Transition and Periodization in Triathlon Training

I’ve been reading my new book Training Plans for Multisport Athletes and planning my training schedule for this season. It’s a great book, but a bit complex and hard to understand. Worth the effort to figure it out, tho!

The book talks about transitioning, which is taking a break in the off season to allow your body to recover. The book doesn’t really tell you how to do this, so I asked my brother. My brother is so great about answering all my dumb questions!

I wrote:
I have a question about transitioning. I don’t mean T1 and T2, I mean
taking a break in the off season to rest before rebuilding for the next
season. I have been ramping up my biking and running all winter, and am
feeling like I need a rest, but don’t want to lose what I have acheived.

So how do I take a rest without losing all I’ve worked for? Or, is that
impossible, but I shouldn’t worry about it because I can get it back again.
What exactly should I do … drop my training volume by x%. Should I skip
tempo runs, and interval training and just do easy pace workouts?

My brother’s reply:
It sounds like you definitely need a break.

Off-season training should be almost exclusively low intensity. No
intervals, no sprints, and easy on the hills. You need to give your body
time to recover. You should also look into periodizing your training, i.e.,
cutting down on training every so often. For example, cut back to half the
volume (hours/week) every fourth week. You build up your body by tearing it
down, and then letting it recover! Many triathletes forget about this 2nd
bit.

I would suggest cutting your training volume in half, and do nothing but low
intensity, for a month. As long as you’re doing something, you should keep
your basic aerobic fitness level. And you need the rest, so don’t sweat it.

I pushed myself way to hard last year, and ended up completely burned out by
October. It took a good month of very little workouts (maybe 2-3 hours a week, down
from 8-10) before I felt better. So, take my advice, and chill for a month.