1. Keep it short
OFF-SEASON BIKE WORKOUTS are designed to rest your body after a long season of racing, while still keeping in touch with some fitness before starting next season’s build. Smart off-season training should briefly touch on technique, power and intensity, while still allowing for overall recovery. The following guidelines will help you design off-season cycling workouts to match those goals. Off-season trainer workouts are effective when they are 75 minutes or less. In the off-season, good choices for longer training sessions would be cross training, – cross country skiing, snowshoeing and mountain biking, for example. Choosing alternate sports allows your body to avoid the repetitive motion of your regular triathlon training. If you want a session on your time trial or road bike, it is better to keep it short.
In addition to total workout duration, keep the volume of quality training short. Off-season sessions should include half the quality time you do in a session during the season. This means a session designed as 30 minutes of threshold work should be shortened to 15 minutes in the off-season. For example, instead of 6 x 5 minutes of threshold effort, do 2 to 3 x 5 minutes.