Right now I am in an offseason from lifting weights hard.  I find it hard to even call it an offseason because I don’t even have a season to be honest.  I am an adult, I just workout.  Even without an actual season I think an offseason now and then is a good idea.  There are a lot of benefits to having an “offseason” phase to your workouts where you just chill out a bit. 

An offseason is a time to be less strict.  If you are dedicated to your workouts that is a good thing.  Mentally it can be nice though to just have some fun and be less strict.  This lets you do things like move workouts around to go do fun things or focus on work priorities.

The offseason is a good time to try new stuff.  If you are caught up in churning forward towards goals it can make it hard to try new stuff.  If you have a program that is working, why would you change it up to try a new exercise?   You probably won’t want to change what is working.  In the offseason you get a chance to just try new stuff.  If it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t matter.  You might find something that works well and then you can work that back into your base program.  Experimentation is a lot of fun, and the offseason is probably the best time for this kind of thing.

I don’t worry a lot about hitting certain numbers during an offseason period of workouts.  I just relax and take what is there for the day and move on with life.  This is a lot less stressful than trying to do something specific in a workout.  There can be a lot of stress associated with trying to hit a certain number in the gym.  Getting a break from that can be very healthy.

The offseason is a great time to get healthy too.  If you are always pushing hard you are going to start to accumulate nagging injuries.  These might be minor injuries but they start to have an impact over time.  In an offseason you can often rest and let things heal.  This lets you come back to training in a way that you can properly train instead of just dancing around injuries.

Sometimes an offseason in your workouts can also be good just so you can focus on your real life.  The gym is a fun hobby, and good for health.  However it starts to take a bit of energy out of most of us at some times.  It can be good to have an offseason to just focus on other things. 

Thinking about having an offseason is something most of us have to do proactively to some degree.  If you are working out for fitness and not competing in any way there is not really a natural offseason.  All the days, weeks, and months tend to just blur together.  It can be a trap to fall into just moving along at our workouts without much change in intensity for a very long time.  Over the long term adding in offseasons will probably lead to greater results from our workouts.  Changing pace now and then is a good, there is a reason athletes and coaches insist on doing it.

Going one step further there are likely other aspects of our lives that could benefit from an offseason.  A break from social media is kind of an offseason.  A break from big projects can be an offseason.  A break from professional develop can be an offseason and recharge batteries.  Professors have utilized sabbaticals for decades to work on other projects, that is just an offseason from the university.  Your offseasons will be your own, they have a lot to do with your goals and responsibilities.   If you can find space to have an offseason though you might just find yourself revitalized, fresh, and further along than you would otherwise be.  Grinding forever is hard, and there is no reason to do things the hard way if we don’t have to.

Useful Links                                                        

I am constantly on the search for new ways to get stronger, healthier and more awesome.  Here are some of the best things I have found lately.

Strength and Conditioning

Good video on foot pronation in the squat.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01Udfnd84eo

A nice article on the merits of direct oblique training, it is worth consideration because you don’t see a lot of people training obliques with much intention in the gym.  https://www.elitefts.com/culture/coaching-logs/oblique-training/

This training program seems like a rather reasonable approach for people that are burnt out and wanting to back off training for a bit.  https://www.elitefts.com/education/8-week-reset-program-for-the-stressed-lifter/

Mindset

I like this approach to adding in new habits to life.  https://zenhabits.net/perfectionism/