This week elite OCR athlete and coach Mark Batres joins me to talk all about training in the off-season: the dos, the don'ts, and how to train to improve your performance for the next year.

We start with Mark telling me about his OCR season went, and then he tells me all about the recent Spartan combine held in Laughlin. I also ask him if he's planning on running one of the new Spartan Trail races, and we chat a bit about that.

Mark then tells me more about his coaching business, and how and why he got started.

We then talk about the off-season, and Mark explains why it's not good to take an excessive amount of time off. He tells me about building a base, and discusses the best ways to use the off-season to improve your OCR performance.

I ask him about plateaus in training, and Mark tells me how they happen, and the best advice for pushing past them. We then discuss finding a balance between overtraining and not training enough, and I ask him what some of the biggest mistakes are that people make in the off-season.

We end by talking a bit about the Spartan U.S. Championship series next year, and Mark's goals for 2019.