Stop Lifting Like It's January

Race season is here and for a lot of the athletes I talk to, that means their strength training goes sideways. Sometimes it disappears completely. Sometimes the opposite happens -- they keep lifting because they know it's beneficial, but they're in a constant state of soreness or low-grade fatigue and feel like they're not making progress at anything.

Both of these athletes think they're being responsible. One is protecting their race prep. The other is protecting the work they put in over the winter. And both of them are making it harder on themselves without realizing it.

So let's talk about what's actually going on, and what race season strength work should look like.

The two camps

Most athletes fall into one of two patterns once the race schedule fills up.

The first group drops strength training almost entirely. It feels logical. You're already tired, your hours are up, and anything that isn't swim, bike, or run starts to feel like it's taking something away from the race. So the gym quietly disappears. Maybe you tell yourself you'll pick it back up after the season. Maybe you don't tell yourself anything, it just stops happening.

The second group keeps doing exactly what they were doing in January. Same weights, same volume, same sessions. They worked hard to build that base and they're not giving it up, dammit. The problem is that the body can only absorb so much. When you stack race-level training on top of a full strength load, something eventually gives, usually as fatigue that won't shift, or a niggle that turns into something worse.

Both of these make total sense given the pressure of a race season. But neither of them is actually serving your race performance.

Why it happens

Race season creates a specific kind of anxiety that off-season training doesn't. Every session feels like it has to count directly toward the race. For a lot of endurance athletes, strength work doesn't feel like it "counts". It feels like a tax you pay on your energy, your time, your legs. So you either cut it to protect those things, or you hold onto it because letting go feels like going backward. And if you've been doing this long enough, you know exactly what it feels like to lose those gains.

What gets lost in both cases is the actual purpose of in-season strength work. It's not about building anymore. That window has passed for now. It's about maintaining what you built, keeping the neuromuscular patterns sharp, and protecting the body from the repetitive load of high-volume endurance training. That's a much smaller job than January's job. It doesn't need the same hours or the same intensity.

What I actually do with my athletes

The biggest lever to pull in race season is volume. Your endurance volume is going up, which means your strength volume should be coming down. Your endurance training is also getting more specific, and your strength work needs to mirror that.

For athletes who are comfortable with barbell work, that means a real reduction from what I had them doing in their base phase. For most of them that looks like 1-2 main lifts at a 4x4 or 4x5 rep range with an RPE of 8-9. Heavy. As they move into their build phase, we go to 1 main lift in the 3x3, 3x4, or 3x5 range at a max RPE of 7.

Accessory work in the base phase is usually 3 sets across a 6-12 rep range, a mix of unilateral and bilateral movements. As we get closer to race season I'll either drop that to 2 sets depending on what else is in the session, or keep it at 3 sets if the athlete is only doing a few movements.

Here's what a session might actually look like:

Main lift: Deadlift 3x4 at RPE 7 (3 reps in reserve)

Accessory superset 1, unilateral upper: Single arm lat pulldown 3x8, single arm DB bench press 3x8

Accessory superset 2, unilateral lower: Bulgarian split squat with contralateral front rack hold 3x8, single leg push up bodyweight or weighted

Core/plyo/finishers: Front foot elevated barbell calf raise 3x12, forward and backward pogo hops 2x10, half kneeling rotational woodchoppers 2x8 each side, KB offset farmer carries 45 seconds each side x2.

If the athlete is pressed for time, this can be made even tighter by doing one unilateral upper and one unilateral lower move. I have one athlete that is particularly time crunched so her lifts look like this. One heavier main lift, 2 unilateral lifts (one upper + one lower) with some core and plyos. Done in 30 minutes give or take.

The reality is, in season strength looks different from off-season strength in almost every way except one. You still show up for it.

What changes when you get this right

When we find the right balance, my athletes always comment on how strong they feel in their training. Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error to get there, and honestly the hardest part is often convincing athletes to dial things back. But when it clicks, it clicks.

What I see most consistently is that athletes who maintain smart in-season strength work hold together better in the back half of a race. Their form doesn't fall apart. They don't hit that point where everything starts to compensate. It just works, race after race. They have built durability because they know the value in lifting year round.

The athletes who dropped everything in May sometimes feel fine in June. By August they're wondering why their running economy has gone soft or why their power on the bike has flattened out. The athletes who kept too much volume going often chalk the fatigue up to their training load, or a rough week of sleep, and never connect it to the obvious thing: too much time in the gym.

Something to take with you

Race season strength isn't a lesser version of training. It's a different job entirely. The goal changes, the volume comes down, the sessions get shorter, but the work stays in the program. Because what you maintain now is what carries you through August, September, and whatever finish line you're chasing.

The question worth asking yourself isn't whether you should be lifting. It's whether what you're doing in the gym right now is working with your race prep or working against it. Less is often more than enough in race season!