Are you a 'skilled' swimmer?

As much of the EC team is on the verge of kicking off ‘Swim Game v2.0’, I could not think of a better time for this post.

I received a little bit of heat/disbelief when I posted some comparison tables looking at relative fitness standards for swim, bike and run in a recent blog. To be fair, the upper end ranges in that table were assuming ‘elite’ swimming skill/economy.

Elite swimming skill can be an elusive thing to define, let alone achieve. Certainly, in the triathlon world, it is seen as a ‘holy grail’ of sorts, something that is the exclusive domain of the fortunate few who ‘grew up swimming’. But before we write off the possibility of converting ourselves into ‘skilled swimmers’, let’s consider what it means to ‘grow up swimming’.

I can’t think of a squad that I’ve been involved with in which attendance of at least 5x per week was not mandatory. When I think back, it also strikes me how, once committed to the squad routine ‘drop outs’ were few and far between. When I think back to my own squad experience, even coming in as a late starter at 12 years old, I was still swimming with the same folks that I started with when I finally made the move to college.

Another interesting tidbit, while I can recall doing a lot of standard drills over the 10,000 or so km I reckon I swam over those years, I don’t think I did one T.I. drill at any point in that time. This is not to suggest that there is no benefit to the TI drills but rather to suggest that the mindset of a ‘quick fix’ to turn an unskilled swimmer into a skilled swimmer is misplaced in the world of swimming.

Another personal observation as I’ve transitioned into triathlon: Even with these 600,000 strokes or so of motor patterning behind me, my status as a ‘skilled swimmer’ is up for revocation at any time. If I swim my usual tri frequency I fall somewhere between ‘triathlete swimmer’ and ‘skilled swimmer’ in economy terms.

It takes a lot of time and a lot of meters to create a ‘skilled’ swimmer. However, the good news is that swimming is the kindest of the 3 sports on the body, both in terms of connective tissue stress and energetic cost. It takes very little energy to cruise up and down the pool (providing technique is decent). For that reason, many athletes are amazed at how well they deal with a ‘swim camp’ period of overload volume. Athletes are often equally surprised by the technical improvement that comes with these periods of constant exposure to the water.

So, in addition to expressing the relative upside that will come with converting yourself into a ‘skilled’ swimmer I also wanted to provide a more realistic measuring stick for those triathletes who have great fitness but lack the background of (or time to turn themselves into) a ‘skilled swimmer’. Data derived from Holmer (1972) & Khort et al. (1987)









The tables show relative paces for a number of different fitness levels for a 100 for time, 400 for time, 800 for time, 3000 for time and Moderately-Hard, Steady and Easy training paces.

Fitness categories are expressed in both VO2max and CP5 numbers so that athletes with good field data but no recent lab data will be able to have a good estimate of where they fall.

When looking at the data, 2 things become readily apparent:

a) There is a BIG difference in performance across the unskilled-skilled spectrum for the exact same energy output. In other words, at 400 time trial effort, an unskilled athlete with a VO2max of 3.8L/min will swim ~7:40. A skilled swimmer with exactly the same size ‘engine’ will break 6:00. When you extrapolate this difference to the distances in IM racing, the implications become apparent.

b) There is a notable difference in the range of paces from easy-flat out between the three groups. In other words, the less skilled the swimmer, the more they will tend towards being a ‘one pace swimmer’. For the unskilled swimmer, an easy pace is only ~28% slower than their max pace. For a skilled swimmer, the range from easy to ‘all out’ is a much greater 45%. The reason for this is really at the heart of this post, the better the swimmer, the less resistance they create at higher speeds.

This is something that is rarely emphasized in the world of triathlon swimming. Everyone is doing their hour of drills at 2:00 or 3:00 per 100 pace without realizing that, at these paces resistance doesn’t matter a whole lot! I am not suggesting that drills shouldn’t first be practiced slow but they need to be progressed to fast (and be able to be incorporated in) fast, whole stroke swimming in order to have any practical significance. For this reason, regular, short fast swimming is more important in the pool than any other place in the athlete’s program.

With the potential ‘free speed’ available to many triathletes, when extra fitness training is limited by fatigue or when fitness improvements begin to show diminishing returns, the best place to spend some extra time may be in the pool.

Train Smart.

AC

The importance of strength to endurance

"When the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts" - Rollins

When it comes to athletic training, a central thesis that I have developed over my years as a coach is that all athletes, from ultra-distance Ironman athletes to 100m sprint runners are, well, for lack of a better word, athletic.

In other words, while there are certainly individual differences that are clearly obvious across the sports, there is also a homogeneity in the fact that, as muscle is the precursor to movement, individuals who specialize in movement are fundamentally more muscular than ‘the norm’.

Sure, there are those athletes with tiny or lithe skleletal frames that get away with less obvious muscle. Tour De France climbing specialists come to mind. However, relative to their frame, (which is fundamentally fixed) athletes, on the whole have a lot of muscle.

