Do Time-Crunched Cyclists Need a Mid-Season Break or Mid-Season Volume?

OVERVIEW
Lots of endurance athletes take a mid-season break following a big goal event or a substantial training block. Some Time-Crunched Cyclists don't need a mid-season break because they don't accumulate enough training stress to benefit from a prolonged period of reduced workload. Rather, some Time-Crunched Cyclists benefit from an increase in training volume during the middle of the season! Coach Adam Pulford explains how to tell the difference between needing a break and benefitting from adding volume to your mid-season training.

TOPICS COVERED

• Benefits of a mid-season break
• What does a mid-season break look like?
• Who benefits from a mid-season break?
• Which athletes shouldn't take a mid-season break?

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades 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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Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast
• 1:06 Benefits of Mid-Season Breaks
• 3:12 What Mid-Season Breaks Look Like
• 6:18 Mid-Season Change For Time-Crunched Athletes
• 9:41 Summer Volume Opportunities
• 12:55 Rest vs. Consistency: Final Advice
• 16:33 Episode Closing and Resources

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 on to our show. Now, on today's episode, I'm coach Adam Pulford. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist the podcast that gets right to the point for all things endurance, training, racing and cycling fitness. So let's get down to it with the benefits. First, I prescribe a mid-season break for many of my athletes and many of my athletes that race and have aggressive goals throughout the year. The benefits of taking a few weeks of downtime helps to prevent burnout, chronic fatigue, overtraining or underperformance whatever term you prefer on that one and the main concept is this you take a bigger break from normal training to increase recovery and ensure a successful second half of the season. It's that simple, really. I'll get into more of what this looks like in a minute with some examples. But a mid-season break can be good for most everyone, as in its insurance policy that you don't push through fatigue after big races and heavy blocks of training just for the sake of keeping going. Now I would say that this works well for many of my time-rich athletes elite athletes, junior athletes, master's athletes, racing frequently at the national level, and typically I'll take this break after their road or mountain bike national championships, between road and cyclocross seasons or after big races throughout the year. And that means like both big and TSS, as well as emotional stress, and depending on the amount of hours and number of big race time periods that my athlete is doing and going through, I may take a few of these breaks throughout the year. Typically, I'm finding that shorter, more frequent breaks like this are better than one big break at the end of the season for both increased performance and motivation throughout the calendar year. So what do these breaks look like, and does a time-crunched athlete need to take this kind of break? It's a really, really good question. So let's explore that with some examples.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Mid-season break for most of us here in North America will come after, say, a national championship or that big race buildup. So a lot of my US elites and cadets, that'll be the end of May, beginning of June. For Masters and Junior National Championships that's the beginning of July we just finished that as I record here in the first part of July. Then mountain bike national championships are coming up here in mid-July. Typically a lot of my athletes are going to be, or either have or are going to be taking their mid-season break here soon. For athletes who are focused on cyclocross, usually this would be like the end of December and then it's like holiday season, but it's also like World Cup season and then World Championships. So, depending on your goals and level of competition there kind of gets a little convoluted. So we won't get into that just yet.

Speaker 1: 4:09

But then there's also the big races, not just national championship races, okay. So for me, for example, I did a big race this year called the Treka in Spain and after that I took some time off because I was just over it. I was over volume, I was over training, I was over intervals. And another good example is I've done Cape Epic in the past and I've had a lot of athletes do that race and it's one of the biggest mountain bike stage races. It's in South Africa and it's in March, in March, so that's typically when a lot of us in North America are still in our base and build phase. But for Cape you got to show up fit and fresh and pointy for that one Also, it's just such a huge race that you need to take a break from the big stresses and the travel to get there. So that's a great example of how it's early season. But afterwards you need that break to help reset and recover. Now, mid-season break, or whenever that break comes, is more than just a recovery week. Okay.

Speaker 1: 5:13

So most of the time, what I'm going to do this is a pretty good example is I'll take a week off. I'll take a week off from training and mostly off the bike. I want you to be lazy, I want full recovery. Sometimes I will put in training peaks for the people who can kind of handle it or manage themselves well, meaning read their body and kind of give it what they need. I'll just, you know, every day I'll say rest easy, your choice, move around a little bit, that kind of stuff For some people who can't manage themselves well, I'll put in three days of rest, a couple of easy rides, easy hike, walk the dog, that sort of thing. So I'll prescribe the recovery in the rest days in there, because for those who don't manage themselves well, they'll just overdo it. So those good rule followers, I will definitely keep the TSS low that we can prescribe it in. Okay, so that's week number one. Second week is just easy endurance. Okay, so I'll keep the total TSS low.

