Alan Couzens

Movement Economy: The D'Artagnan of Basic Limiters

2012-01-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

A little addendum to my Endurance Corner article on ‘basic limiters’ today(http://www.endurancecorner.com/Alan_Couzens/basic_limiters) to address a ‘sort of’ basic limiter – movement economy.

In the article, I defined ‘basic limiters’ as those oft ignored elements of performance that are crucial to all athletes (and maybe all human beings) independent of whatever sport they participate in. In summary, those basic limiters are:

· Aerobic Base (Metabolic Fitness)
· Basic Strength
· Mobility/Stability/Muscle Balance

I half considered adding a 4th basic limiter of movement economy to the equation but it didn’t quite make the cut for the EC article so it wound up here on my personal blog :-) This is the ‘almost a musketeer’ limiter in the sense that while it has some elements that are specific to the individual’s sport, it is a general limiter in the sense that no matter whether your event lasts 2 seconds or 2 days, your ability to transfer metabolic energy into forward movement in the most efficient, economical way possible is a crucial ability.

This ‘sort of’ basic ability is made all the more tricky by the fact that many of our most basic movements are, when you break them down, incredibly complex. Take running for example, an economical run stride demands setting the body in the optimal position to utilize the elastic energy of the tendons coupled with an incredibly complex sequencing of rapidly contracting certain muscles while relaxing others so that inter-muscular resistance is minimized.

Swimming is even more of a mess. Not only must the timing of the optimal contract-relax sequences be figured out, but due to the nature of the resistance, the most economical type of stroke changes with different speeds of movement! Having a longer vessel (and maybe even a slight pause in the stroke) becomes progressively more important with increasing speed.

Contrast these with the relatively simple sport of cycling or basic lifting (which both have a much more steady application of force) and you see how there can be quite a discrepancy between 2 equally ‘powerful’ athletes on the bike (or gym) when it comes to swim and run speed/economy for a given output.

You may be movement economy limited if….

If I were a comedian I’d go Jeff Foxworthy at this point but I’m an exercise scientist so straight to the data…
· Your 30s power on the bike is >7w/kg and you can’t break 30s for a 200m run sprint.
· You can do 12 pull ups in 30s but can’t break 30s for a push start 50m freestyle sprint.

Note: I’m deliberately using short (non specific) tests here to take out the complicating factor of aerobic vs movement economy in longer tests, i.e. fitter athletes will get more mechanical work out of each liter of O2 independent of their movement economy (Coyle et al., 1991)

If you think that movement economy may be a limiter for you…

Incorporate things that teach you to get movement from quick force application followed by relaxation both in the water & out – Light Plyometrics (upper and lower), Agility Drills (dryland and aquatic – learn to accelerate!), Kettle bell/Medicine Ball Work, Jump Rope.

Note that movement economy is also contingent on mobility. For example in running, even if you’ve learned to switch the hip flexor off during the drive phase of gait, if you come up on the limits of your flexibility, it will slow you up!

Mobility is even more of a limiter to economical swimming. If you want to be fast as an adult athlete (over any distance/sport) get a basic level of mobility!

If you suspect that economy may be a limiter, the early season is the perfect time to work on these core issues of mobility & learning to move efficiently.

Train Smart,

AC.

No Guarantees: The Disclaimer

2012-01-08T16:03:00.000-08:00

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

"You may have the best laid out training plan yet still fail to get the results you are after, for the very simple reason that you are alive, complex, and affected by a great many variables that you cannot possibly account for—from moon phases to the health of your cat."
- Pavel Tsatsouline (Russian Strength Guru)

This past week I tweeted about a great book that I’m reading at the moment by strength coach (and legend in the world of strength sports), Dan John. The title of the book is “Never Let Go” This is another book that highlights just how similar athletes and, to an extent, training principles are across sports. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Anyhow, on to the topic of this post....

Dan makes a great point in the book about the relationship between conditioning and performance in different sports. He presents a theoretical continuum from sports with a near perfect correlation between strength in the weight room and performance on the field, e.g. powerlifting at one end, and sports where the relationship is a little more tenuous on the far end, e.g. football. That is to say, that while it’s hard to argue that being stronger would be a negative in the game of football, having the physically strongest team is no guarantee of success. Tactics, skills, psychology along with a little plain old luck, all get tossed in the pot with physical conditioning to determine the ultimate winner on any given Sunday.

While the above is a generally accepted fact in the world of team sports, I’m not so sure that in the endurance sports world of individualism & ‘out working’ the competition it is as readily accepted. Accepted or not, it is a fact that, particularly in Ironman racing, it’s not always the fittest athlete who wins.

I’m in a better position than most to attest to this. I religiously watch the benchmarks and fitness numbers of the athletes that I coach over the course of their season. I’d be lying if I said that I don’t get excited when I see the athlete reach life best fitness numbers. However, every additional year that I spend as a full time coach, this excitement becomes a little more tempered, because every year, without fail, I have an athlete or 2 who don’t manifest the promise of their training numbers on ‘game day’.

The reality is that, just like football, basketball, soccer etc, while being the fittest guy on the start line is a good starting point in Ironman triathlon, it is no guarantee of success. Pacing, psychology, nutrition, climate & luck can all conspire to make a very fit athlete a mid packer on ‘any given Sunday’ To make the deal even a little more sour than it is in the team sports, the coach can’t deliver the post game pep talk of ‘we’ll get em next week’. Nope, the best the Iron coach can do is ‘we’ll get ‘em next year’! Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising then that for many folks the thought of not getting what they ‘deserve’ from a year or mores worth of training is too much to bear. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me but it does!

Truth is that the very appeal of this sport to me is that it’s really hard to pull off ‘the perfect race’. It’s the same sort of appeal that I suspect draws folks to Everest. You can do all of the right preparation, hone your skills, climb every smaller peak that you can muster but the reality is that there are no guarantees come ‘the day’. Perhaps it will happen, perhaps it won’t but for the truly committed (addicted?) fundamentally, it doesn’t matter. A failed attempt will only heighten the challenge and strengthen their resolve. To me, Ironman triathlon, like climbing Everest, isn’t a sport for the ‘dabbler’, it’s a quest!

Perhaps this mindset is a surprise to those of you who see me as a ‘numbers guy’, as an input output guy and it’s true, I get a lot of fun out of controlling the controllable. I get a lot of fun out of saying that if you do this and do that then I can predict with the highest level of mathematical certainty that your performance on race day will be X:XX and I’ve little doubt that if I took these skills back to a sport like pool swimming, my reputation as a prophet would be bolstered :-) However, I stick with triathlon precisely because of the level of uncertainty, because of the number of factors that need to come together to create the perfect race. I stick with triathlon because I can’t think of a sport that offers a more challenging quest to both coach and athlete. If I’m coaching you, I hope you do too.

Train Smart (and with passion),

Kona Or Bust - Phase 1 (The 2011 Season Review)

2011-12-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

Gordo and I are currently writing a series of articles for the Endurance Corner website on the topic of “How to Qualify” for Kona (http://www.endurancecorner.com/How_to_Qualify ). I thought I’d expand a little on some of the ideas presented to this point by offering up a couple of case studies.

The first (an example of what not to do) is the story of my own athletic journey through the 2011 season…

In November 2010 I signed up for the following year’s Ironman Arizona with the express intent to qualify for the 2012 edition of the Ironman World Championships in Kona. This post will describe how the journey played out, what I did wrong and what I intend to do differently the second time around in 2012.

The commitment to the Kona goal actually took shape early in 2010. After a number of very inconsistent months of training I found myself essentially ‘starting from scratch’. As a full-time coach, primarily of high level age group athletes, I was in the unique (and perhaps not ideal) position of knowing exactly how out of shape I was relative to where I wanted to be and of the true extent of the journey ahead. At that point, based on that knowledge along with the knowledge of my own training response, I was aware that building to the level of fitness necessary to qualify was, at best, a 2 year proposition.

2010 went close to plan, with a progressive build in both load and fitness. For the more numerically inclined, Chronic Training Load (CTL) going into the 2010 season was a measly 27.3. CTL peaked out at 78.3 at the end of September, a steady gain of ~50CTL over the course of 9 months. My big goal for 2010 wasn’t a race or performance goal, as I knew that based on the starting point PR’s weren’t really in the cards. The big goal was to not have any extended periods of time off as I did at the end of 2009. I wanted to go into 2011 fresh but holding onto a good chunk of the fitness that I had built in the 2010 season. I accomplished that end and began 2011 at a CTL of 45.9 TSS/d (almost 20 points higher than 2010). Based on my experience in studying ramp rates of other athletes, this platform represented a challenging but possible distance from the ~130 TSS/d that I tend to see in male athletes of my age & average ‘trainability’ (expanded on here http://www.endurancecorner.com/Alan_Couzens/athlete_type ) who qualify, assuming a consistent, uninterrupted build over 10 months of preparation in 2011.

Here are the TSS & CTL progressions (monthly average/totals) that I planned at the start of 2011 compared with how it actually went down.

January was strength focused and close to plan. February included our 2011 Tucson camp so load and fitness both bumped above the planned progression. March through June were on or very close to the planned TSS ranges of ~2100 to 2900TSS per month, leading to me closing out June with CTL right on the planned progression at 92.6TSS/d. July was where fitness began to stray from the Kona path.

(My now wife,) Jen and I went to Hawaii in July to get married and training took a necessary back seat. We had a very active wedding/honeymoon, and were able to fit in lots of ocean swims, runs, hikes etc. but the realities of travel time, celebrating with family etc made the planned training load simply unrealistic (2498 of a planned 3118TSS for that month). Looking back on it, I wouldn’t change a thing about the experience (one of the best times of my life!)but I would be more realistic in planning ‘breakthrough athletic years’ to those years without any major ‘life events’ interspersed. I should have taken my own advice on the significance of a mere 2 week period of reduced training presented here…( http://www.endurancecorner.com/How_To_Qualify/AC/realist)

August was a great month. I found it very easy to get back on plan with the inclusion of the EC Colorado climbing camp. Load totals were BIG & right on plan for that month.

September was a similarly solid training month and my highest hourly load for 2011 at 78.5hrs. In fact, I hadn’t put together 2 consecutive months greater than 70hrs since August/Sept of 2004 so, despite closing out the month a little lower than the planned TSS, I was satisfied. In retrospect, this is the second error of the year. As Winston Churchill accurately observed, “sometimes it’s not enough to do our best. We must do what’s required.”

