The Offseason Transition After a Show: Keeping Easy Activity In

The first week after a show starts the offseason transition. Food goes up sharply, the athlete refills, the scale moves, and the off-season begins. It is tempting to drop activity along with the diet. The research on high-intake periods points the other way. Keeping regular, easy activity in place while offseason food climbs helps the body handle the extra intake. Short walks after meals help with each individual meal.

What the evidence says

Exercise during a week of overfeeding (Walhin et al., 2013). Twenty-six active young men ate 50% more energy than normal for seven days. Their daily steps were held below 4,000. Twelve of them (randomly assigned) added 45 minutes of daily treadmill running at 70% of maximal oxygen uptake. That group also got extra food to cover the exercise, so both groups carried the same net energy surplus. In the group that did not exercise, the insulin response to a standard glucose drink doubled over the week, and fat-tissue genes linked to fat storage and insulin action shifted. In the exercising group, the insulin response did not change, and most of the fat-tissue changes did not occur. With the same energy surplus, the group that kept exercising ended the high-intake week better off. That is the situation at the start of an offseason: a large energy surplus arriving fast.