Speaker 1: 6:13

The volume is going to be low. We're not going to be doing a ton in the gym, we're not going to do any intervals, but we'll maybe just increase frequency of writing and that'll look kind of more like a recovery week for most people. Okay, so that's two weeks easy. That third week. Then we start to increase volume again. We'll come back to that normal frequency of riding and training. So coming back into the gym, maybe doing some light core work and just ramping back up into the next phase of training, which could look a lot of different for many different athletes, but typically phase of training which could look a lot of different for many different athletes, but typically I'll do another base and build phase where we'll increase CTL ramp rates, put more hay in the barn for the second half of the season. That's essentially what it looks like for somebody who has a second peak in their season coming up Now.

Speaker 1: 6:58

A mid-season break can also just be a mid-season change, and here is where I think this is the most compelling for a time crunched athlete. Now hear me out on this one we, time crunched athletes generally will be using more intervals and more intensity to increase our fitness and get toward our goals. It's what I talk about on this podcast so often, about, okay, and that's physically and mentally very taxing. Okay, I would say more taxing than some people who have more time to train and get the volume in, because, as I've talked about the value of just riding your bike and having a three or four hour ride, that you don't have any performance goals or, or you know hard intervals or something like this, you can just ride and mentally, just, you know, not as taxing Physically, perhaps not as taxing.

Speaker 1: 7:47

Time crunch athletes can physically recover, I want to say, more quickly because our mileage or total hours are generally low. Let's just view time crunch and time rich as two separate categories and there's no good or bad. There are pros and cons rich as two separate categories and there's no good or bad. There are pros and cons, and some of those pros or some of the benefits of being a time crunched athlete is we don't have a ton of residual fatigue. That's coming from the training side of things, so we can freshen up, we can recover fairly quickly, relatively speaking. So two weeks quote off or at a lower kind of training phase may not be as advantageous, especially now that summer has hit, the weather is good and we have lots of daylight hours to work with.

Speaker 1: 8:34

So do you really need a mid-season break as a time crunched athlete? And I would say no, I don't think so, unless you're feeling burnt out and physically tired and some of these overtraining things like I talked about before. If you're feeling that way, yeah, absolutely take a break. You pump the brakes. If you're working with a coach, tell your coach that, and when you have like a ton of fatigue, you want to get rid of that. If it's not part of the training program, okay.

Speaker 1: 9:04

So that mid-season break, though, in terms of being planned in there, like I said, I don't think you need it, especially if you're not racing a bunch and your hours are kind of that typical time crunched athlete of around six hours, maybe eight hours. And some people write into me and they're like, hey, man, I'm lucky to get five hours. So if you're there and your motivation is still high and you're watching the Tour de France and you're getting stoked to ride your bike, keep it going. You don't need to listen to a old coach over here talking about a mid-season break and being wooed into it. Not at all. So here's another observation I have with some of my time crunched athletes. Some of them become less time crunched as we head into the summer because of that improved weather and increased daylight hours, like I talked about.

Speaker 1: 9:50

So my advice here is to have a mid-season change, not a mid-season break, and that change is a little tick up in volume, if you can. So, as we're turning here into July and August, for, again, like I said, most of us in North America, if you can extend that long ride every once in a while, maybe every other weekend, you tack on an hour, or maybe you get to just sneak in a half hour or more at the end of the ride at the end of the day, because the sun doesn't set until late, and you tell your spouse and your kids hey, I won't be home as early on Tuesdays and Thursday nights, something like that, and you're leveraging the weather and you're leveraging those daylight hours to get a little bit more volume and get a little bit more fit throughout the summer. And so, yes, I am advocating increased volume right now and that volume should be primarily zone two endurance training. Now everyone and their moms know the benefits of zone two riding, okay. And so if you have a little extra wiggle room right now, I would, I would take it. But as you do that, I would encourage you to decrease your time at intensity or number of interval days If you're going to reach for the volume. Keep in mind adding volume will increase training stress. So I generally decrease time at intensity when I'm increasing volume. For somebody to keep the TSS roughly similar, or maybe a slight uptick in TSS so that we don't hit the burnout or overdo anything, and for a time crunched athlete, if you're not used to doing a ton of volume, I would say just tread softly, tread carefully, and if you increase by 10 to 15% each week for two to three weeks and then keep it stable, that's generally a pretty good recipe for increasing your volume.