Studies that express physique as a 3 digit ‘somatotype’ of ectomorphy (skinniness), endomorphy (fatness) and mesomorphy (muscularity) reinforce this fact that athletic subsamples from distance runners to hammer throwers all have a higher middle number (mesomorphy) than the general population. A visual representation of this from Fox et al. (1988) is shown below:



As you can see, somatotypes among the sample range from ~254 for the meso-ecto distance runners to ~471 for the meso-endo weight throwers to ~271 for the pure mesomorphic weight lifters. However, for all of these athletes, mesomorphy predominates, i.e. the middle number is always the biggest.

There is a very simple physiological reason for this: Muscle = Movement. If you want stronger or faster movement, you need bigger or faster muscle. If you want more watts on the bike, the absolute limiter is muscle mass. If you want these watts to be aerobic, then the aerobic quality of that muscle comes into play but it can’t be denied that if you want 400W, you need at least 400W worth of muscle.

From an aerobic perspective, studies have shown that each kilogram of aerobic muscle can take up ~160ml O2 (Schwerzman et al. 1988). Therefore for a large athlete, say a 175lber, to have an elite relative VO2max of 75ml/kg in a whole body exercise requires ~37kg of appendicular muscle mass!!

My own results from those athletes that I’ve worked with who I have both DEXA (anthropometry) data and VO2 data from the lab have tended to back this up.



Athlete 1 is a relatively well-trained ectomorphic runner/triathlete of ~5’10, 155lbs.

Athlete 2 is a larger endomorphic novice-intermediate triathlete of ~5’10, 220lbs

Athlete 3 is me :-) An ectomorphic intermediate triathlete 6’4”, 180lbs

Athlete 4 is a very well trained meso-ecto IM triathlete 5’11, 165lbs

Athlete 5 is a big, powerful mesomorphic front of the pack AG triathlete 6’3, 215lbs

There are some interesting, practical applications that stem from this data. First of all, the bigger the athlete’s chassis, the bigger their engine needs to be in order to perform well. Athlete 3 and Athlete 4 have a similar amount of muscle mass. However, there performance is markedly different. A large part of this is that while they have a similar size engine, athlete 3 has this engine in a big Chevy chassis, while athlete 4 has it in a smaller streamlined chassis. For a guy with a big chassis like Athlete 5 to attain a high performance level takes a huge engine!!

Additionally, while there are small differences in the aerobic ‘quality’ of the various athletes muscle, it’s equally clear that the overall trend is as peak VO2 goes up, muscle mass also goes up. It’s also both clear and interesting, when looking at the 5 athletes, while VO2 is clearly scaled to muscle mass, it does not appear to be scaled to stature. This is one of the key observations that has led me to adopt the viewpoint of symmorphosis, i.e. that VO2 will increase in response to functional demand rather than adopting the more traditional limiting viewpoint that some folks are born with a big heart and a consequent big VO2. The lack of correspondence between folks with big hands, big feet, big heads, big noses and big VO2 has led me to question this viewpoint. Big muscles on the other hand…..

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, a related unexpected observation that I’ve continued to witness in the field is that top athletes are able to produce quite high levels of max power output. It is rare for me to see a top AG athlete of average size be unable to produce at least 1000W in the field, even if this power band is never deliberately trained. Admittedly, these aren’t Cavendish numbers, however the power gap between these numbers and what I typically see from endurance trained MOPers (in the 600-800W range) can’t be denied.

When we look at the functional attributes of muscle, this begins to make sense.
Considering each kg of slow twitch muscle can typically generate ~50N/kg (Hakkinen,1989) an athlete with 40kg of appendicular muscle, say 30kg of which is in the leg will be able to generate ~1500N (~340lb) of force with legs full of slowtwitch fiber. If they were strength/power athletes full of FT muscle, for the same quantity they would be able to generate an additional ~300N/60lb.

Therefore, it is not so much that strength is important to endurance sports but rather, a certain amount of oxidative muscle mass is essential to endurance sports and, as a by-product of having a good amount of muscle, the athlete will also be relatively strong.

If we accept the conclusions above, then clearly the next step is to suggest that training to make the aerobic (slow twitch and FOG) muscle fibers larger providing this doesn’t have an excessively negative effect on mitochondrial density is a worthy goal. Indeed, there is some research support that shows that total muscle mass in endurance athletes is correlated with VO2max, and performance in weight supported aerobic events (e.g. Kerr et al., 2007, Mikulic, 2008)

While you may argue that this is all fine and good for the weight supported events in a tri, i.e. swim and bike, don’t I need to be light to run well? Yes, the lighter runners with an appropriate muscle mass for their small frame will be the fastest runners but this isn’t your choice. When it comes to frame, you’re born with what you’re born with. An athlete with a larger frame who attempts to hit the same weight as an athlete with a small frame puts himself in exactly the same position as an athlete who puts on 10lb of fat during the off-season, i.e. a higher proportion of his weight (in this case bone) is not movement producing.

In conclusion, aerobic muscle mass is never a bad thing and for many athletes, the absence of sufficient muscle mass for their frame may be limiting. For this reason, appropriate strength training (with a focus on ‘aerobic strength development’ is an integral part of high performance endurance training.

Train Smart,

AC

Influence Curves

“All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others” – The Pigs (Animal Farm).