I did a ‘state of the nation’ assessment in October and became aware of the impact that a light July had on my Kona aspirations. I would be lying if I didn’t concede that seeing that goal slip from my fingers had a negative impact on my ability to keep the big weeks rolling along and, despite a solid camp in Tucson with the EC gang, October turned out to be a very light month – less than ideal that close to my A-Race.

November was an appropriate taper based on the CTL that I was going in with but significantly under the initial plan. Going into the race, I was relatively confident based on both my training numbers and simulation workouts that I had a good shot at breaking 10:45, a long ways from Kona qualification but still a best over the distance for me. Due primarily to some nutritional ‘issues’ on the day, that didn’t transpire and I considered myself fortunate to finish under 13hrs. Taken from this perspective, I’m somewhat glad that the year didn’t go 100% according to plan as, if I had have had the fitness to qualify and failed due to messed up execution on the day, I’m sure it would have stung significantly more than it did.

My nutritional issues (and a plan to remedy them in 2012) is the subject of a future post but it is worthwhile taking heed that fitness only explains a part of the Ironman performance equation. Execution on the day (esp nutrition and pacing) are almost equally important. In fact, I did a multiple regression analysis some time ago for the XTri site of the relationship between lab measures and Ironman performance (http://www.xtri.com/features/detail/284-itemId.511709869.html) and found that, among our complete data set, the lab measures (VO2max, LT, fat oxidation) only explained approximately 60% of the variance in Ironman times!

Up until now I’ve been using CTL and fitness synonomously and while, based on my observations, the 2 very closely relate, let’s take it out of the realm of the abstract and look at fitness in a little more depth and in the context of the EC article that I wrote on appropriate benchmarks through the year for the Kona bound athlete (http://www.endurancecorner.com/How_To_Qualify/AC/benchmarks) . I’ve expressed the same benchmarks in the EC article using my own stats (35yo, 1.93m, 80kg bodyweight below

Benchmarks that I hit are shown in green. Benchmarks that I missed are shown in red. Benchmarks that are not highlighted with either color represent no attempt made.

Overall, the numbers confirm the conclusions made above, i.e. that fitness as a whole was on track through to July and fell off track from that point through to the race. Looking at the various components of fitness (across sports and across the power-duration spectrum), however, can often reveal trends in a little more depth than looking solely at trends in training load. For example…

My strength training was put on the back burner with the inclusion of some epic weekend adventure trips and the camps (I was usually not recovered in time to hit the early week strength session) so I’m not sure whether the 210lb/12 squat would have happened. My gut says probably not. I will plan a longer strength emphasis for 2012.

Across the sports, if I had to nominate a weakest sport, it would be the run. While I was easily exceeding the swim and bike benchmarks early season, it took me a while to get on track with the MAF tests. These, along with the 190lb/12 squat benchmarks fell into the ‘just made it’ category. This makes sense when I consider that this year was relatively bike heavy and run light (27% vs a planned 33% of total load).

The final trend somewhat evident is that there are a lot more reds in the long benchmark tests than the short ones. While some of this effect may be related to the fact that most of the long benchmark tests were planned for later in the year, when general fitness was falling off plan, if we look at the July/Aug benchmarks, I significantly exceeded the CP5 and CP20 targets (397W & 332W resp) but missed the 2.5hr # - with a seasons best of 256W. Overall, my fatigue curve from the year was a rather high 8% ( http://www.endurancecorner.com/How_to_Qualify/AC/fatigue_curves ) This confirms to me, the importance of a continued focus on general preparation (aerobic base + strength) in 2012.

In my next post, I’ll present a ‘what to do’ case study from a first time qualifier that I coach and highlight the differences (Hint: If fitness is ‘on the edge’ don’t take 2 weeks off in the middle of the prep :-) I will be using that model, along with the observations above in planning my own Kona or Bust Phase 2 : The 2012 assault!

Train Smart,

Residual Fitness: The impatient don't get it

2011-11-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

Legendary tri coach Joel Filliol linked up the following short but profound piece from fellow Canadian high performance coach, Craig Taylor in his twitter feed this week. http://rtcguelph.blogspot.com/2011/11/crazy-like-fox.html

The applicability to triathlon training is both direct and profound: So few athletes are truly patient enough to give a plan a chance to work (and those that do are the ones who go on to fulfill their potential and out-perform their peers over the long term).

The one key to year to year improvement is to build on your base of residual fitness.

Residual fitness can be defined as the small but developmentally significant portion of fitness that you truly earn with a year of training. This can be thought of in the same way as interest in a savings account. While the interest earned in a year of savings is small when compared to the total balance of your account, providing you don’t spend it, year after year it adds up!

There are 2 notable temptations (bred of impatience) that constantly encourage the athlete to spend their ‘interest’.

1. Racing: Races respresent a withdrawal from the proverbial bank account. When an athlete tapers, races and recovers they are essentially spending rather than adding to their reserves. Any more than 4-6 weeks of spending each year (including rest periods, vacation, sickness) and the athlete will rapidly deplete their account. Developing athletes simply don’t have the funds to race frequently at a high level.

2. Sharpening: When it comes to protocol there are plenty of ‘get rich quick’ schemes out there enticing the athlete who wants a quick return. Some of these work… in the short term. Intensification can offer the athlete a quick return on the funds that they have but if the athlete devotes too much of their base to these high yield, high risk areas the results are directly comparable to what happens in the finance metaphor – their reserves are rapidly depleted.

Related to the second, frequent changes in protocol result in the athlete spending time not depositing anything into their account, sitting around scratching their head and ‘living off their interest’. I can attest from experience as an athlete and a coach that there is a definite lag time involved in transitioning from one protocol to another, a lag time that the serious athlete simply can’t afford if they’re committed to achieving their potential. Tweaks are OK but overhauls simply take you out of the game for too long. Think seriously about the ‘momentum cost’ of any change.

When it comes to long term athletic development, most folks underestimate the value in simply staying the course.

Train smart.

Learn from my mistakes

2011-09-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

“No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar”
- Donald Foster.

It’s been another good season for the my squad of athletes. Multiple Kona qualifiers, some podiums at Mdot 70.3 and IM events and several personal best performances. The bulk of this credit goes to the passion and drive of the athletes that I work with but as a coach I also have to conclude that I did my bit and got a lot right.

Still, as a naturally critical thinker, and as someone committed to constant and never-ending improvement in those areas of my life that I am most empassioned by, as we move into the post-season review, my thoughts go to those things that I tried that didn’t work so well this season.

When I was starting out I, like most new coaches, made a bad habit of focusing on my successes and sweeping errors under the rug (or worse, blaming the athlete). This may be good for the ego and for business but it is no route to growth. If you’re truly committed to reaching the top of your game in any field, an honest and frank assessment about what truly works and what doesn’t is a necessity. So, with a view to preserving these lessons so that…

a) I learn from them and don’t make them again!

b) you, as the self-coached athlete, benefit from the fact that by coaching a lot of folks I have the opportunity to do more things right and wrong every season

I am recording them here (I will add to this post as more thoughts come up during post-season reviews so keep checking back).

Lesson 1 – Address weaknesses when load is low.

Every year I devote a portion of the training cycle to addressing the athlete’s greatest athletic limiter. Sometimes this is strength, sometimes basic endurance or speed and sometimes this limiter falls in the middle of the power-duration curve as a weakness in threshold or VO2 #s.

I made the mistake in a couple of cases this year of including a general prep period that was too long for athletes who already had very strong base fitness numbers. This resulted in us starting work on higher quality sessions directed to the athlete’s limiter when load was already pretty high.

Although these sessions were of moderate load, because they represented the athletes weakest ability they felt very hard to the athletes, hard enough that something had to give, in one case this was the quality of these workouts so the weakness remained a weakness, in another it was general training load. The take home – for an athlete that already has a very strong aerobic base, address specific weaknesses earlier, when the athlete still has energy/the overall load is still manageable.

Lesson 2 – When it comes to IM athletes, reverse tapers are often good for both the head and body.

Reverse tapers, i.e. in the last block of the year, progressively building load towards the event are something that I experimented a little more with this year. They seemed to work well for 2 reasons…

1. An Ironman race is not a sprint. Many of the physiological adaptations that are crucial to Ironman success, e.g. glycogen supercompensation quickly detrain and are lost if volume is shed too much or too early from the event.

2. Quality training is HARD for an athlete that spends a lot of time going relatively slow. So, having a very light recovery week immediately after the hardest training block of the year before going into the peppier peak training results in more sessions completed to plan and a happier, more confident athlete going into the key race.

Lesson 3 – When the goal is qualifying, course selection (with respect to your morphology) matters.

Some folks naturally gravitate towards hard (i.e. hilly, windy or hot) courses. Some folks naturally gravitate towards fast (flat, relatively cool) courses. When your preferences don’t line up with your morphology and the goal is high performance relative to your peers (i.e. qualification), then you have a problem.

Heat will set an absolute ceiling on power output. If you’re a big guy, it doesn’t matter if you have the strength to churn out 350 watts for 9hrs, the realities of thermodynamics will dictate the power output that you’re actually able to generate by way of the heat that you’re actually able to dissipate.

Similarly, power:weight will determine who goes to Kona on a course with a lot of vertical. Power:frontal area will determine who goes to Kona on a flat course. Due to the realities of allometric scaling, a big guy will always have better power:frontal area than power:weight and should choose his course accordingly.

Lesson 4 – Don’t sacrifice load for quality until you’re ready to sharpen for a major race.

It may be a bit of a generalization, but from my perspective, a little too much is made of addressing limiters. The central element in athletic progress has always been and will always be improvements in ability to handle more chronic training load.

When it comes to the performance benefit of training, it is true that an athlete will generally get more performance benefit per unit of training load by addressing those areas that are least developed. However, if too much emphasis is given to addressing these weaknesses, to the extent that the athlete is doing less load but feeling that the training is ‘hard’ and they consequently shed total load, it is a dangerous slippery slope that is all too easy to stumble on.

For the bulk of the season, a balance must be kept between training content that enables the athlete to get a lot of training load done (this refers to both areas in which the athlete is naturally physiologically strong but also those areas that they most enjoy), while addressing a relatively small amount to those areas that the athlete isn’t good at/doesn’t enjoy as much, all the while keeping a vigilant eye on total training load.

