The Principle of Individuality:

Performance and Malleability of the System or….

Making the most of what you’ve got!

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

This post is part of a series on the practical application of training principles (see sidebar, 'the core principles')

Those of you keeping up with the Olympics will, no doubt, be aware of the dominance of the Chinese, particularly in the Gymnastics events. Whatever your political views, one cannot argue with the results that come from a state sponsored athletics program. While China’s dominance can, in part, also be attributed to their immense population, one need only look at the success of countries in the former Eastern Bloc, such as Romania (the home country of the gymnast pictured above – Ecaterina Szabo) for a striking example of what can occur when a country makes a concerted effort to ‘make the most of what it’s got’. It is ironic that the socialist states have exemplified the art of embracing (and exploiting) individual differences, while, in the name of equality, the Western world is reluctant to admit that we are all different. We all have different strengths and weaknesses that suit us better to some tasks than others. This is the crux of talent identification programs and, in a larger sense, the principle of individuality.

This post is not going to have the same limiting tone that most blogs that look at genetic determinism in sports portray. The “if you don’t like your performance, then blame your parents” tagline just isn’t as applicable to ultra-distance athletics as it is to some sporting events (as you will see!). However, there are certain physiological peculiarities that leave some individuals better suited to some sports than others. At the extreme example, there are some functional pre-requisites that must be met if an individual is to be World Class in any sport. Many of these are very trainable. Some are not. The intelligent athlete will ultimately select the sports and events that give him/her a ‘fighting chance’.

So, what are the physiological pre-requisites to becoming a World Class Endurance Athlete?

1. The Engine.

Absolute VO2max:
Heavy weight Rowers: 5.9L/min-6.9L/min (Hagerman, 2000)
Olympic Swimmer: 4.1-5.3L/min (Klentreau and Motpetit, 1991)
Pro Cycling: 4.6-6.4 L/min (Padilla et al. 1999, Coyle et al. 1991)
World Class Marathon: 4.5-5.3L/min (unpublished OTC data)
World Cup Triathlete: 4.8-5.5L/min (Bunc et al. 1996, Pickard, 1995)
Elite Ironman: 4.1-4.8 L/min (Sleivert and Rowlands, 1996)


According to studies by Bouchard (1988), a reasonable expectation for VO2max improvement with appropriate training is ~15% (range 3-33% improvement, partially in accordance with training status). Therefore, if you’re a male athlete with an untrained VO2max in the ball park of 3.8 L/min, you’re in the Ironman game. To be frank, based on the testing that we have performed, this isn’t all that rare or special.

For those of you who are yet to get into the lab, for the relatively untrained athlete, 3.8L min corresponds with a starting functional threshold power of ~200W. Good but certainly not exceptional.

Within the first year of aerobic training, the average athlete can expect this value to increase his VO2max ~15%-20% to with appropriate aerobic training mixed with higher intensity intervals (Bouchard, 1990; Klissouris, 1971). This equates to 4.0-4.2L/min or an FT of ~240W

2. The Chassis:

Rower: 183-200cm, 79-97kg 8.2-9.6% (AIS Data)
Olympic Swimmer: 174-199cm, 66-99kg, 7.9-12.0% Bodyfat (AIS Data)
Pro Cyclist: 171-196cm, 65-84kg, 5.9-8.7% Bodyfat (Padilla et al 1999, AIS Data)
World Class Marathon: 167-183cm 54-73kg, 4.6%-7.0% Bodyfat (AIS Data)
World Cup Triathlete: 176-181cm, 69-73kg, 6.8-7.6% Bodyfat (O’Toole et al, 1995)
Elite Ironman: 176-180cm, 69-74kg 7.3-11.0% Bodyfat (O’Toole et al, 1995)

For a relatively untrained individual, it is generally considered reasonable to be able to gain 5-9% Lean Muscle Mass (LMM) within 12-18mths of consistent strength training (Gettman et al. 1979, Misner et al. 1974). This equates to ~0.1-0.3kg/wk. So, your chances of achieving the proper morphotype for your chosen pursuit are substantially greater if your starting LMM is within ~6-10kg of your sports optimal weight.