As the pigs suggest in one of my favorite reads, there are situations where while things may appear equal, in reality they are not. One of these situations is in the realm of training load.

Let me explain….

While 3000kj of riding is always 3000kj of riding, the direct impact that this amount of work has on your race performance varies greatly throughout the training year. One of the most practically applicable discoveries that has come from studies that have sought to mathematically model the load-performance relationship (e.g. Banister, 1986, Morton, 1991) is that the contribution that load makes to performance varies with the timing of the load with respect to the key event, i.e. there is a critical period where it is optimal to really ‘lay down’ the big load blocks and there is a quantifiable difference to be had by placing a training camp 4 mths vs 4 weeks before your goal event.

Below you’ll find an example of a ‘typical’ influence curve that speaks to some of those issues.



The chart shows weeks from goal event along the x axis, with relative performance benefit of a given training load along the y axis.

As you can see from the curve, there are certain times of the training cycle that work is very beneficial. At other times it is quite detrimental (e.g. during the taper) period while at other times of the cycle it is neither here nor there.

From a period of 0-14 days before the competition, workouts generally have a pretty marked negative effect on performance, i.e. the freshness that the athlete gets from relative rest gives more to performance than any workout during that time could. Hence the importance of the taper.

Workouts in the 14-21 day period are in that grey zone. For some athletes they will have some positive benefit, for others little or no benefit. In general, this time period falls in the ‘if in doubt, leave it out’ category though some individual experimentation with 2 vs 3 week tapers is warranted.

The period of time between 3 and 12 weeks prior to the event is the critical period in which load has the greatest effect on performance for most athletes. That loading block from weeks 7-3 is particularly important for most athletes and a big relative performance jump can be exploited with significant loading in this block (a training camp, a couple of big weekends etc).

The period of time from weeks 12-26 before the target event can best be termed ‘training to train’. It is a period that, in terms of undertaking heavy training loads, risk greatly exceeds reward. To put in perspective, a 6hr solid ride in this period is worth less than what a moderate 3hr ride would be worth during the critical loading period! Yet undertaking these loads in the early season could significantly compromise the athletes ability to undertake the big loads when they count. This is a very common occurrence among self coached athletes, the so called “February Rock Stars”.

These recommendations change a little bit depending on the individual peculiarities and training status of the athlete, with larger athletes and better conditioned athletes usually requiring longer tapers and smaller and less conditioned athletes benefiting from shorter tapers but the general trends hold.

By far, the most important training for all athletes occurs in that 3-12 week window before their key event. Any training before this, while not insignificant is merely setting the scene for the ‘real training’ to come. While perhaps not as well understood, pacing the season is a skill that is just as important as pacing the race. Hopefully by being able to quantify the relative benefit of any ‘hard workout’ in the early season it will enable you, the athlete, to make better decisions with respect to where to distribute your efforts. For, as the pigs allude, not all training efforts are created equal.

Train Smart.

AC

The benefits of going 'easy'.

I received an interesting question via email this week that left me a little ponderous. Since pondering is always better shared, I thought I’d write a small piece on it for my blog this week.

The question was in reference to a recent literature review by Stephen Seiler on the polarization of training into definitive ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ training….

“It seems that you place a lot of emphasis on ‘steady’ training. I was wondering if you see a place for ‘easy’ training in the athlete’s basic week and if so, what benefits do you feel such training promotes?”

The reader is correct that I see very little direct benefit to training conducted below the aerobic threshold and A LOT of direct benefit to training conducted just above the aerobic threshold. However, this is not to say that there are no benefits to including easy training within your week. I’ll outline a couple of those here.

First a quick caveat that relates to the Seiler paper, and indeed to any comparison that a recreational athlete may make with an elite athlete’s physiological data:
Because elite athletes have greater central fitness, they have a diminished heart rate response for a given VO2max. Take for example, an ‘in-shape’ test for Gordo vs yours truly:

Gordo (60% VO2max) = 72% HR max
AC (60% VO2max) = 80% HR max

So, when looking at time within a given % HR range, for example when Seiler references that a large elite training volume is performed at 60-70% of HR max, keep in mind that a large chunk (probably half of this training) is likely at or above the aerobic threshold for folks with these sorts of engines (VO2maxes in the range of 5.0L+)

However, this does not discount the fact that a still significant portion of training is performed at a lower level than the aerobic threshold. If there is little physiological benefit to training below this magic number, why would these folks spend 500 hours per year or more doing so? Do they have too much time on their hands? While probably partially true  there is benefit to spending some of your weekly hours noodling.

Easy training or, more precisely, recovery training is, in its purest form, training to train. Let me explain….

When an athlete has completed all of the quality training that they can muster and the energy tanks are empty they are left with 2 basic choices:

1. Grab some food and sit on the couch until you’re ready to go again
2. Grab some food and train easy until you’re ready to go again.

While, for the time limited athlete, the first strategy is probably not a horrible one (providing your couch time doesn’t extend into days :-), it is not optimal.

