Like most time-starved athletes, it’s the time of year when you reflect on the season and look forward to a well-deserved break.

While the winter months offer a welcome shift of focus to other areas of life, your commitment to longer-term goals and your performance journey looms large. The threat of losing momentum in your athletic performance conflicts with the need to disconnect. 

Today IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon lays out a few strategies for developing your winter action plan, to help you find the mental relief you seek while setting up a strong performance for next year.

Matt shares his 5 non-negotiable basics that every athlete or fitness enthusiast can do this winter to stay on pace for an optimal long-term outcome.

• Retain Structure and Amplify Focus on Life

(24:07) "A training structure is actually the very framework that allows organization. And that becomes really important because having some structure in your life is the very key that unlocks effectiveness in work, in giving time to family and friends."

• Commit to Strength

(36:19) "If you do strength and conditioning appropriately, you should experience improved motor patterns. So better synchronization, better coordination. In other words, you get to be more athletic, that's really good. We get to improve our posture, our stability, and our balance. So, therefore, better athletic awareness, a better platform to go and launch into any type of endurance activity that we might do."

• Go Play

(42:57) "Beyond the framework of specificity that we have, there is capacity to add play into this...activities that can foster mental rejuvenation, freshness, but at the same time cross-pollinate to an effective training outcome."

• Evolve Your Fueling and Eating Habits

(50:13) "It is the time when training stress is lower, that you really have mental capacity to apply the lessons...and then when training ramps up, you've got the habit creation, you've got the strategies, and you can parallel your nutritional demands with increasing demands of training. And that becomes a winning proposition."

• Lay Your Performance Foundation

(51:26) "The truth is that if you want to make something really special happen for yourself, you need to go out and make it happen. There's no sugarcoating here. You do the work, you work your tail off within the lighter structure, with less hours and you will, as a non-negotiable, lay your performance foundation."

This episode aims to help you turn your back on the sport this winter without turning your back on your overall performance journey.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - 05:37 - Welcome and Episode Introduction

05:44 - 10:49 - Matt's News-ings

10:50 - 100:29 - Meat and Potatoes - Episode 240: The Winter Action Plan - Five Non-Negotiables for Every Time-Starved Athlete

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