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Training
Principles
Peak Health > Peak
Performance
Training should be a positive addition to your lifestyle as opposed
to a cumulative stress element that wears you down. Mind and body
should welcome the training and leave you feeling better than when
you began.
Physical Health
I coach a wide range of athletes, of varying abilities, backgrounds,
and objectives. All of these athletes share a common goal of making
health the cornerstone of their training efforts. It seems simple
I know, but I am constantly amazed at how people seem to lose sight
of this most basic of principles.
M2 Health Tenets
· No workout is worth risking your health. When joints and
tendons are calling for a time-out, heed their call or you might
win the battle by completing a workout, but lose the war when you
are then forced to take a month off from training.
· Training when sick because you have a race and your schedule
insists on a workout, will neither restore you to a healthy status,
nor it will end up helping you in your race, if you do in fact get
to that race.
· Learn to accept what your body will give you on a particular
day and be grateful for that which it offers. If this is less than
what your schedule might call for that day, understand that your
body is the ultimate reality, and it is telling you that your optimal
health and performance can best be served by respecting your current
state. Trying to push and shove it (as opposed to coax) beyond its
boundaries will only shorten your horizon. "As your body invites"
is a term that all of my athletes will become familiar with.
Mental Health
Training should be a positive addition to your life as opposed to
another stress element. Workouts, races, results, all of these are
things that should give you enjoyment, pride, and goals to work
to strive for.
Missed workouts, disappointing races, are not failures, but instead
an invitation to reflect on where you needed to have planned better
or done something differently; in short, an opportunity for a learning
experience. I encourage my athletes to recognize that if they simply
do the best they can and listen to their body, then there is no
such thing as failure. One's ability to accept this simple premise
does wonders to maintain a healthy perspective on participation
in sport, and ultimately to perform up to one's potential.
A simple mental check list:
Are you having fun? Are you excited about your workouts? Do you
feel yourself getting stronger? Would you describe your pre-race
state as "pysched and ready" or let's get this over with?
Do you have outside interests?
If you answer yes to all of these questions, then chances are you
are on a healthy track with your athletic participation.
Less equals More, Quality versus Quantity
Training to be competitive in a 3-sport event like triathlon is
a tall challenge. Factor in life realities like jobs, families,
and only 24 hours in a day, and the challenge can seem impossible…
M2 athletes of all abilities have demonstrated that training which
focuses on hitting key workouts as opposed to cumulative totals
of miles ridden, swum, and ran, is more effective in terms of improving
performance, and certainly more manageable in terms of the time
commitment that is required. In short, M2 athletes perform better
while training less.
I know that the above sounds like an incredible sales jingle, yet
I cannot think of any event more demanding than an Ironman, where
flawed preparation would inevitably be exposed. M2 athletes include
graduates from the mega-miles go slower schools, new athletes, professional
athletes, competitive age-groupers, and athletes simply looking
to go faster or push themselves.
Of the 3 sports, it is the bike that seems to demand the most time
and which can make reaching your potential in the sport a faraway
dream. Ride 200-300 miles a week, in the dark, during winter, on
dangerous roads?
The key to solving this training riddle is use of an indoor training
device such as a computrainer, where an athlete's key training sessions
are 2-3 mid-week rides of approximately 1 hour duration. Weekends
can be used for the great outdoors weather permitting.
Some basic points which describe the above method are the following:
· LSD endurance training builds endurance alone
· Threshold and Strength training make you faster, stronger,
and build endurance
· Threshold and Strength training can be built for much longer
periods of time than basic endurance training, thus allowing a much
higher level of fitness
· Endurance training will be more effective when prefaced
with effective shorter threshold and strength training sessions
Anecdotal Examples
In the winter of 1991, I was forced to remain in Boston as I recovered
from surgery on my gluteal muscles. My riding was limited to 1hr
windtrainer sessions where as a relative novice I experimented with
threshold training. From January to mid-April, I did only two rides
longer than an hour, and only 1hr20min at that.