Lesson 5 - Climate can have a significant effect on your ability to do/tolerate big load.

Training in very hot or very cold conditions is tough. It adds an additional stress to the training that you really don't want to deal with when the focus is training as much as possible (whether in the context of the biggest blocks of the year or a dedicated training camp). Give plenty of thought to when all factors are most likely to conspire to benefit your training when planning your race schedule and give plenty of thought to selection of the best possible locale for a training camp. If the aim is a late season camp with a lot of load at your target race intensity, be sure that the typical conditions for that period of the year also mimic the race as closely as possible. You put a lot of time and $$ into organizing yourself for a training camp. Make it count.

***

I’ll continue to add some more ‘lessons’ (though hopefully not too many :-) over the coming weeks as they crop up during our post-season reviews.

Until then….

Train smart,

AC

The key to building an effective coaching relationship

2011-08-19T08:58:00.000-07:00

(Or any relationship for that matter...)

The picture above is of myself and Mike Coughlin, 3rd place Ultraman Canada 2010 & a long standing athlete in the AC stable, cresting the top of Mt Evans (the highest paved road in America) on our recent Endurance Corner Colorado Climbing Camp.

Mike is in Boulder for the summer (training for Ultraman Hawaii) and has been staying with Jen and I for a bit. It’s always interesting living 24/7 with someone. You learn about that person on a whole new level but the ongoing reflection of how others live differently also forces you to learn about yourself. He and I were stopping for a mid-ride cookie in Nederland the other day when a thought came to me –while we both have an unquenchable passion for triathlon in common, when it comes to a coaching relationship, we truly are the odd couple – Apart from the physical differences, Mike is the quintessential extrovert. He is a verbal guy, I’m a read-write guy. He’s a ‘take in your environment’ guy, I’m a ‘live in your head’ guy. And, I have to think that all of these differences are what make for a coaching relationship that really works.

In Chuckie’s latest blog, he talks about the importance of relating with athletes on an emotional level, citing the example of a coaching buddy who doesn’t fall under the “Rah Rah” category of motivational coaching. I’m not sure if I’m that buddy but it certainly sounds like something I would say :-) and it’s true that I’m much more likely to calm an athlete down than to rev them up. Funnily enough (perhaps for this very reason), I tend to work with athletes who are plenty revved up themselves! Often I’m pulling on the reins, holding them back from how hard they want to train and how much they want to do. Then for maybe 10% of the year, a couple of carefully chosen words act as the proverbial flick of the riding crop to carry them over the finish line, but, with these athletes, it doesn’t take much.

I think the reason that I tend to work with that type of athlete comes down to what Darwin called Natural Selection. Those that demand more extrinsic motivation to keep following the plan fall by the wayside. The last athlete that I parted ways with fell under this category –

Athlete: “Coach, I don’t feel like I’m getting what I deserve given the training I’m putting in”

Me: “We all respond at different rates to the training. Some folks have to put in more training than others to get the same result. That’s just a reality of that fact that we’re all individuals”

Athlete: “But I have been talking with my buddies and they think I would do better on a lower volume, more intensity driven program”

Me: “We have tried & tested different compositions of intensity and arrived at the best balance of load/intensity for your physiology. If we add more intensity, your load drops beyond what you’ve proven necessary to get better”

Athlete: “Well, I want to try this type of program…”

Me: “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out…” Well, I didn’t really say that but you get the point.

Fundamentally, this athlete just no longer had the passion for the sport to spend that much time on their bike each week. Maybe this passion is something that some coaches can re-ignite, or at least bolster, maybe not. Either way, that is not a coaching ‘skill’ that I particularly want to develop. If an athlete doesn't have the intrinsic passion to enjoy A LOT of training then there is only so much I can do.

No, the athletes that I work with long term are those that realize that, despite best instinct, when it comes to an effective coaching relationship (or any relationship designed towards achieving a result), it is important to seek out the things that you NEED rather than the things that you WANT, i.e. the things that you don’t have intrinsically. For most of my guys this turns out to be - long term planning, structure and the ability to put the brakes on when needed. For other coaches’ athletes, it may be motivation, excitement or social reinforcement. Either way, it is important before beginning a coaching relationship to be honest in what you expect to get out of it and to seek that type of person, even if that type of person may be the same type that you beat up in high school :-)

Taking the “what I need vs what I want” approach is going to demand an additional, all important quality – tolerance, i.e. the ability to embrace working with folks who think a little differently, and sometimes bite one’s tongue and just get on with the business at hand. Put another way, when working with others who have different strengths, different weaknesses will also become apparent. As a slow and steady ‘thinker’ sometimes I’m sure athletes are mildly irritated by the time it takes me to digest, consider, think, research and then respond to questions. I have to assume that those who stick with me & tolerate a less speedy response time consider a quality, thought-out response more important than a quick ‘off the cuff’ style answer, even though it goes against their own Type A instincts. Similarly, I often find myself having to re-communicate the same logical response to a question, a few times, in a few different iterations before it finally breaks through all of the negative emotional self talk that may be bouncing around a more emotional athletes’ noggin before it takes hold.

I guess it takes a certain level of maturity to reach the point that you truly begin to recognize the value in diversity and begin to let in, or even seek, folks you know will personally challenge you on all levels, but when you do I can absolutely attest that the synergy that results from working with others with the same passion but different strengths and outlooks will lead to infinitely more productive relationships, whether in coaching, business or personal development than filling your world with mirror images of yourself.

Train Smart,

AC

You are off course

2011-06-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I did one of my favorite things – I packed up a (relatively) small selection of my worldly belongings into a set of panniers, grabbed my bike and took off in search of adventure. While, the act of seeking adventure would have been rewarding in itself, I had a destination in mind – the top of Pikes Peak. This was my second attempt at the summit after being turned around the last time that I attempted it (about a month ago) due to icy conditions.
So, I grabbed my bike, my trail shoes & my Garmin and took off on the 115mi ride to the Springs followed by a 24mi hike (+10,325ft) to the summit….

I had planned out the route the last time that I did it and uploaded to my Garmin 310XT. For those unfamiliar with this Garmin, while it doesn’t have full function mapping typical of the Garmin units that you might see in cars, it has a neat little ‘breadcrumb map’ which shows you the general direction you should be heading and lets you know if you’re ‘off course’.

The first time that I used it there was a bit of a learning curve. I brought the map up and hit the “Do Course” button and attempted to head in the direction of the map but within a mile of starting my watch started buzzing – “you are off-course”. I could see my little arrow looked to be right on the planned line on the map but I obviously wasn’t going where I wanted to go. I thought to myself, this thing is useless! In fact, worse than useless, I had planned out a detailed, pretty complex route to Colorado Springs incorporating trails and secondary roads to avoid the hustle and bustle of the more travelled routes but at least the travelled routes had street signs! I had what looked like a clear map in front of me, but I plain and simple wasn’t able to follow it because the big picture perspective obscured the fine detail that was needed to make the right turns to get to my destination.

Chuckie V wrote a really thought provoking post on his blog this week (http://chuckiev.blogspot.com) that reminded me a lot of this experience. The ‘text book method’ of planning training consists of putting together this big picture road map along the lines of what Joe Friel recommends in the Triathlete’s Training Bible or what Tudor Bompa recommends in his legendary training text - Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training but anyone who has followed the textbook method can probably relate to the experience… You spend countless hours putting together a detailed annual training plan, you kick things off, excited and fired up that this plan will get you to your goal and then before too long something happens and sure enough you’re getting the metaphorical buzz – “You are off-course”. Believe me, at times like this it’s more than tempting to throw your big picture plan (and the watch that it’s attached to) out the window and resolve instead to ‘feel your way’ to your destination.

The above paragraph pretty well sums up how I was feeling when I rolled through my first intersection.. “You are off course”. Alright, let me stop, turn my bike around and try another direction.. “You are off-course”. This process of elimination was going to make for a mighty long ride to the Springs. Until…. I discovered that if you press the little side buttons on the Garmin it allows you to zoom in and makes the immediate route more clear. Genius! I can zoom in to an 800m scale and all of the turns that I need to make suddenly become much more clear.

Relating this to coaching, I realize I do the same thing in planning an athlete’s training program. While the very general big picture map is there a couple of screens away to guide the overall route to the destination, my specific 'nitty gritty detail' focus is on the immediate block of training. What training sessions and what training load are going to get us to our short term destination? While the big picture plan is somewhat useful in plotting what those short term destinations may be, the scale is both too fuzzy and too overwhelming to be of practical value on a day to day basis.

So, after discovering those little side buttons I thought I had it figured. If in doubt about which way to go, I’d simply scale down to look at how to get to the next immediate objective. But then a funny thing happened. I was riding along to the next path that I had plotted on the map and I get there and discover that what I thought was a bike path was actually a golf course path. Now, I’m not one to adhere to the rules when I need to get somewhere but getting to this particular path from the road I was on would require a 20ft rappel down a sheer wall with my 75lb loaded bike! It was impassable. I thought, oh great, one little mistake and my whole plan is wrecked. I was tempted again to throw that Garmin off the rock wall! I now had no choice but to abandon the well thought out plan and go off-course. So, I took off in the general direction of where I thought I needed to go and noticed a very cool thing. While my arrow may have been off the course, having the perspective of where the course goes, gave me something to shoot for. I tracked parallel to that course until I found a way to cut across. I took it and I was back on plan.

I had another one of these occurrences happen as I was going through the trail that runs through the Air Force Academy. I had no idea that there was a trail closure until I was pretty much on top of it. And another as I approached the summit of Pikes Peak, the planned trail had knee deep snow that was practically impassable. In both instances I had to find another way. Thanks to my (now trusty) Garmin, I was able to head off course confidently knowing that I would be able to eventually find my way back to the planned route if I just kept it in sight.

Point being, as Chuckie very eloquently points out, things almost never work out 100% according to plan. There will be times when you hit unforeseen road blocks and obstructions that make you feel like throwing the plan into the nearest river but if you persist, if you pick realistic routes, if you focus on the short term while keeping the long term in the back of your mind, if you are flexible enough to temporarily divert from the plan when needed while still recognizing the importance of having some semblance of a route to your destination in sight at all times, you will arrive at your destination far more quickly & surely than someone who starts the journey without a map. As the Cheshire Cat very truthfully observes in Alice in Wonderland

Alice: Oh, no, no. I was just wondering if you could help me find my way.
Cheshire Cat: Well that depends on where you want to get to.
Alice: Oh, it really doesn't matter, as long as...
Cheshire Cat: Then it really doesn't matter which way you go.