On the flip-side, while potential for fat loss changes with somatotype, even endomorphs have the potential to become relatively lean. This is both the area of greatest upside for most of us and the area that many of us have the most work to do. In this case, reasonable long term fat loss of 0.08 to 0.25%/wk can be expected (4-10% body fat reduction per year in accordance with starting value and somatotype). With the set-point theory in mind, a sporting event within 5-10% of your ‘normal’ body-fat is suggested. In other words, if your current body fat is 20%, aspiring to be the next Olympic Marathon champ may not be ideal. Aspiring to be an elite Ironman on the other hand….

There are a number of other anthropometric variables that are specific ideals for various sports listed below:

Swimming (Macpherson, 1976):
- Large biacromial diameter (>45cm)
- ‘Tall’ sitting height (>0.5x standing height)
- Standing Arms Span > Standing Height
- Large Feet (>0.16x standing height)

Cycling (Coyle, 1991):
- Upper thigh circumference >55cm
- Mid-thigh circumference >52cm
- Calf circumference >36cm


Plugging your absolute VO2 #’s into your new streamlined chassis will give respective relative VO2max values in the ranges of:

Rower: 66-71ml/kg/min (Hagerman, 2000)
Olympic Swimmer: 54-62 ml/kg/min (Klentreau and Montpetit, 1991)
Pro Cyclist: 70-84 ml/kg/min (Padilla et al, 1999)
World Class Marathon: 72-79 ml/kg/min (unpublished OTC data)
World Cup Triathlon: 68-79 ml/kg/min (Sleivert and Rowlands, 1999,
O’Toole et al. 1996)
Long Course Triathlon: 59-65 ml/kg/min (Sleivert and Rowlands, 1999
O’Toole, 1996)

While relative VO2max is of limited significance to a weight supported activity such as rowing, or even flat road cycling/TTing, as a triathlete, it is important that the athlete strives for both the maximal absolute oxygen uptake (to optimize bike performance) and the highest possible relative number (for hills and run performance). Again, long course relative values are within the reach of most folks, esp when the impact of body composition is taken into account.

3. The Drive-Train

OBLA/LT: Now we start to get to the important stuff: The oxidative potential of the athlete’s muscle fibers. Or in other words, the ability of the athlete to pull Oxygen from the circulating blood and convert it to energy. According to the research, this adaptation is much more malleable over the long term. While it may be, to some extent, limited by ST fiber composition, in general, the studies back up the old adage that “miles make champions”. For example, Coyle (1988, 1991) found that athletes with 5-10 years of endurance training had significantly higher LT’s (as a % of VO2max) than athletes with a younger ‘training age’: 66% of VO2max for athletes with a mean of 2 years endurance training, 75% for athletes with a mean of 5 years of endurance training and 79% for athletes with a mean training age of 9 years.

For our hypothetical aspiring champion, coming into his second year of training with an FT of 240W, if he falls in line with the mean rate of improvement from Coyle’s studies, his FT values would progress as follows:

Year 1: 240W
Year 3: 265W
Year 5: 285W
Year 7: 293W
Year 9: 300W

4. The Wheels:

Mechanical Efficiency:

However, in addition to the improved physiological efficiency, there are also long term improvements in biomechanical efficiency taking place that can need to be factored into the equation. Improvements of ~4-6 Watts per liter of O2 consumed have been witnessed for cycling (Coyle, 1988,1991). For the Ironman athlete, this can mean a difference of 15-20 Watts for the same energy expenditure. Similarly, elite runners typically exhibit much higher efficiency, than novice runners, and to a lesser extent, triathletes. In fact, with years of running training, athletes can expect to run 5-7% faster for the same energy expenditure by sheer virtue of improved biomechanical efficiency: 15-20s/mile at typical race paces!! (Margaria et al. 1963). Again, providing you have a ticket to the dance (in the case of Ironman, they’re pretty easy to come by)….. miles make champions.

In a cycling sense, for our “champ in the making”, this brings the progression more in line with the following:
Year 1: 240W
Year 3: 270W
Year 5: 293W
Year 7: 307W
Year 9: 320W

5. The 'Back-Up' Battery

Substrate Efficiency: Finally, we come to the big one. While not directly related to LT or FT, it is the prime determinant of your ability to use your aerobic efficiency over long course racing duration.