Upon arriving in Spain, my very first ride was a 70mile hilly ride
with a couple of semi-pro riders who had been training outdoors
all winter. A suicidal mission one might think. To my astonishment,
I was able to ride aggressively throughout and more than hold my
own with these accomplished cyclists. Hmmm, longest previous ride
was 1hr20' and here I was slugging it out for 3.5hrs on challenging
terrain with excellent cyclists?
While this ride caused me an impression, I was happy that I would
now be able to improve even more by riding outside everyday in Spain's
mountainous terrain. Two months later, I was noticeably slower than
when I had arrived. My friends thought it was ludicrous when I then
went out and purchased a windtrainer in the month of June.
Yet, two months later my friends were decidedly less critical when
I broke the Ironman Canada bike record enroute to a winning performance.
The key to my biking success was my twice-weekly 1hr-1hr20' indoor
sessions coupled with my weekend endurance efforts.
A similar approach to run training, which featured emphasis on
key workouts produced similar results; I had the second fastest
run split that day, a 2hr44' marathon; weekly mileage was typically
30-35miles.
Thus, my improbable Ironman winning experience provided the genesis
for rethinking the training process for triathlon events. Since
that time I have experimented widely and in the process refined
the approach to apply to a wide range of athletes of varying strengths
and abilities. There are now many M2 athletes who will endorse
In our first year of work together, Gina Kehr improved her previous
best Ironman performance by more than one hour and finished 11th
overall in 9hr45min at Hawaii 1999.
Yet, earlier that summer we were desperately chasing ITU points
in a last-minute run at the Olympic Trials, the speed and fast-paced
drafting represented a shock to Gina's system and strengths, and
I thus did not want to compromise her Olympic efforts by having
her doing distance training at the same time.
It was these circumstances which made for Gina's first ride over
3hrs in nearly 3 months occur in the 2nd week of September after
the Pacific Grove Olympic distance triathlon. Her run training was
similar in its conspicuous lack of leg-deadening long runs. Her
peers had been racking up endurance miles for weeks and she hadn't
even begun her Hawaii training; or had she?
Yes, Gina was panicked, yes we were cutting it close, yes her husband
Chris was very skeptical but knew it was too late to change horses,
but where she never go injured or sick, I was confident that we
would pull it together in time for a breakthrough Hawaii performance.
I still get goose-bumps when I remember seeing her running fast
and free in the marathon and yelling to me how she couldn't believe
how great she felt.
In summary, the evidence I have to support my training beliefs
is bountiful and has a long track record. My methods are continually
being refined. In endurance events, particularly grueling ones such
as Ironman, an athlete's performance is absolutely a reflection
of the efficacy of his or her training. Fluke performances cannot
simply occur because an athlete is "on" that day. My athletes
take satisfaction in knowing that their performance was the best
that they could offer on that particular day.
Variety In Training
Variety is the spice of life…particularly when applied to optimizing
training. Variety in your training is essential because of its widespread
influence:
· contributes to health by mixing things up and bringing
balance
· keeps things fun and interesting
· respects scientific evidence of the need to have your training
evolve
Why then do so many people fall into training ruts where improvement
is stifled, and much of the fun seems to disappear from their workouts?
Why also do people repeatedly expect to achieve a different result
with the same kind of training? Perhaps a good television show idea
for Unsolved Mysteries.
M2 believes in applying variety at both a micro (individual workout)
and a macro (2-6 week phases) level.
The Case for Variety as a Fundamental Training Principle
1. All athletes of all abilities will have had occasion to stop
and marvel at the body's ability to adapt to change. A few short
months of training can produce incredible levels of fitness and
Ironman-ready bodies, while a month of inactivity and all of that
fitness is gone! The lesson here is that these dramatic examples
of bodily adaptation were provoked by a change (read variety) in
routine.
2. All training obeys the law of diminishing returns. This is to
say that after a certain point, repeating a workout will bring less
and less improvement. Athletes that do not realize this will continue
to train to the point where workouts are not only failing to help
them improve, but in fact are making them slower! Hence, the need
to have your training evolve.
3. I believe in variety within a workout; the more variety the
better. For example, let's look at a workout that is prescribed
in numerous cycling publications by a top cycling coach. The workout
consists of 3 x 20' at threshold.
