Purple Patch Fitness

Classic Ironman off-season base training is outdated and will make you slower.

There's some easy aerobic work in a good off-season, of course. But the body thrives on variety, and if the only thing you do between October and February is ride and run easy, you'll arrive at next season with a lower ceiling than you have today. Continue to do short, sharp, high-end work across disciplines.

Take it from Emily "I really enjoyed the off-season. And despite not intending to chase personal bests, I did still set new PRs in each race I entered, which was a bit of a surprise as it didn't feel like I'd done anything hard enough for those results."

There's a better way to train these next 3 months.

Our off-season training starts September 28th.

Comment OFFSEASON to get more info.

Your race season is over, and your 2027 plans may feel far away, but what you do in the next few months will have a bigger impact on them than any race build.

Most athletes get this block of training wrong in one of three ways.

They keep hammering -- same training, minus the races. Fit, permanently fatigued, often injured.

They drop to easy miles. Feels responsible, but three months at one intensity and you get slower, not fresher.

They drift. No plan and no structure. Twelve weeks disappear and you went backwards.

Three different mistakes, same outcome: next season starts and you're not just no better than last year. You're worse.

There is more nuance and important information about the off-season, but we didn’t want to overwhelm you in this caption. So we put together a short video on how you can optimize your off-season.

Our off-season training starts September 28th.

Everyone talks about how the off-season is when you work on your weakness.

Nobody tells you how to do that without creating a new one.

Swim, bike, run, strength. Every one of them is a legitimate thing to improve, and you've got six to ten hours a week, not fifteen.

Go all in on the swim and your run frequency slips. Make strength the priority and your feel for the water is gone. Fix one thing and something else quietly becomes the new problem.

So most athletes do the reasonable-looking thing: a bit of everything, at reduced volume. And they arrive to next season having not really moved the needle on anything.

We do things differently at Purple Patch.

Take it from Kostia -- "It felt simple, but I progressed in terms of performance in all three sports, set my highest FTP, PR'd twice in half marathons, and had my best 1K swim test ever. All that in winter while having no pressure with what didn't seem like serious training."

Comment OFFSEASON for more info on how we approach it.

You can train fewer hours the next 3 months and get faster for next year.

Here's the maths.

Most athletes train 14 hours a week in season, drop to four or five of whatever they feel like, then slam back to 14 in March.
Try 6 to 8 structured hours through the off-season, then build to 8-12 as race season ramps. Fewer total hours across the year. Better results at the end of it.

In twenty-five years of coaching, I can't think of a breakthrough that didn’t come off the back of a better off-season.
It's the difference between athletes who improve year on year and athletes who repeat the same season with a different race number on their arm.

And it's the biggest reason our time-starved athletes produce results that make no sense next to the hours they're actually training.
More than 2,000 of our athletes have qualified for world championships, and we've had too many PRs and first-time IRONMAN finishes to keep track of over the past 15 years.

Our off-season training starts September 28th.

Comment OFFSEASON and my team will send you everything you need to know.

If you are an older athlete your body needs to recharge in off-season but the worst thing you can do is take a complete break or revert to only easy base miles.

Both mistakes lead to the same outcome: next season starts, and you're not just no better than last year; you're worse.

In 25 years of coaching, a well-executed off-season has been the single biggest predictor of whether an athlete has a breakthrough year. It’s how we have qualified over 2,000 Age Group Athletes for World Championships.

You can get faster as you get older.

Our off-season training starts September 28th.

Comment OFFSEASON and our team will send you everything you need to know.

The off-season is the only time you can actually fix your swim technique.

Once race season starts it’s about building race fitness. Right now is different. Training stress is low, you're not focused on race specific sessions, and you can finally turn your weaknesses into strengths.

That's what these next 3 months are for. It’s time to rebuild, retool and recharge. Technique, strength, keeping top end fitness all while making room for outside of triathlon.

There is more nuance and important information about the off-season, but we didn’t want to overwhelm you in this caption. So we put together a short video on how you can optimize your off-season.

Our Off-season training starts September 28th.

Comment OFFSEASON for everything you need to know.

Four pro tips I tell every athlete about the off-season.

- You're allowed to train less. I want you to. What changes is intensity and specificity, not whether there's structure at all.

- Don't spend three months at one intensity. Endless Z2 is outdated and it will make you slower.

- Make strength non-negotiable. Two sessions a week, heavy rather than long.

- Pick one weakness and go after it. Not three. One.

If you’d rather have all of this done for you, the plan written for you, coach support through the winter, and a seat on coaching calls covering info like what's in this post — our off-season block starts September 28th.

Comment OFFSEASON and my team will send you more info.

Your race season is over, and your 2027 plans may feel far away, but what you do in the next few months will have a bigger impact on them than any race build.

Most athletes get this block of training wrong in one of three ways.

They keep hammering -- same training, minus the races. Fit, permanently fatigued, often injured.

They drop to easy miles. Feels responsible, but three months at one intensity and you get slower, not fresher.

They drift. No plan and no structure. Twelve weeks disappear and you went backwards.

Three different mistakes, same outcome: next season starts and you're not just no better than last year. You're worse.

There is more nuance and important information about the off-season, but we didn’t want to overwhelm you in this caption. So we put together a short video on how you can optimize your off-season.

Our off-season training starts September 28th.

Comment OFFSEASON and we'll send you more info.