What’s the difference between Race Season and Post Season?

Throughout the year and seasons we are constantly periodizing our clients’ nutrition to support their current output and goals.  The same goes for post season.  

However, during the post season, we CANNOT maintain that high level of focus on sports nutrition, sweat testing, gut training, ergogenic supplements, etc.  Those should NOT be the primary focus in the post season. Additionally, our brains need a break from the tedious sports nutrition calculations and timing.

Instead, our focus now shifts towards maintaining current fitness and weight with a decreasing training load after a tough season of stress to our bodies and gut.

What does Post Season nutrition look like?

We still need to specifically calculate and suggest changes in caloric and macronutrient needs, but in the post season, we include more fiber rich foods to help repopulate and support the health of the gut microbiome.  These needs are specific to each client and their current diets, so a thorough nutrient analysis is necessary before we can make any recommendations.

Typically during this time, training volume decreases and strength training increases.  Again, specific nutrition recommendations are prescribed for our clients to meet this changing tissue stress and their goals during the post season.

In addition, injuries or overuse injuries become more prevalent during this time.  Providing specific nutrition suggestions and inflammation management tools to heal tendon, vs ligament, vs muscle, vs bone injuries are important to fine tune. This helps to ensure that each athlete is getting the needed micronutrients in their diet to support the proper type of tissue healing, ideally from a foods first approach.

Lastly, if there are no injuries to work on healing, this can be a great time of year for those athletes who are looking to shed a larger portion of body weight. High volume training and racing season is NOT the time to be in a caloric deficit because doing so actually harms athletic performance. So, that’s why we use the post season to work on weight loss goals with our clients.

Want to support your post season gains?

If you’re needing a more detailed 1:1 approach to support your post season gains, reach out to schedule a 15-min complimentary call with one of our practitioners!