While the benefits of active recovery between intervals within a session are well known, i.e. marked increase in the reduction of lactic acid within the muscles, redistribution of blood pool etc, the benefits of easy/recovery training between key training sessions are less well understood.

One could probably postulate that moving more blood into the muscle will more quickly evacuate the debris associated with muscle damage and lead to an expedited healing. This is a core tenet of many physiotherapeutic modalities. However, there is much more ‘good stuff’ to be had than just speeding up the muscle healing.

Fundamentally, the primary physiological limiter that prevents athletes from getting up off the couch, out the door and into their next key workout is incomplete refilling of the muscle glycogen stores. Therefore, anything that will hasten this process will ultimately lead to more steady-state training within the athlete’s week.
So, this begs the question, ‘how in the world could expending more energy lead to getting energy back at a faster rate?’

It’s a fair question and one that has received mixed answers. For example, Choi et al., 1994 found that while active recovery was beneficial from the perspective of lactate dissipation, it did result in slower total glycogen replenishment than passive recovery. However……

When looked at on the muscle fiber level, it was found that this extra glycogen breakdown was coming from the relatively unused Type 1 muscle fibers while replenishment of the Type II fibers was marginally enhanced (Fairchild et al. 2003)

This makes intuitive sense when we recognize the fact that exercise is a significantly more potent stimulus for muscle glucose uptake than insulin - the stuff that is secreted when using the ‘sit on the couch’ methodology (James et al. 1985).

When you undertake light exercise (below the aerobic threshold) between your key sessions, you greatly increase blood flow and consequent glucose delivery to the muscle and you put the muscle in a much more receptive state to take up and use this glucose to replenish muscle glycogen stores than if you were sitting passively.

Additionally, easy training mobilizes energy from muscle fibers that are full of glycogen so they can be utilized by those fibers that are depleted, i.e. the athlete can ‘borrow’ energy from slow twitch fibers to use in fast twitch fibers (Brooks, 1985). Similarly, the athlete can borrow energy from unused muscle groups to pay the energy debt of exhausted muscles. For this reason, doing some cross-training using different muscles on your recovery days is a good practice.

By utilizing these forms of easy training, quicker between-key-session recovery takes place. It’s the old adage of ‘the more you do the more you can do’. Or put another way, the more ‘active’ your recovery, the more purposeful training you can get done each week.

This adage brings up a key condition and one that, in the quest for bigger logbook numbers, a lot of athletes miss – your easy training should result in you being able to do more steady training. It should support, not detract from your key workouts.

Yet again, it comes back to understanding the purposes of your workouts and sticking to them. It has been said that once you begin making your easy days a little too hard, it is a matter of time before your hard days become a little too easy. Hopefully understanding the whys of easy training will make the embarrassingly slow shuffle or the ‘granny gear’ spin a little easier for the ego to tolerate :-)

Train smart.

AC.

Right Effort

A young boy traveled across Japan to the school of a famous Martial artist. When he arrived at the Dojo he was given an audience by the Master.
"What do you wish from me?" the Master asked.
"I wish to be your student and become the finest Karate-ka in the land," the boy replied "How long must I study?"
"Ten years at least" answered the Master
"Ten years is a long time," said the boy. "What if I studied twice as hard as all your other students?"
"Twenty years" replied the Master
"Twenty years!" "What if I practice day and night with all my effort?" the boy said
"Thirty years," was the Masters reply
"How is it that each time I say I will work harder, you tell me that it will take longer?" the boy asked.
"The answer is clear. When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the way."
~ Text from: Zen and the Martial Arts (1979 edition)
by Joe Hyams

I was re-reading Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do the other day and I came across his interpretation of Buddhism’s eight fold path:

- Right Views
- Right Purpose
- Right Speed
- Right Conduct
- Right Vocation
- Right Effort
- Right awareness
- Right concentration

His interpretation of Right Effort as;

“the therapy must go forward at the ‘staying speed’, the critical velocity that can be sustained”

struck me as both profound and incredibly applicable to athletics.

As a coach, I find a large part of my job is continually bringing the athlete’s focus back from ‘the goal’ to ‘the way’. As the proverb above suggests, the fundamental limiter to an athlete achieving their goal in the shortest possible time is, paradoxically, a focus on achieving the goal in the shortest possible time.

It may be of some surprise that Rob DeCastella, one of the most successful marathoners of all time credits his success to his willingness to ‘undertrain’. That is, to be certain that all training is at or below his ‘absorption threshold’. Deek goes on to state that “while there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of runners around the country who could keep up with him on any given training run, there are none that can keep up with him for a years worth of training runs and that is the difference”

I have seen similar things in my own experiences training with some of the sports best. At one of our early season camps in Tucson, I was riding hard with Gordo, JD and a couple of other campers. Using every inch of my focus to purely hold the wheel in front, I didn’t notice when Jonas Colting made the executive decision to turn around, as the effort was too much for this training day. Focused as I was on hanging on for dear life, I think I had too much lactate in the bloodstream to have been physically capable of considering that option. Maybe I should have. After getting myself into a pretty deep hole following that camp, I wound up crashing my bike and never really regaining my mojo for my A race of the season after putting out several ‘A efforts’ on training days like this one. Jonas on the other hand…

Similarly, in his book, ‘Breakthrough Triathlon Training’, Brad Kearns describes one of the times that he had the privilege of training with Mark Allen on one of the competitive group runs around Rancho Santa Fe. He was amazed to watch Mark trot in several minutes behind the quasi-racing pack. He says “Mark had an intuitive sense not to ‘mix it up’ that morning. Furthermore, he didn’t seem troubled or distressed by missing the big, intense, macho battle at the front of the pack.”

