QOTW:    I listened to the podcast this week on taking a break and the importance of Postseason.  It sparked interest and a renewed engagement — I was planning to fall into the long break without structure.  With it comes a practical question. I really need to allow training to take a back seat with minimal family impact.  It is important to give the family ‘the full me’ this winter, but I don’t want to go backward. I was planning on keeping active and exercising (likely 5-6 hours weekly).  With this in mind, any specific individual thoughts and how long can I go being in ‘break mode’?

We can crack this code for you and give you ‘everything’.  Let’s tackle your question piece by piece.

The break:  In your situation, you can afford to take a break for four weeks, but with structure around it.  As a squad member, this is incredibly simple. Just take the week immediately post-race to completely turn your back on the sport.  You don’t need to do a darn thing except being with the family as much as possible. Following this, I would go into ‘bridge mode’. As a Squaddie, apply the Bridge program, which is four weeks long.  Delete the last week. You now have your 2nd, 3rd and 4th week of a real break, but with minimal activity to keep the mind and body both healthy and fresh. The shift of lens is toward becoming a normal healthy human, and not becoming a sloth.  Rather than being viewed as a ‘training plan’, the Bridge is the provision of structure within a break.

This is about as long as you want to go as a full break — but this is a long time globally and you will also have the backbone of a bit of structure.  The next mission is sustainable postseason performance within a life that focuses on family primarily. This is simple. The postseason training will still offer plenty of load, but your lens should be to anchor in 5-6 hours weekly.  These are the hours you allowed to do without structure. Why not make them highly effective, specific and progressive? Why not make the hours anchored in preparation for the work? Random always provides random results, but simply shift the lens and hit the highly specific pieces of work in the postseason.  

When the time comes, you will not be recreating the wheel; instead, you will simply turn up the volume (load) and transition back into a full load.

You don’t need to be on or off completely.  Strike that, you should not be on or off completely.  

Go forth and conquer, enjoy your time of lower training stress, but don’t fall off the performance wagon completely.