Speaker 1: 11:41

Now I did an episode on this. I don't have the number in front of me but we'll include it in our show notes. But I talked about using these metrics of how to use ramp rates, volume and good planning to increase CTL and fitness. Again, if you want all the details about that, I did a nice 20, 30-minute episode on it and I will link to it in the show notes. So check out more on that for more details. Now for athletes that are typically crunched on time, an extra two to three hours of riding per week for three to six weeks will do wonders to improve your aerobic capacity, depth of fitness and durability.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Just plan ahead, communicate with your family and your work colleagues, your kids, and get creative on how you use your time. Many of my athletes do this in the summer and can do this because some of the normal barriers, like cold and dark, are not there for those months. So generally, I would say again if you're not blown out, if you're not craving a break in fitness, in fact, if it's like man craving a break in fitness, in fact, if it's like man. The first quarter of the year was stressful with work and weather and all this kind of stuff. I didn't get in all my training and you're going good right now. Just keep it up, keep that consistency rolling, keep the momentum rolling and you're going to set yourself up for a great end of the year.

Speaker 1: 13:01

So this gets back to should you do a mid-season break? Or is a mid-season break always good? And I'd say you know it really depends. You know, for the time crunched athlete, for the athlete who's a little like hit and miss in their training, probably not. But if you're a very routine athlete, if you're a higher mileage athlete or time rich athlete, I'd say generally, yes, I would take a break. And most athletes we want to keep on pushing from January all the way through December in hopes of increasing fitness and improving VO2 and maxing out their FTP, all that kind of stuff. But I'll remind you and I'll remind them that they need to rest in order to see gains. Stress plus rest equals the adaptation and those gains are not always linear. So sometimes you just need to go down a little bit before you go back up, and having a few more down weeks after months and months of hard training can decrease fatigue and allow for more motivation, energy, focus and that super compensation effect to come back in months to come.

Speaker 1: 14:07

So for those doing two sports like road and cross, definitely take a couple of weeks, if not three weeks, easy before ramping up into your cross season. You won't lose much in two to three weeks. Search for D training episode that I've done before and you'll get all the details of what that means. But if you just hang up the road bike from master's gnats and then start crushing it on the cross bike right away, I think you'll burn out before Waterloo. Okay, for all the cross racers you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Now, for those time crunched athletes who are listening to me and they're like I just struggled to hit six weeks on average and my summers are being burned up by my, you know, getting the kids to camps and sports and family trips. I hear you. I have some athletes there right now alongside you. You don't need a break from your training. You probably just need a break from life. But that's where staying consistent with the bike is key, because those mini breaks behind your bars are just as much as stress relievers as they are fitness builders. So just know you don't have to follow the similar build and rest cycles that you may see on VeloNews or even from our own newsletters, right, because periodization is kind of out the window for you. So just stay consistent for now, and that will carry you through.

Speaker 1: 15:31

So kind of in a long summary, and to wrap this thing up, my main message for the time crunched athletes out there is see if you can get a little more time rich during the summer months, freshen up the legs with an easy week or something like that if you've been hitting the intervals, and then kick up the volume for July and August. The tour is on now. The Tour de France Femmes is just around the corner, a couple of weeks away, I think. So let that stoke the fires of motivation to help you get out there on the bike and ride a little bit more. Get creative with your time put in the miles and know that this will serve you for the fall fondos cycle cross season, if that's your thing, or just some extra fun when the heat breaks and we get some cooler weather down the road. For those of you listening who have raced a pretty heavy first half of the season, and if you're feeling cooked, unmotivated and you got some tired legs that just won't go away, kick them up, watch the tour and be lazy for a week or two. Then start riding back. Don't be in a rush and know that all the work that you've been doing for the past six months is going to be there for you, but it is very good to take that mid-season break. So that's it. That's our show for today.

Speaker 1: 16:42

If you liked what you heard, please share it with a friend or a training partner, as that's the best way to grow the show and ensure that you keep on getting good content like this streaming into your feeds. If you have a question for me, head on over to trainrightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question. Head on over to trainwrightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question. Those questions get sent directly to me and I'll do my best to answer it on a future episode. Thanks again for listening and be sure to come back next week for more training tips in a timely manner. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist 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.