Brad goes on to say that, in his opinion, “The misuse of mental toughness may be a contributing factor to the mediocrity epidemic in our sport. Applying mental will and stubborn toughness to workouts that are intuitively wrong will fatigue you and sabotage your fitness”.

The ability and willingness to train like this comes from knowing your body and from having complete confidence in your training program.

As Franz Stampfl once said “training is principally an act of faith”. When one doesn’t have complete faith in the program, the temptation is always there to ‘test it out’.

Consider the level of faith required for Lasse Viren to spend 4 years running slower than he ever had & routinely getting beaten in smaller meets all so he would be able to unleash on the one day in those 4 years that mattered – the Olympic final.

The point of all of these anecdotes is that the ‘right effort’ in order to progress as fast as your potential will allow in day to day training is (perhaps paradoxically) never 100% effort. When training with others who are willing and chomping at the bit to give 100% effort, this then becomes a spiritual task as much as a physical one, a task to abandon the ego and reaffirm your faith in your own training process on a daily basis.

This is an essential spiritual stepping stone on the path to discovering your true potential as an athlete and, perhaps, as a human being.

Train Smart,

AC

Destructing your Annual Training Plan - Part II

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”
- Bruce Lee

In my last post I outlined a light framework for creating a response-focused Annual Training Plan. The focus of the plan being simply to simplify - to cut planning down to its essentials to maximize the potential for individual responsiveness. For review, the points that I considered key prior to ‘getting out the door’ were:

1. Determine competition dates and phases
2. Determine number of peaks
3. Take a conservative guess at your starting load
4. Come up with a balanced weekly schedule of mixed methods at an appropriate load.
5. Get out the door and train! Repeat! Repeat!

In this follow-up article I will take a look at some of those factors that I look at to ‘get to know’ an athlete individually and to determine the response to (& future direction of) the program.

Once I start an athlete on a new ATP, the first question I am looking to answer in the early weeks is how long is it going to take this guy to get tired? This brings us to Step 6….

Step 6: Train until you get (a little) tired.

You’ll remember that in the last post we took a guess as to appropriate starting load for the coming season. How do we know if this was ‘right’?
Simply, the right training load will make you a little tired within 2-3 weeks (generally for a novice athlete, 2 weeks, for an advanced, 3 weeks), leading to a slight reduction in performance (5-10%)

If the load that we estimated was too light, the following will happen:



You’ll notice a slight drop in performance over 2-3 weeks (usually <5%) followed by a marginal improvement in performance following your recovery week but performance will not recover to ‘baseline’ standards.
If the load we estimated was too heavy, the following will happen:



You’ll notice a MARKED drop in performance (+>10%) over 2-3 weeks that doesn’t recover with 1 week of recovery. Again, performance does not recover to baseline standards.

If the load was ‘just right’ you’ll notice a slight drop in performance (5-10%) after 2-3 weeks followed by a performance boost above baseline standards after 1 week of recovery.



You’ll recall that I recommended we be quite cautious with the initial estimate. The reason for this is that it is far easier to ‘up the ante’ on a load that is too easy, than recover from a load that is too hard. You can see from the trend of the ‘too hard’ curve after one recovery week that if we overdo it, we can spend a month or more recovering from one cycle that is too ambitious!!

So, if the load turns out to be ‘too easy’, quite simply, increase the load as we normally would for the next cycle until you get a little tired.

The choice of what type of session to use as a benchmark of ‘performance’ is up to you. There are pros and cons to each method. Personally, I prefer short duration, aerobic heavy sessions, e.g. solid 1500 run for time. You’ll note that I recommended scheduling one of these sessions at least every other week in the athlete’s ‘balanced’ week.

These sessions are sufficiently aerobic that they respond to base training but sufficiently short that they can be regularly completed at a solid effort. Tests at a fixed HR can also be used, however, if so, consideration to & control of extraneous HR influences should occur (e.g. temperature, resting HR)

Step 7: Rest, recover, then increase the load appropriately for the next block.

Assuming we ‘got it right’, as we begin the next block of training we are looking to increase the training load by an amount that will result in a similar level of tiredness/performance drop to the first block.

A part of identifying appropriate load increases through the various cycles is coming up with some idea of load equivalents for the different types of training. To this end, I’ve found it useful to equate different volumes of the respective training intensities into training ‘units’ of somewhat equivalent training load. In this way we can say that if we have 1 training unit to ‘spend’ on increased load in the next block, we could choose to spend it on 20 minutes of steady training or 10 minutes of threshold training or an extra 2x800’s on the track. My equivalents for 1 training ‘unit’ are shown below:



So, now that we have a common ‘currency’ for training load, what does a typical athlete’s ‘paycheck’ look like from cycle to cycle? How many extra training units does an athlete have to spend from one block to the next?