For example, 2 athletes with a Functional Threshold Power of ~320W, one burns 5kcal/min of fat. The other burns 2kcal/min from fat. The extra 3kcal/min of Carbohydrate that the athlete must use to supplement for their poor fat burning results in athlete A (Mr inefficiency) racing an Ironman at 68% of his functional threshold power (218W), while athlete B is able to race at 80% of his functional threshold power (256W). In terms of “bang for your buck”, this 40 watts is a whole lot easier to come by than the 5 years that it takes to achieve a similar improvement from aerobic training. While all successful Ironman athletes require relatively high aerobic numbers (LT/FTP), not all athletes with high aerobic numbers will be successful Ironman athletes. Substrate oxidation plays a large part in explaining this.

The good news is that, all in all, substrate oxidation is very malleable, esp with diet.
Ravussin et al (1985) observed a change in subjects resting RQ by .05 within a 16 week period by manipulating protein/CHO content of the subjects’ diets. This represents a change in fat oxidation of ~17%. The extent to which this carries over to exercise performance is largely a function of the subjects’ aerobic fitness (Goedecke et al. 2000). Again, aerobic fitness is a necessary ingredient to achieving your potential as a long course athlete, however, alone, it is not enough.

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Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the principle of individuality is that, while we are all born with different handicaps and advantages within the athletic arena, we are also born with widely varying ‘trainability’. Even the most genetically deterministic sports science researchers such as Claude Bouchard are ultimately forced to conclude that attempting to predict the extent that an athlete will adapt to training is futile. Some athletes will improve VO2max by 1.0L or more with 20 weeks of aerobic training, while others will struggle to improve by 0.1L. This can only be partly attributed to the athlete’s starting level. In real world terms, while I have provided an example of the average rate of progression observed in a number of studies as a 9 year process, the reality is, that, while the majority of us will fall under the ‘meat of the curve’, based on the genetic studies to date, some folks can expect to go from untrained to World Class in 3 years, while at the rate that others are progressing (with equal training load) they will simply run out of time. While there may be some clues that we can use (and heed) along the way, when it comes down to it, there is only one way to completely answer the question “How good can I be” – Get out there!

Lessons from the Meatheads

After last week’s blog, that emphasized the magnitude of the time commitment necessary to reach the top of a sport like triathlon, I thought that it might be a good time to throw out a reminder that, while in the long term, all athletes who are successful in the triathlon world will wind up doing a lot of miles, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the goal of those miles is to make us more fit, not simply more tired. In a volume focused sport like triathlon, it is very easy to lose sight of this simple fact.

One of the things that distinguishes triathlon from other sports is the uncontrolled nature of the environment in which it takes place. This is both a positive and a negative. Being able to experience all kinds of environment; lakes, mountains, beaches, forests, in the context of a sport is one of the most enjoyable aspects of triathlon. In fact, one may argue that it is the aspect of triathlon that makes the immense volume that I alluded to last week tolerable. However, for the athlete who is not coming from a competitive sporting background, it can be very easy to confuse this ‘touring the countryside’ with athletic training. My buddy JD wrote a blog about this distinction a while back and it is a principle that I keep coming back to with my own training and with the athletes that I work with.

It is important as an athlete to remember that the only way that you are going to witness an improvement in your average race speeds is with a concomitant increase in your average training speeds.

This principle is something that is very easy to enact and monitor on a daily basis in a sport in which the environment is controlled: The lap pool of swimming, the track for running or, the velodrome for cycling. Perhaps the extreme example of control in a sport occurs in the training environment of our cousins on the other side of the force-velocity pond – the strength and power athletes.

We can learn a lot from the years and years of logbook entries from athletes in whom the training environment and protocol is absolutely and completely controlled. After all, the only way that we can make conclusions on the effectiveness of any training manipulation is if we completely control all of the extraneous variables. How often as triathletes will we:

a) Increase our training miles while not paying attention to a drop in training speed
b) Add speedwork to our weekly running plan and notice a drop in energy/speed for our other aerobic runs.
c) Add a myriad of swimming drills to our program without ever assessing if we are able to improve our stroke length while maintaining our stroke rate, or are our drills just making us look more ‘pretty’.

Yes, as much as we make fun of the ‘meatheads’ in the gym, in the grand scheme of things, these folks are training much more intelligently and systematically than most triathletes (or triathlon coaches) could ever dream of.