In other words if it’s all about the journey & the experience then perhaps a map isn’t required but I’ve got to say planning out a route in your head then physically following it (as closely as possible) to arrive at your planned destination is pretty darn satisfying…

Train Smart.
AC

Standing up for complexity

2011-05-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science)

“Our experience hitherto justifies us in trusting that nature is the realization of the simplest that is mathematically conceivable”*
- Albert Einstein

*Commonly misquoted as “Things should be made as simple as possible but not simpler”

Inspired by Chuckie V and Gordo, I’ve decided to get my personal blog back up and running. Frankly, as an outlet for thoughts & adventures of mine that may or may not be educational or applicable to the EC site but, at the very least, will be personal and real.

Kicking things off with a topic that’s been on my mind …

There seems to be a common theme running through the coaching blogs of late – simplicity. Let’s ditch the gadgets and get back to work. Let’s abandon periodization and just focus on work. Let’s dismiss those focused on advancing sport through science and go back to what has been the common thread in all successful coaching programs from Milo to Lydiard and beyond – Work!

Anyone who has been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to come in contact with a training plan designed by yours truly knows that, for the athlete, work is indeed a central element. In fact, consistent work is job 1 for the athlete and demands the majority of focus but what of the coach? What is the coach’s ‘job 1’?

An athlete comes to me with a goal: Coach, I want to qualify for Kona. Coach, I want to go pro. Coach, I want to win xyz race and their core expectation is that I will create a training plan that will enable them to achieve this. My core expectation is that they have the inherent passion and motivation to follow said plan without the need for a lot of pep talks or mind games from me. Perhaps this is unique to my athletes, I’m not sure, but my perspective is that, on the whole, motivation is not the missing link when it comes to Ironman athletes looking to take their game to the next level.

So, my job 1 is to create a plan that will enable that athlete to achieve that goal. What information do I need to do this? Plain and simple, I need to KNOW how that particular athlete responds to training, what type of training that athlete will benefit the most from and how much training that athlete can handle. I need to KNOW this on the deepest, most specific, most quantitative level for THAT athlete. I need to know, if I throw 20hrs of steady aerobic work at this guy right now is it going to make him stronger or is it going to dig a hole that’s going to take him weeks to climb out of? I need to know how much performance benefit is this athlete going to get from this week of training and how many of them do we need to get him to his goal (or get him to the point that he can handle a 25hr week). All of these questions demand an individual understanding of the athlete than only comes with attentive (recorded) observation over time.

Reproducing the plan that I used to get Johnny Kona to qualify isn’t going to cut it. Maybe Johnny Kona had a stronger constitution than THIS athlete and could handle more training. Maybe Johnny Kona came from a mega mileage background and needed to work on their top end. Maybe Johnny Kona got more performance bang from a training buck than this athlete and so had to do less work to achieve their goal. I guess if I didn’t care too much about the individual athlete, I could keep applying the Johnny Kona formula until the next Johnny Kona came along but since I DO care about each and every athlete I work with…

I need to know this particular athlete’s individual dose-response relationship to training in order to effectively predict the precise type & amount of training it will take them to achieve their goal. Short of this, what am I basing the plan on? A generic “Here’s how to qualify” program that I read in a popular training book? A distant memory of the sort of training it took me or a previous athlete to get to a goal? Don’t laugh. More coaches than we all care to admit base their ‘customized training plans’ on precisely that!

No, the only way to effectively & honestly predict the level & type of training that is going to be necessary for this athlete to achieve their goals is to empirically observe how that particular athlete responds to training over a period of time – and collect and analyze data over that period to identify reliable trends. Fortunately we live in an age where we have the tools to readily support this kind of analysis. All a coach need do is put the time in to understand them!

Without this perspective – an ongoing record of the training input vs the performance output, how can a coach confidently & honestly say to an athlete “my plan will get you to xyz goal”? Answer - They can’t! So, in place of hitting the books and putting in the necessary time to acquire the concrete knowledge needed to understand these relationships, you see a lot of self marketing and bravado, as much to bolster the coaches own confidence in themselves and their coaching abilities as to inspire confidence from their athletes.

In a way I can’t blame them. I am in a better position than most to confirm that collecting, analyzing and understanding training data is both time consuming and tedious and I’m not always sure that the value (at least for the time it takes) is immediately apparent to the athlete (whose ‘job 1’ is not to understand but to DO). If my central goal was to ‘live the tri life’ or make money from coaching or even to create one champion athlete, I may take a different route but, as mentioned, my central goal is to genuinely understand the training process to the extent that I can say to each and every athlete that comes to me with the greatest degree of integrity and confidence that following this plan will give you the absolute best chance of achieving your goal.

Be honest with yourself about what you’re expecting from a coach when you look for one – someone to get you out the door (if this is the case, a better solution may be to find a more inspiring sport!) or someone who truly has the knowledge, the background and the tools to understand the complexity of you as both a biological organism and a unique athlete. Don’t call me (I’m busy enough) but do choose wisely.

Train smart.

What does it take to Qualify?: A physiologist's perspective

2010-03-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

OK, so back to my normal milieu this week …..

Questions and emails on my ‘what does it take to finish an Ironman’ post seemed to indicate that you all liked the format but, for you, finishing isn’t going to cut it. You want to qualify! :-)

Today’s pic is of one of the top Age Groupers I coach, Shawn Burke, busting out a 9:23 qualifying time in Ironman Florida. Being able to work with Shawn and a number of other top age group athletes ‘up close and personal’ over multiple seasons, I’ve been able to witness first hand ‘what it takes’.

I’ve written a previous post on what it takes from a general work/commitment perspective to reach the very top of your age group. Despite the heat received, I stand by the message:

- Multiple years of physical training, amounting to several thousand hours of work.

Perhaps the message would be a little more moderate for a Kona slot, but the way things are going at the pointy end of the field, Kona qualifier and top AG are rapidly becoming one and the same. In fact, based on last year, most flat course qualifying males under 50 were in the 9:30’s!

But is work enough?

Gordo wrote a great blog this week on personal excellence. His conclusion that “protocol does not matter UNLESS it is supported by a habit of personal excellence” is worth a re-read. Or, put another way, you need to set up your life (& your program) to enable you to ‘do’ before worrying about ‘what you do’.

Based on the Kona qualifiers that I have worked with, some 20hr training weeks are almost a pre-requisite. Also based on the athletes that I have worked with (excepting those with freakish recovery abilities), 20hr weeks are going to be VERY hard to string together on much more than a ‘standard’ 40hr work week. Add in the constraints of a young family and you can see that for many, VO2max or FTP is NOT the #1 limiter.

That said, while a 20hr week load (and the life conditions to absorb said load) may be bordering on a pre-requisite for a Kona slot, it is not sufficient in and of itself. Put another way, just because you set up your life so that you’re able to string together the requisite load doesn’t guarantee that this load will give you all of the fitness abilities necessary to race at the very front of your age-group and secure a Kona slot. I can guarantee this from personal experience!

There is somewhat of a ‘bottle neck’ effect that kicks in around the 10hr Ironman mark. A lot of very serious folks getting their consistent 2-a-days in and all shooting for a limited number of slots. Under these conditions, only the smart survive. In these conditions, work is not enough, it is focused work that counts.

‘Focused work’, to me, means work targeted towards a specific objective. This necessitates that we define what physiological objectives are ‘mission critical’ to fast Ironman racing. By defining them we can assess whether you have that base covered as an athlete, and if not, the best way to rectify that shortcoming.

Endurance:

In my last blog piece I outlined the key endurance adaptation of glycogen supercompensation, in which with repeated bouts of glycogen depleting exercise, the body’s energy stores can double. Maybe somewhat surprisingly, this adaptation seems to have a ceiling that can be reached pretty quickly by novice or prospective Kona qualifier alike, i.e. both have ~3000-3500 cals to work with.

The major difference between the novice and the Konee when it comes to long duration fueling comes from the energy contribution from fat. Based on our lab testing, athletes who qualify for Hawaii are typically generating >33% of their energy needs from fat (~300kcal/hr). This is an important adaptation and one that can be limiting for a lot of athletes with V8 power but lousy fuel economy. By generating 5kcal/min from fat, a 10hr Ironman gets an additional 2800 calories of work done over the course of a 9.5hr Ironman. Add in ~2400 cals of worth of energy from exogenous carbs (gels, sports drink etc) and we’re up to ~8500 cals worth of energy to play with. So how much fitness do we need to get 8500 cals of work done over 9.5hrs?

Fitness:

8500 cals of energy output over 9.5hrs is equivalent to ~230W of power on the bike. Now, as outlined above, we want this 230W to occur within the zone of max fat oxidation (~60-65% VO2max) This infers that the athlete has a VO2max of ~5L/min at an economy of 75W/L.

These numbers also pre-suppose that a 230W output will ‘get the job done’ and get the athlete from A-B in ~9.5hrs. Based on my calcs, probably true for a 75kg athlete with decent position over a well paced flat course. Much bigger or any less aero, and the athlete will need more power.

So, in relative terms we’re talking about a VO2max in the neighborhood of 65ml/kg, equivalent to 5K speed of ~17:30 and a CP5 of ~400W. It goes without saying, that this represents a very high level of aerobic fitness: 1 in 200 fitness for a young male, 1 in 10,000 fitness for a 40-49 yo guy based on the Cooper Institute’s data!

It is also worthwhile remembering that this level of fitness is not sufficient if not paired with appropriate race specific endurance. If it is paired with a high level of fat oxidation and an AeT of >60% of VO2max, the athlete will be in a good spot for their Kona assault.

If the athlete has a particularly strong fitness base, i.e. an AeT at a higher % of max and a fat oxidation profile that continues over a broader range, they may ‘get by’ with marginally less VO2 ‘top end’. However, there are limits to the % of VO2 that any athlete can hold for a given duration and in the interests of long term development, shooting for this balanced mix of ingredients is the athletes best bet towards achieving their potential in the sport.

Setting these fitness pre-requisites in place before putting the final race specific endurance block in place represents a strategy of ‘reverse periodization’. I’ll talk a little more about this in a future blog. Until then…..

Train Smart,

AC

What does it take to finish an Ironman?