Again, this is a trial and error process and one in which it is best to err on the side of caution until appropriate load jumps are established. However….

A couple of guidelines that I have found from my own experience:

- Athletes can handle larger load jumps in the early season when they are relatively ‘fresh’.
- The higher the starting load, in relation to last year’s peak volume, the smaller the load jumps (Note: advanced athletes should begin the season with a higher % of their peak volume than novice athletes).
- Counter-intuitively, the more advanced the athlete, the smaller the load increases, i.e. the closer the athlete gets to their maximal absorbable load the smaller each loading jump should be.

Specifically, here are some guidelines in terms of an increase in training units for different athletes at different points in the season. Please keep in mind that these are simply guidelines and the true ‘proof in the pudding’ will come from whether this load makes the athlete ‘appropriately tired’ as described in step 6. If in doubt, err on the side of a smaller load jump and If the athlete is not improving from block to block then change the load!



Step 8: Identify Strengths and weaknesses and where to devote the load increase

So now we know how much we want to increase the load, we’ll need some idea of what type of load we want to use to ‘up the ante’ for the next block. This comes down to 2 things:

1. Identifying where you are in your season (general vs specific preparation)
2. Identifying current strengths and weaknesses (by sport (first) and intensity band (second))
3. Identifying the race demands of your event


a) Identifying where you are in your season (General vs Specific Preparation)

The first consideration when determining where to add load relates to where you are in your season, or more specifically, how generally fit you are.

All load is not created equal. Some types of load, e.g. steady endurance work build you up, while others, e.g. intensive track work, tear you down. The more aerobic base work that the athlete has behind them the quicker they will recover from more intensive work. Therefore, in order to ‘earn’ the right to spend your new fitness how you choose, you need a foundation of general fitness behind you. I call this the Suze Orman rule.

Those of you familiar with Suze Orman’s financial advice TV show will be able to relate. Folks call in, tell Suze what they want to purchase along with what their current financial situation is and Suze either approves or denies their purchase. Unsurprisingly, the more financial foundation that folks have behind them, the more latitude Suze is likely to give with what she ‘approves’. I am the same way. If an athlete comes to me with a 100 mile/wk run base and tells me they want to work on their 5K speed, I am likely to approve it. On the flipside, if an athlete with only a year of running behind them tells me they want to do 3 track sessions a week to improve their VO2max – DENIED!

Specifically, I follow Jack Daniels recommendations on this topic, with upper % limits set for each type of training. These ‘upper limit’ percentages in relation to percentage of total weekly mileage for each type of training are shown below:



A concrete example, let’s say an experienced athlete is preparing for a competitive marathon at which they aim to run sub 3:00. Based on experience, I would expect the athlete to be able to complete a Marathon Pace run of at least 2/3 race duration at target pace by the end of the specific preparation – in other words, 17 miles in <2:00. However, in order to have ‘earned the right’ to attempt/absorb such an intensive session, I would expect the athlete to have built their easy-steady base mileage to ~100mi/wk i.e. so that the intensive session represents <15%.

Similarly, if I have an athlete who has a weakness in their running ‘top end’ and I know that I want to schedule 2 run track sessions of ~5K each per week in the specific prep portion of this athlete’s season, I know that in the general prep phase of the season I need to build the athletes base volume to a point that 10K of VO2 track work represents less than 8% of total weekly load, i.e. a base volume of ~80K/wk.

These general ‘preparatory’ objectives, can thus have substantial bearing on where I choose to ‘spend’ the athletes fitness even if they don’t immediately relate to the athletes weaknesses or the specific needs of the event.

b) Strengths and weaknesses:



In the above table you’ll see what I consider to be balanced standards across swim, bike and run for criterion measures of a similar time duration (numbers are in minutes for 400m swim and 1500m run and watts for CP5 bike). This sort of table can be a useful tool when determining what discipline is more deserving of additional training load from block to block. The numbers are based on VO2 equivalents across the disciplines for athletes of good (but not elite) economy.

For instance, if an athlete can generate 450W for a CP5 but struggles to break 6 minutes for a 400m swim (the situation for one of the athletes I’m currently working with) you can rest assured, he will be carrying a permanent smell of Chlorine with him for the next few months :-)

In the early season, emphasis periods may be used to address a ‘weak’ sport. In the first 2-4 months of the year, fitness can be maintained on 50% of the normal training load for a given sport. In other words, if your normal balanced load in the early season is 5hrs per sport, the athlete can maintain fitness for 2 of the 3 sports on 2.5hrs/wk, leaving the opportunity for a 10hr block for the weak sport. Therefore, providing maintenance load is kept to 50-75% of normal, emphasis periods afford the athlete an opportunity to play ‘catch up’ on the weak sport.

