add a little bit better context on sight on the cycling side.

Speaker 2 33:14

That for the runners what I like to do is introduce Like small doses of frequency just to kind of, you know, prepare the body for for upcoming training phases, and that may not be enough time at intensity to really elicit any meaningful physiological adaptations. So kind of what I'm getting in here in the running world is strides, so I might incorporate like 30, 20 to 30 second strides at like the B02 max effort and that's not enough time to really, you know, produce any meaningful adaptations for that intensity. But it's just preparing the body and the mind to get like okay, we're back into, we're getting back into routine, we're getting back into real training again, structure training, and that that's kind of a good segue and lead way into, you know, the next training phases.

Speaker 1 34:07

Exactly. And I would say, on the cycling side of things, a couple things I would do, separate from strength training, to add in some of that intensity. Because if you, if we are lifting heavy at that point, typically it's enough and I'm just riding zone 2, but if I'm going to incorporate some meaningful structure I'll do one of two things. One and I add this in For a lot of athletes, but I I work on cadence, so it's very similar To the, the idea of why you're prescribing running strides. It's a lot of leg speed and For us it's a near muscular adaptation. So I want the athlete to get really good at high cadence work and I call them VO to aerobic intervals, not VO to max intervals, because we're doing this only around like Tempo or subthreshold. It's high cadence, hundred plus and I'll go up to wherever there's. It's smooth and I'll have a block of that and I typically find that it improves the athletes ability to produce power on whatever scale of leg speed, and Typically higher is better. So that's one way to do it.

Speaker 1 35:16

The other one is if I do have an athlete who detrained well, we're building base back up and they have a weakness, I'll work on it. Then, for example, a really good climber may be Not so good Aerobically, so I'll incorporate some short, really hard stuff, but, as you said, nothing that's gonna make you like really tired. But we're going to hit that high end of and try to Pull that up in a time period where it doesn't matter so that if we come into a time period when it does matter, it's slightly higher. All right, cliff? Well, let's take this thing home with a couple summary points. I guess the first one that comes to mind for me is you know, as we Started this whole podcast like having a period of less training or detraining is very important for long-term performance gains as well as just overall health. What else would you like to add to your summary points?

Speaker 2 36:06

kind of going back to our earlier talking point of Purposeful, intentional, but it needs to be a longer in duration, right, it's not. It's not a recovery week, I think, as you mentioned, but it's an actual training phase. That's a necessary process for long-term growth and development.

Speaker 1 36:25

And then I would say, after you've had a successful detraining phase I mean you want to transition to base simply and not too quickly. You can pull on the threads of frequency, volume and intensity. Do it appropriately, but just ease back in, Don't go too crazy, too fast. And it's also a time period where you can incorporate training for some of the weaknesses that you may not be able to train later on in the season. So that's the summary for today.

Speaker 1 36:54

I do think detraining should be embraced by all endurance athletes a little bit more than it is. I think the research that's coming out has helped to identify that a little better in terms of doing it with confidence, and so I'll incorporate those into our show notes, which is like links to resources, and for people who've been listening here, they're like wait, what Are links to resources? Yes, there are. So go to the landing page at trainrightcom backslash podcast. You'll find it there. You also go on like Apple Podcasts or Google Play, wherever you listen to yourself, and it's right there on the landing page for each episode. But, Cliff, before I let you get back to your four kids director of over 60 athletes around the world, being a husband and an athlete shameless plug For anybody who loves the Cliff Pittman way of coaching. How do they reach out to you? Are you taking on clients right now? How do they get more cliff in their life?

Speaker 2 37:57

Yeah, so I think the best way to connect is through Instagram. I'm pretty active on there. The handle is just at coachcliffpitman and I would love to interact with anybody there. I'm not currently taking on any athletes at the moment, just because of all the reasons you mentioned. That's all I'm going to play to, but of course, I will help facilitate if you reach out to me. I will certainly help facilitate getting you in touch with the right coach. That would be a good fit for you and the coach. Yeah, and then also you can plug into. I write a monthly column for Trailrunner Magazine and so a lot of those concepts apply to cyclists, like I just wanted to publish today on should you be training, about heart rate or perceived exertion, and obviously in the cycling crowd it's very power heavy, and rightfully so. But I kind of go into that article on why power meters aren't quite as effective in running. But anyways, yeah, that's another medium that you can plug into to get content.

Speaker 1 39:02

Yeah, see, I'm learning here too. I did not know you do a weekly on that, so send that over to me and I will put it in the show notes. Cliff, and if for yeah and for audience members, thank you for tuning in to another Time Crunched Athlete podcast and, cliff, thank you for your precious time that you gave today.

Speaker 2 39:22

Thank you so much for having me on, it was fun.

Speaker 1 39:27

Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclists podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.