2010-03-02T09:05:00.000-08:00

A bit of a departure this week from my regular focus on high performance athletics to discuss the level of fitness required to complete an Ironman race in under 17hours.

Before I whip out the scalpel and start dissecting, a couple of quick observations on the psychology of the Ironman finish…

Having the chance to coach some first time IMers has been an interesting experience. Not so much from the physical side of things, as I point out below, the physical equation for an Ironman finish is quite simple – get the athlete fit, strong, and teach appropriate pacing. But the psychology of an athlete’s first attack on the Ironman distance is a thing of pure beauty.

In my experience, a first time Ironman has a perspective that often fades as the athlete morphs into a ‘mid-packer’. The magnitude of an Ironman finish is not lost on the first timer and the accompanying fear offers real, pure, motivation.

The athlete pictured above, Louie Bonpua exemplified ‘pure motivation’ better than anyone I can think of. For more on Louie, click here…

I know, thinking back to my own first marathon, the daunting task that lay ahead and the accompanying fear of ‘the wall’, ‘the bonk’, ‘the bear on the back’, motivated me to train seriously – 45-50 miles a week for a good 3 months prior. Right or wrong, after completing several of these, along with some Ironman races, century bike rides etc, I think I have tended to lose that outsiders perspective on the significance of running a marathon and the respect that the distance deserves. The same thing often happens as an Ironman athlete has a finish or 2 under their belt.

Make no mistake, the Ironman offers no mercy for those who have tread those roads before. She is and will always be a distance that demands the utmost respect, to finish an Ironman on any day is a significant accomplishment, one which is often forgotten by the experienced IMer until they experience the joy of crossing that line one more time.

So, let’s delve in to what purely ‘crossing the line’ entails in a little more depth….

Endurance

Of course, an Ironman finish requires substantial endurance. But what, physiologically, does this mean?

In events over approximately 90 minutes in duration, the #1 thing that ultimately will force the athlete to slow down (or stop!) is most likely to be running low on glycogen. Therefore, any athlete who takes on the task of Ironman is going to want to maximize their glycogen stores.

This is an interesting adaptation because, given the right (glycogen depleting) exercise, athletes can almost double their glycogen stores within 10 weeks of specific, intense training (Greiwe et al. 1999). Thereafter, very little change is expected.

In specific numbers, an average sized male athlete may begin training with glycogen stores of 1650kcal and after 10 weeks of training may be up to 3300kcal. In other words, time to exhaustion in glycogen depleting activity roughly doubles. Obviously this is a key adaptation for the Ironman athlete

Metabolically, the other 2 key sources of energy for our Ironman athlete are their fat stores and exogenous glucose, i.e. sports drinks, gels, bars etc taken during the race. Maximizing the energy contribution from the first is a long term training adaptation. However, maximizing contribution of the second is purely a case of being out there long enough to digest the carbohydrate. This is where the back of the packer picks up a significant advantage.

While it may take roughly the same energy to cover 140.6 miles irrespective of the speed you do it, those who space out their effort over a longer time are able to take in and digest more exogenous carbohydrate along the way. Therefore, while a front of the pack guy may only have sufficient time to digest and use an extra 1800 calories worth of sports nutrition, a ‘back of the packer’ who is out there for 17hrs may get an extra 3800 calories from outside sources!!

OK, so assuming we have maximized our energy stores to 3300 cals and we’re out there long enough to get another 3800 cals from food, how fit does the athlete have to be to use this 7000 cals of energy to get from A to B in less than 17hrs?

Fitness

So, in pace/power terms what are the requirements for a 17hr finish?

Assuming an ~ 8.5hr bike and ~6.5hr marathon, an 80kg athlete will be putting out anything from ~80W on a flat course to ~120W on a hilly course. Additionally, they will be walk/jogging at ~4 miles per hour.

In fitness terms, sounds pretty tame, eh? But keep in mind that for most athletes, this ‘fuel economy mode’ of 400 cals of carbohydrate per hour is (based on our lab data) only going to enable them to work at 50-55% of their max aerobic power.
So, keeping in mind that the athlete will only be able to hold ~55% of max aerobic pace/power over this distance, in my opinion, an athlete hoping to break 17hrs, in addition to the requisite endurance training needs to be fit enough to have VO2max numbers of ~160-240W on the bike and 8 miles/hr on the run. Based on ‘normal’ economy data, this translates to a VO2max of ~30ml/kg for a flat course to ~40ml/kg for a hilly course.

I’ve provided a couple of charts with VO2max norms for male and female athletes below to put these numbers in perspective for different age groups. My suggested ‘tough course’ IM requirements are in red, with ‘flat course’ IM requirements in yellow.

As indicated, any older athlete, particularly any older female athlete that finishes an Ironman under 17hrs is VERY FIT! Even an older guy of 40+, who finishes an Ironman under 17hrs is likely fitter than 98% of 40 y.o guys across the country! This puts ‘Iron fitness’ into true perspective.

The magnitude of a tough Ironman finish for an older athlete is borne out in the results. In Lake Placid in 2009, for instance, 1 out of every 5 guys in the 60+ age groups DNFed or failed to finish within the cut-off. For the 20-29 guys, only 1 in 23 failed to make it. For the women, a finish is even more impressive. Of the 5 females who started in the 60+ age groups, only 1 was able to complete the course under 17hrs!

These numbers only serve to make me respect the ‘Iron-vets’, even more than I already do. There are some supremely fit older guys that I’ve had the pleasure to cross paths with over the past 10 years or so of IM training.

In a world of Kona obsession, hopefully these numbers also serve as a reminder to all athletes, even the young ones, that finishing an Ironman puts you in the crème de la crème of fitness when compared to the rest of the population. Simply put, when it comes to fitness, finishing an Ironman or multiple Ironmans is a very worthy goal.

Anyhow, back to the numbers….

For those without access to lab testing, the VO2 numbers that I’ve mentioned correspond with a 5K run fitness of sub 35min 5K (for flat IM) to sub 25min 5K (for hilly IM) and FTP numbers of 1.75W/kg (flat) to 2.6W/kg (hilly).

These numbers offer the first time athlete looking for a sub 17 finish a good ‘reality check’ on their basic fitness prior to beginning the more specific preparation workouts designed to acquire the necessary endurance for their IM.

Additionally, for the more experienced athlete, by knowing where the athlete’s basic fitness is, more appropriate pacing goals can be better set for the specific endurance workouts going into an Ironman race preparation phase. This is a very practical way of applying a reverse periodization approach for Ironman athletes. But that’s the topic for another blog…

Train Smart!

AC

Torque Yourself

2010-02-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

This has been a tough winter. Especially for my UK athletes. It seems that the UK has been hit by a perpetual winter storm that has lasted most of the season. Needless to say, they are ready for this winter to be over and to get out of the gym and back on the roads.

On the upside, the indoor time has allowed us to really hone in on 2 critical abilities to Ironman racing – steady (trainer) cycling and pure strength. Many of my athletes are at or on the verge of life best strength numbers at the moment. As we emerge from the cold, it will be my job to transfer this potential ‘gym strength’ to real ‘rubber meets the road’ strength.

In a previous blog, I wrote about the theory of strength-endurance training. Specifically, about how to look at torque numbers to set some goals for on-the-bike strength training. However, these numbers are of little value to athletes ‘on the road’, as you usually don’t get to see your torque numbers from a given training session until after the download. Not sure if the new Joule will change that situation (?) but for now, most folks are limited to basing their concrete training prescriptions on 2 elements: power and cadence.

So, without further ado, let me present a table that looks at the sort of power/cadence combinations that are optimal for on the bike strength & strength-endurance work:

You can use the table as follows:

Let’s say your Functional Threshold Power is 300W. The minimal power/cadence combination that is likely to elicit strength gains is ~205W @ 40rpm. In practice you may set a target range of 205-250W @ 40-50rpm. This is a power level that is significantly below functional threshold, actually upper steady for most folks at the bottom of this range, allowing you to accumulate quite a lot of work in this zone.

For the higher octane strength work, for an athlete with an FTP of 300W, big gear hill reps of 30-60s@ ~40-60rpm/410+W will likely offer the athlete the greatest strength ‘bang’ for his time ‘buck’.

A new, very useful, tool that has recently emerged with the introduction of wko’s v3.0 is that of quadrant analysis. Basically, breaking a ride’s data points into 4 quadrants – High Force + High Cadence, High Force + Low Cadence, Low Force + Low Cadence and Low Force + High Cadence. This is a particularly useful way of looking at strength-endurance training, with the first type of session ideally falling within the lower half of quadrant 2 (High Force + Low Cadence), i.e. below threshold power but above threshold force, and the latter falling in the top half of Q2 – above threshold power and significantly above threshold force.

An example of a strength-endurance session from one of the athletes that I coach is shown below.

The chart shows the ride data broken into the 4 quadrants. Because most of the ride took place in Q2 and Q3, these are dominant. The orange elipse in the center of Q2 represents the ‘sweet spot’ of strength-endurance work, i.e. high loads with relatively low metabolic stress. FTP is represented by the darker orange line cutting Q2 in half. The ‘sweet spot’ for pure strength work occurs within the red elipse, i.e. low cadence but above the FTP line. Because this wasn’t the objective of the ride, only one point occurs within this range.

To put this ride into more ‘real world’ terms, it involved a 5mi 8.5% climb with the instruction to keep wattage within the 210-250W range with a firm cap of 300W (FTP) and cadence at 40-60rpm, i.e. within the prescriptive range of strength-endurance training from the table above. In chart terms this represented from 286N @ 0.73m/s (210W@40rpm) to 341N @ 0.73m/s (250W@40rpm). The athlete clearly did a good job of racking up a good number of data points within this range.

Considering a competitive Ironman bike split requires the equivalent of 43,000 or so step ups with 45lb on your back, it’s no surprise that strength is important. But pure gym strength doesn’t cut it. Your strength program should move from general strength training designed to improve your strength reserve to specific muscular endurance training at race specific loads. ‘On-the-bike’ strength work is a key intermediate step.

Train smart.

AC

Are you a 'skilled' swimmer?

2010-01-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

"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

2009-12-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

“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'.

2009-12-19T17:30:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

“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

2009-10-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

“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.

********

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

The Fatigue Curve

2009-10-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

A big part of understanding the training process comes down to understanding all there is to know about being tired. After all, in order to ‘supercompensate’ to a level of fitness above the ‘norm’ requires the athlete to take on more work and become more fatigued than they would ordinarily submit themselves to.