I mean, do you ever hear the following conversation take place in the weight room:
Gymrat 1: So, what’s on the schedule today?
Gymrat 2: Oh, I’m just going to bust out an easy 500 reps.
Gymrat 1: What weight?
Gymrat 2: Oh, I don’t care. Today’s just a long easy day.

Quality is ALWAYS part of the equation.

This is not to say that every session is hard. Those of you familiar with weight training, will know that the bulk of training typically takes place at 70-80% of 1 RM, only a moderate load. However, the load is always fixed.

On the flipside, I will often hear athletes say, “I don’t get it coach. I’ve been doing the same amount of training as Johnny over there. I’ve been running my 40 miles a week, the same as him but he’s running 3:30 off the bike. What gives?” Of course, the element that the athlete is missing is that Johnny is running his 40 miles at sub 7:30 pace, while my disillusioned buddy has to slow down to 8:30 pace to accommodate the same mileage.

In fact, the years and years of trial and error experimentation in a controlled setting has yielded a number of training principles on the response of the human body that carry across well to endurance training.

One of the foremost authorities in distilling and applying these principles in the world of strength and conditioning is the strength training guru, Charles Poliquin:



Here are a couple of Poliquin’s principles that you may find particularly applicable to you as an endurance athlete:

1. The ‘critical drop-off point’

The basic premise of the critical drop off point is that a coach should never increase the quantity of a given stimulus at the expense of quality. It is pointless to do sets in which the resistance is lowered so much that (a) sufficient tension is not put on the muscle to elicit performance gains, i.e, the load is below the training threshold (b) the targeted muscle fibers are no longer being recruited/trained. These additional “garbage sets (miles)” would impede recovery by putting excessive strain on the nervous system, energy stores and neuro-endocrine response. The cumulative effect could be overtraining.

In practical terms, when pace or power is diminished by 5-7% from the goal, shut it down. This ties in well with Friel’s comments on decoupling, Coggan’s perspectives on the number of reps to perform during interval training and (kicking it old school ) with Lydiards comments that if an athlete cannot return at the pace in which he went out that the distance is too great.

2. To prevent overtraining cut back first on volume rather than intensity.

The body is very well equipped to not overtrain by intensity – it will simply decrease the neural drive and not allow the body to undertake a load that is too heavy for its current reserves. It is not well equipped to deal with excessive volume. Therefore, when tired, it is better to decrease the volume until the athlete is able to equal or better his/her usual training load. This can be a hard thing for the addicted triathlete to do and provides good impetus to be proactive in recovery.

3. Vary load by only 10-12% within a given training session.

A typical scenario for the AG athlete: Jimmy goes out for a steady 6hr endurance ride @ 170-190 W. He’s not feeling great in the early stages so he decides to prolong his warm up and rides for 90 minutes at an AP of 155W. All of a sudden he meets up with his buddy, Fred who has an FTP about 20W higher than Jimmy and decides he could do with some company. He gets on Fred’s wheel and has to hold 200+W just to stay there. Fred makes a turn for the hills and Jimmy hangs on for dear life, ultimately doing 5x2 minute climbs at a little over his FTP of 240W with 5 min recovery between climbs.

All told, a session that had a desired range (after warm up) of 20W, winds up with a range of almost 100W! The problem with this is that there is not enough stimulus at any one training intensity to elicit a training effect. But, there is sufficient overall training stress to fatigue the athlete. Bottom line, know the purpose of the session and stick to that intensity band.

I really could go on all day about the lessons that we can learn from strength coaches and athletes but I have a 2hr aerobic ride at 170-190 Watts with my heart rate under 150bpm to do. :-) 

Train for fun & IMPROVEMENT.

AC

The Grey Zone

“While there is a place for the 8 hour-a-week swimmer, the job of the coach is to sell the dream to the athletes doing 10-12 hrs a week and persuade them to commit to the 18-24 hrs a week they need to become successful, competitive athletes”
- Bill Sweetenham

This blog is a bit of a counterpoint to the G-man’s recent blog on ‘adding it up’.

