When I was racing in the Ironman triathlons, I lived in the beautiful area around Manly Beach, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. While there definitely is a Winter, it is hardly unbearable.
While there was usually a “key” race at some part of the year, there was nothing stopping us from training and racing year round.
In Europe, when the season ends, there is snow on the ground. The athletes head to the gym, or go snow showing. They have to give the body a rest from the intensity of their “chosen” sport. Natures way of curbing annual specialisation..
After a severe burn-out and complete system shut-down, I moved away from high level endurance sports. My stance on seasonality in a Training regieme also changed.
We know that seasonality also can shift the physiological load upwards, as darkness (or lack of light) acts as a stressor. So, here are a few current thoughts on how I now approach seasonality (the more distinct the difference in between seasons, the more important these become). This would be for moving into Winter.
- Darkness is a stressor. This means a net stress increase, which means more food overall. Another way of looking at it is – we need more fuel to maintain our metabolism and body temps (and CO2/energy production)
- Reduced training intensity. Volume can sometimes remain, but walking, lighter “warming” movement becomes favourable. Reduce “breathless” exercise.
- Sleep more. According to Ray Peat, PhD, sleep helps us to balance the stress of darkness
- Simplify sessions. Overall, I decrease complexity and focus on strength building and hypertrophy work. Anabolic exercise could help to down-regulate stress (the creation of muscle itself is metabolic)
- Longer warmups
- Observe the nature of the mind. Usually the stress of darkness can increase cases of anxiety (often comes at night), which can be a stress response. Often people report more depression during Winter. If the mind state is consistently down, I’d look to further down-regulate other stressors like training intensity.
- Plan a holiday north to top up on light exposure and Vitamin D. Vitamin D is not available year round as soon as you go south of Sydney.
- Usually decrease coffee intake. Many people go the other way, but I find in Summer I am more tolerant to higher levels of coffee. In Winter, I limit it to one per day usually in the morning.
Introducing a seasonal shift to your program* is important and can help create the long game results (year round).
While I “knew” this intellectually years ago, I had to experience the downside of the burnout before I started to research the mechanisms behind this and really dial in a new approach.
*This concept of seasonality in training was first taught to me by Chris Jones at Primal Movement