However, fatigue in and of itself isn’t enough. If the athlete doesn’t allow sufficient time to supercompensate from a given training session, in other words, if the athlete decides to ‘kick himself while he’s down’, all he or she will do is get more tired rather than more fit.

To complicate matters, there are all kinds of ways of getting both tired and fit and to train effectively, the coach or athlete needs to have some rudimentary understanding of them all. For example, no serious athlete can afford to wait for full structural recovery (repair of muscle fibers and functionally disturbed mitochondria) between sessions. To do so would mean that the athlete would be reduced to performing about a session a month. Even the fast responder must concede that it takes more than 6 miles of running a month to achieve anything in endurance sport!! And so the athlete is left to only allow partial recovery between most sessions. This brings us to the concepts of ‘residual tiredness’ & the ‘fatigue curve’(below).

We can ostensibly divide the recovery from fatigue into 4 key periods.

Phase 0: High-Energy Recovery:

Refers to recovery within the session, i.e. the recovery of muscle ATP and Creatine Phosphate stores, resaturation of muscle myoglobin stores with O2 and general repayment of the classic ‘O2 debt’ that comes with vigorous exercise and enables us to repeat this vigorous exercise with relatively short rest. This is the basis of interval training.

Phase 1: Metabolic Recovery

However, even allowing for recompensation of the body’s O2 needs, if sufficient steady-state training or a sufficient number of intervals is completed, eventually the athlete will begin to run low on glycogen. This phase of fatigue (phase 1) requires longer to recover from - 24-96hrs depending on the level of fatigue, the muscle fibers involved and the content of the athlete’s diet. This is the basis of ‘hard-easy’ training within the microcycle or week.

Phase 2: Structural Recovery

Yet, even applying an intelligent approach to structuring your weekly training isn’t sufficient when it comes to recovery. With every one of these tough sessions, a residual muscular damage is carried over from session to session. In other words, the 48-72hrs between hard sessions, while sufficient for supercompensation of the body’s glycogen stores is insufficient for repair and supercompensation of the muscle fibers and intramuscular components which represent a large part of the long term performance improvement in endurance sport. It is both desirable and necessary to do structural damage that will eventually compromise performance within the mesocycle or loading block. This is providing these ‘beat down’ cycles are accompanied by a ‘worthwhile break’ at the completion of the cycle. This period may be 7 days, 10 days or 14 days or more depending on the recovery needs of the athlete. The important thing is that the athlete recovers their performance potential once each cycle. You may notice that this aspect of fatigue comprises about 50% of the fatigue curve. Therefore this aspect of recovery is the key component in the training response.

Phase 3: Neuro-Endocrine Recovery

And, still, even the use of appropriate recovery between sessions and between cycles is not enough to prevent an eventual performance plateau in long term training. In addition to the issue of residual damage, the athlete must also deal with the habituation to stress that comes with long term load cycles. In the interests of protection from stress, in an organism who is perpetually involved in the stress response, the body will eventually habituate itself to higher stress levels so that it literally doesn’t wear itself out. Eventually the body will ‘run out’ of stress hormones or the body’s stress receptors will become less receptive to these hormones (Lehman et al. 1993). This represents the poorly understood fatigue of the neuro-endocrine system. Therefore the response to training is blunted. When performance begins to plateau, the smart athlete rests. This represents the final phase of the fatigue curve. Periodically, a multi-month recovery period will be needed to avoid carrying this small amount of habitual fatigue from one training year to the next.

If we accept Gordo’s saying that, when it comes to training, getting tired is the point then surely a big part of being an intelligent coach and athlete is about understanding what it really means to be tired. Hopefully, in addition to helping to better elucidate the concepts of periodization, in the same way that Eskimos have 100words to describe snow, this article has added to your vocabulary of being able to define your own tiredness :-)

Train Smart.

AC

The Science of Decoupling

2009-10-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

Those of you familiar with the training philosophies of Joe Friel (the guy decoupling big time in the shot above :-) will have no doubt come across the concept of ‘decoupling’, i.e. a shift in the power: heart rate relationship as a workout goes on.

An example of this, from one of the athletes I work with, in the form of a rise in heart rate and a drop in power as the session progresses is shown below.

Clearly, as time went on the gap between the athlete’s power and heart rate widened, to the point that by the end of the session, the difference in power:HR compared to the start is 26%. Or in other words, it is taking this athlete an extra 30 beats/min to generate the same power!!

Detailed info on the calculation of decoupling can be found here, but the general gist is; we take the power/heart rate for the first half of the session and divide it by the power/heart rate for the second half. E.g. if that athlete did 105 watts at 100bpm in the first half (power/HR = 1.05) and 100 watts at 100bpm in the second, i.e. he lost 5 watts (power/HR = 1.00), then his decoupling would be 5watts/100watts = 5%.

When you think about it, this is a pretty perplexing phenomena. We assume physiologically that a given effort requires a given amount of energy, which requires a given amount of oxygen, which in turn requires a given amount of heart beats, at least for a particular individual! So what are the causes and implications of a need for more heart beats at the same workload?

To illustrate, let’s start with a typical ex phys scenario:

Say that I start pedaling a bike at 260W, a level of power that on average requires approximately 3.5 L/min of Oxygen. As I start the exercise & my muscles figure out “we’re gonna need more O2 captain”, my body goes to work transporting O2 to the working muscles.

Let’s assume that I have 12g of hemoglobin per deciliter of blood (an average amount) Assuming 100% saturation, this 12g/deciliter carries 16ml of O2, so 160ml of O2 per liter of blood. But I need 3.5 L of O2, so it’s going to take me about 22 liters of blood per minute to keep up with the demand (3500/160). Assuming I have a cardiac stroke volume of 150ml, it will take my body 150 beats per minute to pump these 22 liters (to the ex-phys geeks, yes I’m ignoring the a-VO2 difference for the purpose of simplicity).

Pretty simple, eh? A given workload requires a given O2, which requires a given amount of heart beats. So, if the workload stays constant but the heart rate changes over time, what’s going on? At what step in the chain is the breakdown occurring?

The obvious one and the most commonly cited cause of increased heart rate for a given power is a change in stroke volume due to dehydration. If my cardiac stroke volume all of a sudden goes from 150ml down to 140ml my heart would need to beat 10 beats faster in order to get the same amount of blood per minute to the muscles. So, for my 260W, I would now be putting out 160bpm instead of 150bpm. The most common cause of this drop in stroke volume is a drop in blood volume via dehydration. For this reason, cardiovascular drift frequently occurs under hot conditions where some of the body’s fluids must be devoted to cooling rather than maintaining the integrity of the blood volume.

However, can an increase in heart rate for a given power reveal more?
Joe suggests that not only is decoupling of power and heart rate a sign of heat stress, he also uses it as an indicator of aerobic fitness. Is there a possible mechanism by which this metric could be used as a sign of not just heat tolerance, but also aerobic endurance?

Thomas and Chapman (2006) may be able to help answer the question of the validity of decoupling as a training metric. By observing VO2 during prolonged downhill walking on a steep grade, they saw a progressive rise in VO2 uptake with no change in body temperature or stroke volume. OK, you say, “the sweat thing made sense but what’s going on here?”

The break in the chain under these conditions occurs not in Oxygen transport, but Oxygen demand, i.e. at the top of the chain. During the eccentric exercise, as muscle damage occurs, the legs are forced to recruit larger, less economical muscle fibers. These fibers require a greater amount of O2 to exert a given level of power and the heart rate goes up for a given power output when the more economical fibers begin to fatigue.

In fact, type II fibers require ~twice the O2 for a given power output. Therefore, small fiber shifts result in relatively large differences in heart rate for a given power output (Coyle, 1992)

As we know, muscle damage isn’t the only cause of muscle fatigue. When a muscle fiber runs out of fuel (glycogen) it’s out of the game. Thus, decoupling can serve as an indicator of how our targeted muscle fibers are doing, both in terms of muscle damage and fuel stores.

As the targeted muscle fibers become stronger and more fatigue resistant, the time before the muscle fatigues to the point that it needs to call on it’s ‘big brother’ fibers increases. Therefore, as an athlete’s muscle fibers become more trained, decoupling over a training session decreases. In fact, the researchers above found that the effect disappeared when athletes were trained in downhill walking for a period of weeks. Or, in other words, as fitness for a given task increases, decoupling decreases.

Additionally, if we accept that HR:Power can indicate muscle damage and fuel depletion, we can also then use this metric to help determine if an athlete is adequately recovered for a key workout. If we know that typically an athlete takes 140bpm to run 7:00/mi (after warm up) we can use this number as a ‘check-in’ before key sessions. If the athlete takes 147bpm for the same pace (a difference of 5%) it may suggest that recovery is incomplete and the session should be postponed. Chuckie V wrote a great post on the practical implementation of this concept here.

Incidentally, a swing in the opposite direction can also indicate incomplete recovery via other mechanisms. In fact, over-reaching studies have typically found either decreased power/pace of ~5% for a given effort (e.g. Coutts et al. 2007, Jeukendrup et al., 1992), OR a decreased heart rate of 5% for a given power/pace (e.g. Hedelin et al, 2000). Therefore, ensuring athletes are within +/-5% of ‘normal’ power and HR is a good policy.

While it’s true that heart rate is subject to more confounding variables than other measures, it is not, as some coaches would suggest ‘useless’ as a training metric. The confounding variables can quite easily be accounted for by a good coach with effective communication and athlete knowledge. When used with a given athlete over a period of time, observing power:heart rate relationships offers the coach a fairly objective indicator of both the athlete’s base fitness and their readiness to work (two things that athletes notoriously over-estimate when left to their own devices). For this reason, in my opinion, decoupling is a key concept of science-based coaching.

Train Smart.

AC

Trust No ONE

2009-09-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

My post on “What it Takes” from a couple of weeks back generated a good deal of discussion both in my inbox and on some internet forums. I didn’t comment on any of the forum posts because I find it much more interesting studying the psychology from afar than attempting to influence it. It is my experience that the bulk of internet ‘discussion’ is more about a proverbial peeing contest than a true attempt to learn anything so, as a general rule, I stay out of it.

