FOBO
Fear of Backing Off
If you want to improve you need two things. Really hard work and really good rest. This rest could be a day off, a rest week, or an offseason. I have encountered many athletes that resist taking their foot off the gas for fear of losing fitness. They always say they feel like they will lose fitness. The feeling is so powerful that they never slow down. Often, we notice these people’s performances start to worsen. I have fallen prey to this. I have also seen the opposite. People who have been able to put those fears aside and embrace a more balanced approach. Their performances usually improve. That has also happened to me!
I find that people who constantly have their foot on the gas never have proof that resting makes them lose fitness. Firstly because they have never slowed down. Secondly because they never actually objectively measured if they lost fitness. Again, they go by how they feel. More often than not it’s actually the brain that feels like it slowed down but the body stayed ready to go. I can’t even count the amount of times my brain said I was going to have a bad training session but then my body showed otherwise.
This is one reason why it’s beneficial to track fitness. Obviously I do this with my clients. When I can show them that they have made progress in spite of days off and rest weeks it becomes easier for them to take it easy.
If you’re still on the fence
I think it is helpful to look at the abundance of research on tapering. Tapering is when you reduce your training volume before an important race by up to 50-70% in order to perform better. The three things that add up to volume are frequency, duration, and intensity. When we taper we want to keep the intensity up, the frequency pretty up, and reduce the duration. This overall reduced volume has been shown to improve performance on race day anywhere from 0.5-6.0%. There is a lot of variety when it comes to tapering that I will save for a specific tapering post. Here, what’s important to realize is that we can reduce our training volume by up to 70% for weeks and potentially get stronger. Check this study out that found Olympic swimmers improved their performance by 2.2% after a three week taper. Even Olympians do not fear reduced volume.
Again, this post isn’t about tapering but its science can guide us for any periods of time that we need to take our foot off the gas. I purposely am using the vague statement “foot off the gas” because I don’t believe people have to take complete rest from exercise. Some older school coaches do. In fact there is a lot of science that says we will lose a lot of fitness in just a few weeks if we do nothing. Plus it’s important to remember that exercise is straight up good for our health. I would always suggest keeping it moving somehow (cross and strength training) even in the offseason. But let’s get back to the main point.
Taking your foot off the gas could mean tapering of course but it also includes rest weeks and the offseason. If we can improve our performance by reducing our training volume by up to 70% for up to three weeks do we need to fear a day off? Do we need to fear a rest week? Tapering? Even an offseason? If we can go a few weeks and actually get stronger would a month or two of strength and cross training during the offseason bring our fitness way down?
Rest weeks, days off, and off-seasons are necessary for us to make progress. We need to work hard and recover well in order to progress. Reducing our volume from time to time also helps prevent injury and overtraining. So often I see so much resistance to the idea of reduced training. I hope that this post has eased your mind enough to give it a try!