Okay, so we can see that for a time-trial event the coach recognized
the need to train at or around threshold intensity, and a 60' total
would certainly indicate a high level of fitness. Hmmm, I hope though
that you can see this creative gem is about as tedious as tedious
can be, violates the fun principle, and ridicules the variety principle.
Granted, it is a very easy thing for a coach to pencil in though.
Problems with this Workout:
· Heart rate drift (the tendency for HR to gradually drift
up over time despite no increase in work effort) will compromise
the overall intensity/speed of the workout.
· Redundancy; 60' of exactly the same thing (actually a declining
intensity-remember HR drift will obligate you to gradually lower
your speed)
· No variety means doing little to challenge the body to
adapt
· BORING
Let me be perfectly clear: I will never prescribe such a boring,
monotonous, lazy-coach workout for an athlete of mine, particularly
when the overall effectiveness of the workout could be greatly improved.
How to Improve this Workout:
· Shorten and vary the length of the intervals to 1.5'-4'
and introduce short rest intervals of 15-30" during which HR
must be maintained within 20 beats of threshold
· Intensity can also be varied by interval over a range from
8 below threshold to 4 beats above
The Benefits that Result from this Change:
· Will have the effect of raising the overall intensity/speed
of the work intervals while also lessening the effects of HR drift.
· Every time the body has to come back up to speed you are
forcing it to adapt, hence making it stronger. Simply pedaling at
a steady rate is much easier.
· Shorter intervals should see faster speed, hence higher
overall intensity and a lack of redundancy
· Different interval lengths teach you more about the sustainability
of a given effort
· Slightly different intensities teach you more about their
implications and give you signs that you can refer to when racing
· Vary the gearing/cadence to vary your muscle recruitment,
again lack of redundancy and forces the body to adapt
· Mentally, the frequent changes in interval length, adaptations,
and intensities will require concentration, teach you more about
your body, and provide more overall mental stimulation than saying
you survived a tedious workout
· 60' does not become an eternity! It can be fun!
Efficiency is Everything
Endurance, strength, and speed are all essential ingredients to
success in an endurance event. Yet, it is imperative for an endurance
athlete to seek out improved efficiency where a given amount of
work can be performed with less effort.
When I began my personal odyssey to compete at an elite level in
the sport of triathlon, I quickly came to realize that grit and
determination would not be sufficient to propel me to a top Ironman
performance. Strangely, a formula that had worked for me in many
other arenas, that of simply working harder and being more focused
on the prize, was not so readily applicable to success in a grueling
endurance event.
Although endurance athletes generally represent a highly motivated
and driven segment of the general population, it is simply not physically
possible to thrash your arms faster than anyone for 1.0-2.4miles,
blast away for 25-112 miles on a bike, and then run to blazing glory
for 10k-26.2 miles. No can do, although many folks keep trying!
M2 measures efficiency in each of these critical areas:
· overall training
· swim
· bike
· run
· fueling
The vast majority of triathletes have a finite supply of training
hours available to them. Things like jobs, family, etc. have a way
of limiting one's ability to bike 150 miles a day, taking naps,
getting massages, stretching, et al. It is thus imperative to get
the most bang for the buck from your various training sessions.
In swimming, efficiency can be measured in large degree by stroke
count. Killer swim sets and mega-endurance sessions will only take
you so far if you take 20 strokes per 25 yard length.
In cycling, pedaling efficiency is paramount. I have had several
athletes come to me with amazing power capacity on the bike, yet
with horrible pedal strokes. No amount of threshold/speed/strength
training was going to make these athletes faster until they first
learned how to pedal correctly.
Running efficiently can be readily observed in stride rate and
length. A gazelle like stride might look pretty, but chances are
it will be decidedly tortoise-like by the end of an endurance event.
Fueling also represents an area where efficiency plays an important
role. I have demonstrated that one can teach the body to be more
efficient in its use of existing fuel stores, thus relieving in
large degree the systemic stress of having to assimilate extraordinary
fueling in the midst of an event. Nutritionists find it hard to
believe that I won an Ironman event using fluid replacement drink
and one banana.
In short, the athlete that fails to make efficiency a premium consideration
in his training, will forever fall short of his endurance potential.
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