It certainly was interesting, though, to watch it from afar. To watch how some good athletes were hell-bent on proving to themselves and others that they lacked ‘what it took’ to be great. The psychology is still a little puzzling to me. Even more puzzling is how they interpreted my last post to be somehow pessimistic. Let me be frank. If the thought of ‘having’ to put in 10 years in this sport in order to discover your potential is in any way depressing, then find yourself another vocation.

My curiosity turned to anger when the discussion moved to the deterministic implications of genetics. If you want to limit yourself, go ahead, but don’t generalize that others are equally limited. The logic goes, well I’ve done ‘everything I can’ over the past x amount of years to fulfill my potential in this sport and I’m still not world champion. Must be genetics.

I took a look at what the genetic research has to say on the topic of endurance sports in this post. For mine, not all that impressive and certainly not equivocal. Ironically, the same folks who took issue with the sample size of the Baker and Cote 10 year study seem to have little problem with a genetics study that uses a similar sample size trained with a high intensity 12 week training program to infer levels of ‘trainability’ for the Ironman athlete! But my hunch is that the opinions of these ‘dream crushers’ are not based on perusing the genetics research literature and weighing it against long duration physiological studies and theories on deliberate practice. Rather, my hunch is that these folks are throwing out their opinion based on a sample size of n=1.

The central problem with any n=1 opinion in endurance sports is, as the old Edison quote infers, any ‘failure’ is just as attributable to the one training program that you are following than to failure of the principle of training as a whole:

"I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb."

Put another way, be very careful when perusing the forums that you don’t mistake the failure of one athlete to come up with a successful method of making their light bulb for the impossibility of light bulb making as a whole.

Additionally, recognize your failures quickly and CHANGE, lest you become ‘one of them’.

The further problem is illustrated in the following story from my swim days:

I have always been a cerebral kind of guy. Always on the look out for ‘the answer’. In my swim days, I was under the impression that ‘the answer’ was technical. I remember one day before practice I was chatting with one of the superstars of our squad. This guy was the most technically beautiful swimmer than I have seen to this day. Every stroke was textbook. I would watch the guy underwater to try and work out the nuances of what he was doing with his stroke that was enabling him to swim 6s or so quicker than me in a 100 sprint. So, anyhow, conversation was slim, so I took the time to ask him, what do you do underwater that gives you such an efficient pull? His answer? I don’t know. Of course, that wasn’t enough. I asked him to demonstrate parts of the pull. When he did, his actions looked nothing like they did underwater. This guy really had no clue how he pulled off swimming as fast as he did. I’m sure never missing a session helped, but that’s the topic for another blog :-)

My point is that the same is true of most elite athletes that I have known and worked with over the years. It takes pretty dramatic consequences to enforce a 100% logbook policy in a swim squad, even an elite one. Most athletes want to do the work, not write about it. As such it is my experience that many of the best athletes have only a very vague idea (based on memory) of how they got to the level that they are at. The very best elite coaches on the other hand, record everything and have notebooks going back to the dark ages on their training programs. Unfortunately, in triathlon, there are so few truly elite coaches that provide accessible knowledge that we tend to believe verbatim the generalities of the athletes that are based on their best recollection of how they trained.

Chuckie V’s most recent blog on “How to become a champion endurance athlete” is a flat-out gem. Through the entire post, the importance of self-belief is highlighted.

Make no mistake, spending time on the forums listening to folks banter on genetics based on their limited recollection of their own n=1 sample is not just harmless web-surfing. It is life altering. With every n=1 reference that you take on, your belief in your own potential is damaged. Fortunately my own ego and pig-headedness makes me pretty immune to what others say, but if you are in any way susceptible to this stuff, keep the following in mind:

• Any ‘failure’ is purely a failure of the one program or protocol that the athlete personally selected.
• Many athletes have a very limited idea of what their selected protocol was !!

So, who do you trust? Well, I’m a pretty good starting point :-) Primarily because I have an obsession with collecting real-world data for all levels of triathlete that borders on OCD!!

But, that doesn’t sit well with the File-O-Phile in me, so in the end, I would tell you to trust RESULTS. Every athlete is an experiment of one and any ‘truths’ about the human training response are typically based on limited samples, limited time frames, along with the limited assumption of human conformity, which I am dead-set against. Every athlete is different. Your best bet for success in this athletics game is to X out the forum window, open your spreadsheet and keep detailed personal records on your personal response to a given training stimulus. In addition, keep that picture of Edison and his light bulb firmly engraved on your screen saver, along with the caption “Persistence conquers all”.

Train Smart.

AC

More on athletic balance....

2009-08-29T20:43:00.000-07:00

How to use power curves to help determine athletic strengths and weaknesses

One of my key objectives as a coach is to address and rectify the athlete’s weaknesses with respect to the demands of their event.

The first step in addressing is assessing, i.e. determining where the athlete is physiologically weak. I use multiple means in making this assessment, including laboratory testing (which I have written about at length) along with field data, which will be the focus of this article.

One of the key principles within my training philosophy is that of athletic ‘balance’. This is no doubt, at least in part, bred from the testing that I have performed on a wide array of athletes of different events of different duration. In all cases, the general ‘athleticism’ of these athletes shines through, to some extent, irrespective of their specific event.

This is more than just platitude. In the communist GDR for example, all athletes from marathon runners to Olympic lifters to 1500m swimmers, first had to pass a ‘general athleticism test’ in order to be considered for the sports schools that would enable them to eventually practice their specialty. The criteria for a male 13 year old was as follows (Arbeit, 1997):

• Height: 1.71-1.76m
• 30m sprint: 4.0s
• 3x hop: 6.0-6.4m
• Ball throw (165g): 54-60m
• Shot Put (3.0kg): 9.0-9.5m
• 1500m Run: 4:40-4:50

My first personal ‘aha’ moment on the notion of athletic balance came ‘way back when’ during my college days. Our sports science class represented a cross section of elite athletes from a wide variety of sports, ranging from body builders to tennis players to swimmers to distance runners. It is an understatement to say that I was frequently surprised by who ‘topped the charts’ in the various physiological tests. Our body builder had the highest VO2max, a pro skateboarder topped the pull-up test and, just as surprisingly, when we took to the track for running field tests, our elite 10K/marathon runner came in top 3 in running tests of ALL DURATIONS, ranging from a 5K time trial down to a 60m dash!!

This pattern has since been confirmed as I’ve gone about my business as a coach of elite and AG swimmers and triathletes.

World class 1500m swimmers will beat National class 100m ‘specialists’ in a 100m race. Likewise, world class Ironman triathletes have surprisingly high 5sec power numbers, beaten perhaps by equally world class road and track cyclists, but certainly equal to or better than a Cat 2 ‘specialist’ sprinter (incidentally, the use of my inverted commas is an attempt to convey my view that a Cat 2 racer shouldn’t be a ‘specialist’ at anything, but rather should continue to focus on general development, but that is the subject for another blog…)

So, second to my central job of getting my athletes fit enough to train, my next job is to make sure that the training is focused on long term athletic balance, which will eventually lead to the athlete fulfilling their potential in their most genetically appropriate event. Of course, this implies that I have some idea of what ‘ideal’ balance is.

First of all, let’s throw out the epitome of athletic balance by looking at world best powers over each duration (Wilson, 2004):

Of course, despite the importance of balance that I have outlined, we wouldn’t expect a world class Ironman to also have world class anaerobic capacity. While the general shape of the curve will be the same for all athletes, parts of the curve will be warped to favor the athlete’s strengths/primary event. For example, below I have overlayed actual power data from a world class Ironman athlete with that of a similarly world class male road cyclist.

The differences are evident. While both have very strong curve ‘ends’ (in fact their maximal power is separated by less than 100W and their 4hr power by 12W!!), the difference in the middle of the curve is obvious. The anaerobic capacity of the road cyclist shines through in a significantly higher curve in the 1-20min time frames. This is the result of an athlete with very good basic strength and endurance specifically preparing for the decisive demands of their event.

On the flip-side, while not as obvious on this curve, as the duration increases, a trend is evident, the Ironman athlete loses very little power, while the road cyclists curve is on a steeper descent. Again, the result of an athlete with very high levels of strength and endurance (at least to the 4hr mark), developing the economy and lipolytic capacity to prepare specifically for the demands of their event.

If you look at the curves above, you will notice that beyond the 10 minute mark, the curve drops at a pretty steady rate (with the exception of the 30 minute point for road cyclists which falls within the range of TT performance and is therefore typically stronger than the other points). Beyond 10mins, the curve drops in a pretty linear fashion. Practically, then, the ‘steepness’ of this descent can be quantitatively defined. In fact, several coaches have developed rules of thumb that assess an athlete’s endurance via their fatigue rate. You may be familiar with Jack Daniels 2.2+10s rule, which implies a fatigue rate of 10% as the distance doubles. Joe Friel suggests a fatigue rate of 5% as the duration doubles in the Triathlete’s Training Bible, while George Dallam introduces a similar concept by looking at individual fatigue curves in Championship Triathlon Training. Based on the numbers that I have seen, here are my own rules of thumb regarding the gradient of this fatigue curve:

• Athletes with very strong endurance or who are long duration specialists, exhibit fatigue curves of ~6%. In other words, as the distance doubles, athletes with strong endurance lose ~6% of their power.

• Balanced athletes with average levels of endurance or mid-duration specialists (Time Trialists, Olympic Distance Triathletes etc.) exhibit fatigue curves in the realm of ~8%.

• ‘Top end strong’/Anaerobic athletes exhibit fatigue curves of 10% or more.

These numbers imply steady-state endurance (@ ~60% VO2max) of 90minutes+ for anaerobic athletes, 3hrs+ for mid-duration specialists and 12hrs+ for long distance/IM specialists.

Delving into this fatigue curve in a little more depth, from the database of field data that I have collected on a large number of top AG and pro athletes, I have compiled the following ‘ideal’ power-duration curve for (male) Ironman athletes.

The first number on each point represents the power duration (in minutes, for example, 0.1=6 seconds), while the second refers to the % of max power held for that duration.

So, using these numbers, in a basic development sense, if an athlete lacks the strength/power to hit max power numbers better than 4x their 2hr numbers, strength/power may be limiting. On the flipside, if an athlete is unable to hold 1/4 of their max power for a 90min session, endurance may be limiting.

Following this basic assessing and addressing of the foundational qualities, consideration can be given to specific development towards the athlete’s event. In the world of Ironman racing, this means both training to hold progressively higher % over longer durations and, just as importantly, since this is a long term project, identifying the % that they will realistically be able to hold for the next race.

