In most sports the term “off-season” represents a time of lowered intensity and relaxation to recover from the grind and challenges of the competition season when reaching your physical best is the number one priority. In physique sports, although the competition is used to reach and display a visual physical peak, it is the off-season when that physique is built and improved and where the greatest amount of progress is made. Without the correct approach and effort in your off-season training, you stand little chance of improving your physique and ever reaching your physical ideal.
Stage 1: Recovery- The first step in implementing your off-season program is simply to make sure you have properly recovered from your last show prep. This is usually accomplished by giving yourself an adequate amount of time off from your training and the strictness of your diet. It doesn’t mean you need to eat everything in sight or take months off from the gym. It simply means that you have been pushing your body to the limit to reach your peak and now you need to back off the intensity and allow your mind and body the necessary recovery period. How long this needs to be is related to how long and difficult your last prep period was. If you’ve been training and dieting for months on end, it might be a good start to give yourself a week away from the gym. Still, try to eat reasonably clean during this period as you don’t want to put on any avoidable extra weight. Your body will recover better with quality nutrients in adequate amounts as opposed to loads of excessive calories of junk. Once you have given your body and your mind a little rest you will be even that much more motivated to get back into hard training.
Stage 2: Physique Assessment- Perhaps the most important stage of off-season training involves thoroughly evaluating your physique and assessing what it needs to improve. You can’t reach a particular destination without knowing where you currently are and what direction you need to take. This is the time to be brutally honest about your strengths, weaknesses, and exactly where you need to make changes. Surrounding yourself with people who only tell you what you want to hear, or believing that the only thing between you and physique immortality is bad judging or politics is not the approach to take if you ever hope to reach your best. You should analyze your physique front to back, left to right, and top to bottom to see where you need to be better. Use any available pictures to help you and enlist the aid of an objective, experienced person who understands your goals to offer input. By being honest with yourself you create the opportunity to improve and give yourself the ability to take your look to the next level. Symmetry, proportion, overall balance, level of conditioning, posing and presentation, and the proper degree of musculature should all be assessed. How you currently look versus how you desire to look should be the driving factor that fuels your efforts in every training session you do.
Stage 3: Program Design- Once you’ve determined what you need to work on, then you can plan and put together the proper training program. A big mistake that a lot of people make is that they never stop “working out” and start “training”. Almost any type of physical activity can constitute a workout. But to actually improve you need to “train” to do so. Training is how you take a particular physique aspect or skill to a more advanced level. Just as you can train to run faster, jump higher, improve quickness, have greater endurance, increase flexibility, or become stronger, so can you train to have a better physique. Everything you do in your gym sessions should have a purpose. At times general workouts can help you get closer to your goals. But as you get more advanced or as your needs become more specific, so too must your training become more specific.
You must select exercise movements, rep ranges, training techniques, poundages, repetition speeds, rest periods, training equipment, etc. based on what your physique needs, where you want to take it, and what will best get it there. You must do what your body needs for you to do in order to improve your physique. This may be different than training to improve athletic performance or a specific set of skills. This is training to change your body for a sport in which your physique is the athletic representation of your efforts. Simply doing plyos because you enjoy them or running because you like to run can be counterproductive unless they are helping you improve either your physique or some aspect of your fitness that helps you to improve your physique. It’s time to do what you need to do more than what you want to do. Simply being in the gym more often than everyone else will not guarantee that you will make better progress. Design the proper program that is focused on making the changes your body needs to make as determined by your previous physique assessment. Once you learn to train for improvement as opposed to simply working out you will take a very important step towards attaining the look you are capable of.
Stage 4: Program Implementation- This stage can be a little tricky and requires that you constantly stay in tune with what will always be changing physical needs. Having assessed your physique and designed the ideal training program, you must be constantly aware that as your physique changes your program may need to evolve as well. Always take note of how your body is responding so that you can make your program adaptive. If you are targeting weaker areas of your physique, don’t develop them to the extent that they now overpower other areas. If you are generally lean but have trouble putting on size, don’t add body weight to the extent that getting lean becomes a new issue for you. If your physique was suffering due to a lack of training intensity, don’t push yourself to the point that your body is over-trained and stops progressing. Always evaluate your needs and then make the proper adjustments. You may need to focus on improving certain aspects of your development for quite some time. But always try to stay in tune with the ever-changing needs of your physique.
Also, remember that fitness even for an athlete takes a lifestyle approach. Endeavor to keep your program fun with a little variety if possible. There is a fine line involved with this process. If you are at the stage of your career where you are still trying to build your physique, going out and running a marathon will not help you. But you could incorporate other types of workouts for variety or as an active rest. The purpose of this is to keep both your body fresh and responding and your mind engaged and focused so that you don’t risk burning out. If you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve developed the needed amount of critical mass to compete you will have a lot more options when it comes to mixing things up. But never forget the difference between something you are doing as a “workout” for variety and the actual “training” you do to reach the next level.
Stage 5: Pre-Contest- Depending on your current level of conditioning a pre-contest training period usually starts about 12-14 weeks out from your show date. While we will save the specific particulars of a contest prep program for another time, some definite concerns need to be addressed about this stage as it relates to your off-season program.
One of the biggest mistakes competitors make is jumping into a full contest prep mode as opposed to transitioning into it. The human body can only change so fast and will only lose body fat so fast. To make a dramatic change from your off-season improvement program into a peeking program full of extremes is not only unnecessary but can easily cost you much of the improvements you worked so hard for and can seriously compromise your metabolism. You should never jump into a minimum-calorie diet full of restrictions or a max cardio program from the onset of your contest prep period. Instead, you should make only enough nutritional and training changes to begin the process of leaning-out and then modify those changes as your progress dictates to keep you moving at an ideal pace. Try to get your body to respond on as many calories as possible and only the amount of cardio necessary for a positive result. With controlled changes, you will continue to improve your physique even while leaning out. Losing weight at the fastest possible rate will only serve to bring your weak points back to the front and cause you to have to work harder and harder towards the end of your prep to keep progressing. You want to change at a sustainable pace in order to keep from hitting that dreaded plateau where you seem to be doing everything right but to no avail. By making gradual changes in your training and diet you still allow your body to adapt and improve in the desired direction while still assuring that you will reach the finish line. Don’t make the mistake of causing your body and mind to burn out and start resisting your efforts halfway through your prep. By training hard and eating right during your off-season you have put yourself in a position where you can coax your body into attaining a peak without having to force it to. Plus you leave yourself some options to up the pace when/if needed as you strive to reach your best look on the day of your show. Making the proper transition from off-season into contest prep mode is simply a matter of being patient, practical, and understanding how the body works as it relates to long-term success.
Conclusion: The off-season has historically been a time when many competitors find themselves lost and without direction. Those competitors often make minimal improvements by the time they step on stage again and can easily become frustrated. But if you look at the off-season as your best opportunity to change and improve, it can become your most favored and productive time of the year. By giving yourself adequate post-season recovery time, a proper critical assessment, and a designated plan of attack, your training can reach a whole new level of productivity. Once you see your physique improving and changing, your enthusiasm and focus will be limitless. And when you step onstage better than you’ve ever been in your life, you’ll know even without a judge’s confirmation that you’re a winner and a champion.
Model: Gia Marie Photo: Terry Goodlad
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