Most athletes are familiar with the concept of the ‘grey zone’, that intensity band that is too hard to be able to back up day to day but to easy to elicit any of the physiological benefits that come with high intensity training. It is my suggestion, based on the experiences that I have had as a coach that a similar zone exists in relation to weekly volume. This point is alluded to by former Aussie National Swim Coach, Sweetenham in the above quote.

This whole concept is related to the larger issue of being clear on your motivation for being a triathlete.

You can achieve optimal health (perhaps more optimal than your high volume counterparts) with good nutrition and an hour of training a day. You can get yourself in sufficient shape to enjoy the experience & camaraderie that comes with participating in recreational short-course triathlons and, with a short period of long distance training, increasing your volume to 12-15hrs/wk you can even get to the point of completing an Ironman triathlon.

On the flipside, you can experience that thing that few of us ever will, the joy of winning – be it winning your age group at a local race, qualifying for Kona or even getting your pro-card and mixing it up with the big boys by simply doing what others won’t, i.e. training 20 hrs per week, 3hrs a day today, tomorrow and the next.

Or…….., you can do what the majority of the field does and live in ‘the grey zone’, where you have the negative feelings that come with feeling like life is just a perpetual transition from one set of workout clothes to a business suit and back, without the accompanying positive feelings that come with the joy of the ‘pay off’ for all of your hard efforts. Or, as Sweetenham puts it

"This amount of swimming is too much training to be fun but not enough to produce a competitive result. The swimmers in this middle ground never feel good, and in time they become frustrated. We call this the competitive swimming twilight zone."

In order to ensure that the sport satisfies its’ desired role in your life, it is important that you get clear on what that role is. Or, put another way, are you a ‘completer’ or a ‘competer’

Note: I make no judgement that one role is more worthy than the other. However, I do get a little ticked off when an athlete doing the work of a ‘completer’ adopts the expectations of a ‘competer’ (Regardless of the commitment that a 12-15hr week may ‘feel like’ in the context of the rest of the athlete's life).

Speaking from experience, like the island prison of Alcatraz, the grey zone is a fine place to visit but not a place you want to live:

I, like many of my clients, are making a brief stopover there at the moment, but we are not under the illusion that our 12-15hrs of training a week will get us anywhere close to our potential. Sure, we may complete an Ironman or 2 along the way, but for us, it is simply a means to an end, a stop-over on the road to reaching our maximal tolerable training load and consequent potential. Sweetenham calls this point “breakpoint volume”. While, I’m not sure that I totally dig the connotations that come with reaching your ‘breakpoint’ (actually, if I’m to be honest with myself, I do dig it a lot! :-). It does bring home the truth in TS Elliot’s timeless quote – “only those who risk going too far can truly know how far one can go”.

What will 15hrs a week 'get' you? 95% of your potential? Nope. 90% of your potential? Probably not (I mean we're probably talking 30mi of running a week, if you were a marathoner how close to your potential would you expect 30mi a week to get you?) In the end, 15hrs a week of training will get you one step closer to discovering your breakpoint volume. That's it. For some of us, that's enough.

While I’m in a ‘quote happy’ mood, here is another than is particularly relevant to this piece:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, for they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

Making the Grade

“It takes a long time to get good”
- Scott Molina

It is no secret that success in endurance sports is a long journey, a journey that, like many of the bike rides that it encompasses, begins on an easy flat road, before moving into rolling hills and eventually culminating with a mountain like the Tourmalet (above). Yes, for the athlete who is committed to fulfilling their potential, the old adage is true:

“You cannot create the you of tomorrow with the actions of yesterday”

This is the very essence of the principle of progressive overload: Always doing a little more, inching up the volume and (to a lesser extent) the intensity over a very long time frame.

But, like all journeys, the intelligent traveller will invest in a map before setting out. Something that the explorers of yesterday learned in a hurry was that it is a whole lot easier to cross a mountain range by finding and crossing the passes rather than the peaks. The easiest way to cross the mountain range and to get to your end destination is not to pick the highest immediate peak and resolve to summit it (this is a sure-fire recipe for eventually tripping on a piece of loose gravel and falling down the mountain). No, the best way to get to where you want to be is to find the path with the most moderate altitude gain and the most shallow grade.