The other area of ‘balance’ that I am concerned with when deciding what areas to work on with a given athlete is that of their balance across pace and power durations. I have addressed this topic in a previous blog and offered some suggestions on expected ‘norms’ across the pace/power curve for Ironman athletes vs shorter duration specialists. (link)

c) Race Specific Demands of the Event

Finally, at least some time during the season should be devoted to sessions that closely mimic the demands of the event. I have found through practice (and from copying some of the worlds best coaches on the matter  that time trials of 2/3 race duration or broken sessions over race duration are key sessions to be included in an athletes preparation. Therefore, some time must be devoted to building up to and repeating a number of these workouts at the tail end of an athlete’s prep. For example, if an Ironman athlete finishes their specific prep period with a 20hr week with a ‘big day’ of 4hrs, some time needs to be ‘set aside’ to build this big day up to 7hrs + to prepare the athlete for demands of IM racing. Many athletes and coaches over-do this period. I will take a fit, fast, balanced athlete with a limited race prep period over a slow, unbalanced athlete who has 25 big days under his belt any day of the week!

In summary, the 3 steps mentioned in this piece are all quite fluid and demand a good amount of flexibility on the part of the coach/athlete in order to optimize. It is impossible to predict, at the start of the year, with any practically applicable certainty, the level of load/volume that is going to make an athlete appropriately tired 10 months down the track.

Likewise, it is impossible to determine how many blocks of training it will take to rectify an athletic weakness, or indeed if that will still be a weakness 6 months down the track. I have seen some funny things in my years of coaching – strengths become weaknesses and weaknesses strengths within relatively short periods of time. The intelligent athlete/coach must always remain fluid and adaptable to the utmost.
Re-read that Bruce Lee quote 3 more times and…….. :-)

Train Smart

AC

Destructing your Annual Training Plan - Part I

“The best laid plans of mice and men go often askew”
- Robert Burns

It’s that time of year again. The end of the old season and the beginning of the new means that coaches and self coached athletes throughout the country are buying their notebooks, double clicking their excel spreadsheets and picking up the training manual du jour for the 2010 season.

Of course the training manual du jour of the 2010 season will likely be the same one used in the past recollectable seasons, Joe Friel’s Triathlete’s Training Bible. Joe is a magnanimous guy and as such is offering additional information in a new blog series on ‘constructing your annual training plan’ for 2010, the part inspiration for the somewhat pithy title of this piece.

No disrespect to Joe or his training philosophies at all are implied by this article. 95% of everything I know and do as a coach is related to concepts either espoused or invented (!) by Joe. However, you may find some interest in the 5% of things that I do a little differently to many of the coaches out there.

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The other polar opposite inspiration for this post comes from a comment made by my good buddy Chuckie V in the comment section of one of his recent stellar blog pieces, where he says (in response to a question about Chrissie Wellington):

"Chrissie is a product of Brett (Sutton) and I work pretty closely with him. He doesn't "believe in" periodization or have much to do with planning. He simply finds the right template for the athlete and puts them to work. Over time, I've migrated to this line of thinking more and more.

So many coaches tout the merits of having a good plan (after all that's how they survive, by providing plans) but our body doesn't respond to plans (only our minds do, though not always favorably). Sometimes you just have to learn to listen to your body's needs and what your goal races require; these two considerations don't always sync up however!

An athlete can ruin a whole career on planning; it's best to get to work."

-V

I find myself and my own coaching method smack bang in the middle of these 2 perspectives. I am a planner by nature and yet I have come to realize that no rigid annual plan ever works out even close to 100% for my athletes. Furthermore, as Chuckie suggests, attempting to adhere too rigidly to a plan can severely compromise an athlete’s performance potential. And yet the absence of any plan can also compromise an athlete’s potential.

Races happen on a schedule therefore some attempt must be made to gel the athlete’s ‘body clock’ with the race calendar. The difference in the two approaches of overplanning vs underplanning can be likened to rocking up to the train station without even glancing at the timetable then arriving to find that the next train doesn’t come for an hour vs planning your jaunt to the train station rigidly around the time table and arriving 5 mins early, seeing the train and deciding to wait for the next one because that’s what your schedule says to do. Some responsiveness and reactivity is needed in order to get where you are going as fast as possible.
So I find my approach to be one of controlled chaos or organized anarchy. While I really can’t in all good conscience draw up the blow by blow details of any athlete’s annual training plan, I can quite accurately describe ‘the method’. This is going to be the subject of this blog post and likely a couple of others to come. I want to describe some elements of the practical application of ‘the method’ so that you may choose to use them in the destruction of your old concept of the ATP and the construction of your new one.

Step 1: Determine Competition Dates and Phases.

In my world, phases of preparation are largely about when you concede basic development. In an Ironman sense, for a novice to intermediate athlete there comes a point 8-12 weeks out from the race in which, irrespective of how high the athlete’s aerobic threshold endurance, we must put that on the back-burner and succumb to the reality of the athlete’s true race pace. It is certainly my goal at the beginning of any season to extend the athlete’s aerobic threshold endurance to the extent of their race duration, however, for Ironman, this is a loftier goal than many athletes are willing to concede and so, for lower volume Ironman athletes (less than ~500hrs/year) or athletes with a young training age, I frequently arrive 12 weeks out from the race with the athlete yet to ‘prove’ their ability to hold AeT endurance for a good chunk (more than 2/3) race duration. At this point it’s time for a reality check and a recognition of what true race pace is likely to be.

