The Best Offseason Decision You Can Make
The best offseason decision you can make; KEEP YOUR COACH OR HIRE ONE!!
There are huge pitfalls in firing or pausing with your coach in the off season. Especially when you’re tired, motivation from the race season ending is changing and you’re in that transition period of the year. This is when a lot of mistakes are made. Not having a coach through this period really prevents continued long term progression. It interrupts the most critical time for important changes, continuing steady progression and changes over time, with repetition. There is also a risk that it can affect the relationship between coach and athlete over the big picture. More progress is made when it’s year round and long term, in all regards.
I recently asked one of my long time friends who I trust with pivotal decisions in my life. I asked, should I get a coach myself? His answer made a lot of sense to me:
“ You’ll waste a lot of time and energy planning things out for yourself. Hire that out to an outside eye! It’s continued education, it’s an outside look at things for yourself AND it will save you a ton of time and energy to leave the planning in someone else's hands. You can invest that time into other things like the actual training, your work, other projects, relationships and rest.”
Another pitfall a lot of athletes fall into is comparing what they did in the past will produce the same result as before. Remember the saying, "do the same and you'll get the same!" That actually isn't true in my experience. With training and development our body is always adapting and changing. That actually is the goal, you train, you adapt to it and then move to the next level or change in stimuli is needed. Our body literally changes on a physiology level and so do our brains. So if you keep doing the same thing each year you'll not only not grow, but you may even start going backwards. Continued improvement is a year round project with different adaptation phases. You might not see this for yourself, but an outside eye can see YOU, the big picture and the progression. They can also see where you might be getting stuck that might slip past you. Now, in saying that you don't throw the baby out with the bath water, too much change doesn't work either. The goal is to stay close to the foundation while creating small changes to push new stimuli based on a lot of different things throughout each time period.
When we are in race season we are preparing for races with race specific blocks. Off season is where the bulk of your progress is made. You can addresses weaknesses, work on strengths, improve habits and make real gains as an athlete. This is KEY to your progression and development from year to year.
Avoid these major pitfalls of the off season! Invest in yourself, you’re worth it. I find not only will performance instantly improve, but daily inspiration in all areas of life will improve. The older you are the less wiggle room you have for major gaps in consistency. It’s worth your long term health to stay in the game!
End your season strong, make the right decisions for your off season, you didn’t work this hard all year to go backwards now!