If you are anything like me, when going on a new mountain ride, the first question I will ask my riding buddy (or my map) is, what sort of grades am I looking at here? If I start to hear high double digits, my quads start cramping in anticipation :-)

Similarly, for the athlete committed to the long term journey of becoming the best triathlete they can be, they may wish to know:

a) What is the most direct route ?
b) What sort of grades am I looking to encounter?

The good news is that, based on the successful athletes that I am working with, the net grade increases are pretty tame. The climb to the top is more like a Mt. Lemmon steady grade, with great scenery the whole way, than a Tourmalet suffer-fest.

The bad news is that, even the most direct route is a looooong way. Istvan Balyi, the guru of long term development, said long ago that it takes 10,000hrs to become a world class athlete. While, I’m yet to have the privilege of taking an athlete to the summit of world class competition, based on the elite athletes that I have worked with, this trend holds.

So, that news is the worst of it, you’re in for a long trip. Now back to the good news, the climb is only a 1% grade!! That’s it! If you take the most direct route, the climb is total cake. Now, I know many of you will wind up taking the road less travelled and seek out the hard stuff, the 15-20% grades. Some of you will make it back to the moderate path, others will blow out a knee or crash on the descent. While, in the long run, both routes have the opportunity to get you to the same place, one is a whole lot more risky than the other.

The chart below shows the training volume and intensity for one high performing elite athlete over the past 6 years. While, not always taking the most direct route, the long term trend is obvious: a gain of ~10hrs/wk of volume over the course of the past 70mths (or ~6 years), an increase in training volume of 8 minutes/month, a net grade of ~1%!!

A similar trend can be seen in the following data on an elite German long course triathlete: As you can see, annual volume increased from 900-1600hrs over the course of 6 years. This represents an increase of ~115hrs/yr, 10hrs/mth – a grade of ~1%

This magic # of 10-30% volume increase each year has been advocated by a number of periodization experts including Matveyev and Bompa.

Additionally, the trend of adding 2-4 hrs of training to the basic week each year doesn’t just apply to the elite athlete. Another age-grouper (and Kona qualifier) that I have been working with increased his annual training volume from an average of 14hrs/wk in 2006 to 18hrs/wk this year (a net grade of 0.6%!!). Definitely not a Tourmalet inclination, but a long term sustainable one that doesn’t require the athlete to start ‘snakeing’ across the road in order to complete the climb. Let me elaborate...

Many times, when an athlete attempts a more rapid increase in volume, it will be, by necessity, accompanied by a corresponding decrease in quality. The obsession that many athletes have with overall miles or hours without any concern for the speed at which those miles are completed is a fundamental training error. The only way that you will move to the next level is by aerobically training muscle fibers that are currently ‘anaerobic’ or ‘gas guzzlers’. If you’re going too slow to recruit these fibers you are, as my buddy JD would say, ‘touring’ not ‘training’.

So, as an athlete setting out on a very long journey, you have some decisions of very practical significance to make: A moderate path with lower short term peaks and a more moderate grade or a more risky route that may or may not get you to your destination time-efficiently and in one piece.

The most moderate approach is to devise a basic week of general preparation at or slightly above (no more than 10-30% above) the previous year's volume that you know you can complete on at least 40 of the 52 coming weeks of the next year. This week can be tweaked occasionally in the case of camps or race preparation periods, but overall remains the same for a year or more.

For example, an athlete who achieved 500hrs of training (~10hrs/wk) in the preceding year may design a basic week of 11-13hrs (11hrs minimum acceptable for a normal training week, 13hrs target) for the following year. Even accounting for 'down' weeks of business travel, race recovery, family obligations and the like, a moderate plan like this will ensure a minimal 10% increase in training volume each training year.

The other mitigating factor that comes into play is the ‘quality’ of the road that you select. Sometimes the most direct route won’t be on the highest quality roads. I know that living in Boulder, if I want to head up into the mountains from where I am, my most direct route has me on my cross bike with some very low quality (but fun) surfaces. If I put too many quality constraints on the roads of my journey, all of a sudden my journey takes longer. Admittedly, I’m going a lot faster during the journey, with periods that I am absolutely flying on the high quality roads, but in the long term, they are not the most direct route to my destination.

We all know that progressive overload is one of the core tenets of an effective training program, but I think that sometimes we lose sight of the fact that ‘progressive’ training and ‘hard’ training are fundamentally antonymous.

Stay the course.

AC