Similarly, for a short course athlete, even for those athletes in who aerobic threshold endurance is relatively weak, there comes a point at which the athlete must start training for the specific speed and demands of their event. Therefore, 12 weeks out, truly specific training (training over close to race duration at close to race pace) begins irrespective of where the athlete is at and to a large extent, irrespective of their strengths and weaknesses. It is the nature of this specific training that is largely determined by how diligent the athlete was in rectifying these weaknesses in the basic preparation phase of the season.

In addition, there comes a point 2-4 weeks from the race date at which work has a net negative effect on performance due to the fact that the athlete will generate fatigue that he/she cannot shed by race day. Therefore a peak/taper phase should be implemented.

So, in summary, step 1 is a simplified ‘traditional’ approach:
• Identify race date
• Count back 2-4 weeks and begin the peak/taper phase
• Count back an additional 6-8 weeks and begin the specific preparation
• Count back an additional 12-32 weeks and begin basic preparation.

For short course athletes, a further option is to insert a short precompetitive phase devoted to VO2 enhancement. However, for the vast majority of sub elite folks, the basic development that you give up while VO2 training makes its emphasis a bad deal in a long term development sense.

The wide time span in the last summary point brings us to the next task:

Step 2: Determine whether you will have 1, 2 or 3 peaks this season and how long the peaks will last.

It is a simple but oft forgotten fact that for every peak performance the athlete gives up valuable training time in the form of taper and recovery. In relative performance terms, an athlete can expect ~7.5% less relative performance improvement over the course of a year for every additional peak (assuming a 1-2 week taper and 2-4 week transition/prep period after each). In other words, if the athlete could potentially improve their performance 10% with one annual peak, they will likely improve only 9.25% if 2 true peaks are attempted, this is down to 8.5% for 3 peaks etc etc.

Additionally, while in theory, a relative peak can be held for a competitive season of 6 months (as displayed by the performance of ‘career triathletes’ on the ITU circuit) maintenance and improvement are 2 different things. It is only when the athlete reaches the limits of their own personal performance that such a strategy is appropriate. With the small differences separating Olympic medals, one could argue that in an Olympic year this strategy is not even appropriate for these folk!!

Generally speaking, the intelligent developing athlete should plan one true peak with a full taper and active recovery period each year. This is not to say that they shouldn’t race B and C events during the year, in fact, I recommend a mid-year B event for most of my athletes in order to mentally break up the season. However, the important thing is that if the highest levels of improvement are to be attained, these B and C events should be performed relatively untapered and should be sufficiently short that they don’t require extended recovery (much longer than a normal key workout). Additionally, in an ideal world, these races will be selected to support the training aims of that mesocycle.

In summary, plan 1 true peak period of only 2-4 weeks and be careful with the effort level of your B and C events!

Step 3: Take a CONSERVATIVE guess at your starting point (load)

Plain and simple, this is where a lot of athletes go wrong. For year to year improvement to occur, an athlete needs to let A LOT of fitness slide in between training seasons. Consequently, the starting load of the following season should be very low in comparison to last year’s peak. This is a tough pill to swallow when we’re talking a 50-70% reduction in tolerance to training load in the space of 6-8 weeks but believe me, IT IS NECESSARY. In fact, for a lot of good age group & neo-pro athletes it is the difference between remaining ‘good’ in the following season or becoming GREAT!

Some suggestions related to peak volume in the preceding season.



These numbers are assuming a couple of things:
1. We’re talking about sustained volume, not one off camp weeks.
2. We’re assuming the bulk of training is easy-steady aerobic training
3. We’re assuming that peak volume occurred within the past 3 months

And, most important of all…
4. We’re assuming the athlete took a month off serious training at the end of the season!!

Step 4: Come up with a balanced (general) weekly program that represents mixed training methods at an appropriate load.

Even at the beginning of the year, providing the athlete is healthy (getting rid of any niggles is a high priority of the transition period), some training content from all intensity zones should be included:
- A BULK of easy-steady aerobic training
- One slightly longer session each week in each sport (~1.5x average)
- Gentle whole body strength/circuit training 2x/wk
- An up-tempo effort on at least one of the aerobic days (5-8% of weekly total)
- One solid effort at least every other week (<5% of weekly total) – a timed 1500 run or CP5
- A small amount of regular fast training – reps, strides, jumps, sprints in each sport(<3%) of weekly total

So, for a novice triathlete (training for anything from a super-sprint to a long course triathlon) with a peak weekly load of ~40hrs/mo in the previous season, an initial basic week may look something like….



Step 5: Get out the door and train! Every day!

The above 5 steps represent the limit of my preliminary planning.

The direction you will take from here depends on:
- Progressively moving towards the specific needs of your event
- Revealing your current strengths and weaknesses (a moving target)
- Figuring out how your body responds to training (another moving target)

There is only one way to answer the last two questions – Get out there!

Tune in next time for more on ‘the method’ and above all else…

Train Smart.

AC