For an elite Ironman competitor, this may be 21% of their maximal power, for a fit but not fully ‘Ironman developed’ athlete, it may be closer to 18%. For a novice athlete with a longer race duration, still working on basic preparation, it may be closer to 15% (lower than their ‘basic training’ intensity!!)

Ironman athletes are fundamentally, strong, fast, fit athletes (who are powerful but shy of world class short duration power) who then lay down ~6,000 hrs of specific endurance training to increase their economy, their fat oxidation and the consequent power that they can hold over the tail end of the curve by 15% or more.

In terms of development then, rather than focusing on a particular event, an athlete with a young training age is better served focusing on one of 2 general athletic weak points. Put simply, if you lack the ability to put out 4x your 2hr power in a maximal effort, focus on the strength end of the curve. If you lack the ability to hold 22-26% of your max power for sessions in the 60min to 4hr range, focus on the endurance end of the curve.

I find the power-duration curve to be a very useful ‘check-in’ tool with the athletes I work with. I hope you also find some value in this approach.

Train Smart,

AC

What it Takes (Part II)

2009-08-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic. It takes sweat, determination and hard work”
- Colin Powell.

I was in the unfortunate position over the last couple of weeks to lose 2 athletes that I had been working with one-on-one over a relatively long period of time. It bothers me on a ‘gut’ level when an athlete changes coaches. Probably harkens back to my swim coaching days when it was common for the best swimmers in our squads to abandon ship when they were either ‘poached’ by one of the less ethical coaches that made up our competition or they became impatient with the amount of work that they were putting in vs the perceived lack of results that they were achieving.

So, I decided to write this piece as a bit of a ‘reality check’ for those athletes who do aspire to reach their full performance potential in the sport of triathlon. This is in no way suggesting that reaching the front of the pack or the top of your age group is the only worthwhile goal. As Molina says, “take a look around, the fountain of youth doesn’t come easy”. Staying in fantastic shape and having fun are worthy goals.

Nor is it suggesting that the MOPers are ‘slacking off’. For your first 2-3 years in the Ironman ranks, the middle of the pack is an important developmental stepping stone on your Ironman journey. However, for those folks who’ve been in the sport for a while and are thinking about taking it to the next level, I offer the following reality checks.

Reality Check #1: There is very little difference in commitment between the top of the age-groups vs the Open Elite.

The guys who are racing Kona are doing so by getting top 10 at the most competitive Ironman distance races around the world. These folks are very serious competitors that make athletics a large part of their lives. Additionally, a surprising number of them are in a financial position to live a ‘pro triathlete’ lifestyle. In actuality, perhaps the only difference between the pros and the elite AGers is that maybe they started a little later than the pro athletes or had a period of their life that was career focused that caused them to miss their absolute window of opportunity in a physical sense. But make no mistake, these athletes aren’t holding back. They are 100% committed to reaching their potential in the sport.

Reality Check #2: It still takes a long time to get good.

Baker, Cote and Deakin (2005) studied the developmental patterns of expert, mid-pack and back of the pack Ironman athletes. They found that on average there were 12,000 hours of training behind a 9:30IM performance. Developmentally, these training hours must occur before age begins to negate performance improvements, i.e. by age 40-45. So, for an athlete who begins competing in Ironman triathlon at 25-30, they have about 15 years to accrue 12,000 hours of work. This equates to an average of 800hrs/year for 15 years!! For an athlete who goes in with some single sport experience, maybe they’ll get there in 10. For an athlete with endurance experience who commits to doing nothing but train, eat and sleep, maybe they’ll get there in 5 :-). Most of us don’t have this option.

Additionally, there are intensity limits that constrain just how ‘rushed’ this development can be. In order to challenge your aerobic abilities, a bulk of your training must be above the aerobic threshold. The glycogen cost of training at this point limits most folks to 2.5-3.5hrs/day of training. In other words, if you’re going to get ‘serious’ start now.

Now, the pattern of performance improvement illustrated by Cote’s study is both interesting and potentially discouraging, see below:

By the time the average athlete gets to a 15hr IM they have 4000hrs of training under their belt (5 years of single sport @~300hrs/yr + 5 hrs of triathlon @ ~520hrs/yr). By the time they ‘graduate’ to a 12hr ‘midpack’ performance, the average athlete has 6000 hours of training in the log books (an additional 2000hrs of training over 2.7 years for a 3hr performance improvement). However, to graduate from mid-pack (12hrs) to FOP (9:30) requires an additional 6000 hours of development!! Or, put another way, an additional 6-8 years of ‘2 a days.'

This is not unusual to the single sports. In the world of swimming, for instance, a kid with realistic goals of swimming open nationals will begin 2 a days at age 13-14 and have 6 or 7 years of these under their belt before reaching their peak performances at the national or international level in their late teens to early twenties.

Of course, one big difference is that our developmental period as long course triathletes is later than it is for swimmers and this poses some significant ‘life challenges’. Despite how it feels at the time, our lives are much more ‘simple’ during our high school years. Get up, eat, go to swim practice, go to school, leave when the bell rings, go to swim practice, eat, sleep. This is much more challenging in adulthood when other responsibilities are vying for attention. Still, this does not negate the fact that this (simplicity) is the path to success and that if you really want to compete with the guys at the top of the sport, that’s how they’re living.

Perhaps the other difference is the performance expectation that comes with 2-a-day training. I remember my promotion to the “A Squad” when coming up through the swim ranks carried with it a feeling of privilege to finally be ‘swimming with the big boys’ rather than something I needed to suffer for x amount of years in order to ‘get somewhere’. A 6 year period where long periods of high volume training offer very modest improvements in performance can be hard to take if it’s all about the ‘end game’. In fact, with the non-fitness related variables involved in the Ironman game coupled with the fact that most athletes will only race 1-2x per year, it is likely that athletes will experience seasons where despite increasing training load, performance regresses. This can be tough to deal with if you’re not getting a good deal of intrinsic motivation just from ‘living the life’.

So, what does it take?

• Persistence (irrespective of bad races)
• A lifestyle that supports 6-8 years of ‘serious’ training. What is serious training? 18-24hrs/week of aerobic training (3hrs/day, 10 sessions a week, 48 weeks a year).
• A deep love of the process

That means that, to achieve ‘your best’ in triathlon, for almost a decade, you need to be willing to put other aspects of your life in maintenance mode. It is difficult to climb the corporate ladder and the AG ranks at the same time. That doesn’t mean you need to ‘drop everything’, it just means you need the type of job (and the assertiveness) that enables you to block out time for a morning and evening training session most days for the next 6-8 yrs (see Gordo’s latest blog for more on this).
It also means, as an athlete with nothing better than an 11-13hr IM to your name, you need to have the courage or the naivety to ‘back yourself’.

This is a common decision among the majority of the guys (top age-groupers and pros) that I know who have ‘made it’. My buddy, pro triathlete, Justin Daerr comes to mind. At our last camp he recounted how, as a 12hr IM guy he planned his college class schedule around the needs of his 20+ hr training week not because of his pro ambitions, or an impending Kona goal but simply because “he enjoyed riding his bike”.

Maybe in the end, the answer to ‘what it takes’ to reach the top of the sport is to not care about ‘what it takes to reach the top of the sport’. Rather, to realize that you are committed to being a lifelong triathlete and committed to the life that it entails irrespective of performances (good or bad) or life demands at any point in the journey. A commitment to a life of consistent training offers so much more than a trophy or a ticket to Kona. As a buddy of mine says, the journey is the destination.

Train smart.

AC.

As mentioned, I have 2 open one-on-one coaching slots available for athletes who are willing to work with me for the next 5 years or so to discover their potential in the sport (athletes in current coaching relationships need not apply – I’m no poacher :-)

The Science of 'Steady'

2009-07-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

On our Endurance Corner forum (www.endurancecorner.com) the following question was recently raised, regarding the emphasis Endurance Corner places on steady-state training:

“Help from the research literature gurus, please.
My involvement with Endurance Corner has generated plenty of great discussion at the cardiology practice I work in. Many of us in the practice pride ourselves on readily referencing the various studies that provide support for the diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations we make. If I can't reference a study, I am careful to qualify my position as being based on a theory or based on anecdotal experience.
Today I was making a case for endurance athletes spending a significant amount of the available training hours on 'steady" zone work. The very appropriate question came up, 'based on what research". My response "I'll get back to you'.

Jamie

While there are a number of observational studies on elite swimmers, cyclists and runners that support a large percentage of training being spent in what we at EC would call the ‘steady’ training zone, i.e. at or slightly above the aerobic threshold, there are few controlled scientific studies on athletes that provide scientific validation. The reasons for this are multiple and more related to the difficulties in controlling the extraneous variables within an athlete’s life, coupled with the fact that most studies are, by their nature, short duration studies, and finally that it’s tough to convince an ethics board of the merits of ‘harvesting’ the athlete at the end of the study so that physiological adaptations can be investigated to their full extent :-)For this reason, we tend to turn to the rats to help to determine the training strategies that result in optimal physiological adaptation.

One of the studies that I referenced in reply to this athlete’s question was the landmark (rat) study of Dudley, Terjung and Abrahams (1982).

In the study, the researchers subjected rats to training protocols of varied durations and intensities over the course of 6 weeks ranging from 10mins/day at 116% of VO2max to 90mins/day at 50% of VO2max. They then looked at mitochondrial adapatation as a function of cytochrome c concentration in the 3 different fiber types – fast glycolytic, fast oxidative and slow oxidative.

While the optimal protocol for improving the aerobic capacity of FOG fibers was clearly maximized at 60-90 minutes per day of training just below the anaerobic threshold (~functional threshold pace/power), the slow twitch fibers exhibited a different pattern:

The aerobic capacity of the fiber is shown on the y axis (in the form of cytochrome c concentration) for the 3 different duration groups on the x axis (30, 60 and 90 minutes per day) for each respective intensity level.

In the first group – 10m/min or approximately 20% of the ‘athletes’ vVO2max, a very light level of intensity, only small improvement in aerobic capacity can be expected. Additionally, once the athlete is doing 60 minutes per day at this level, very little additional improvement can be expected with increased duration. In other words, there is little physiological benefit to ‘touring’ at very low intensities, whatever the duration.

This pattern continues for the second group (~40% of the ‘athletes’ vVO2max) albeit to a lesser extent. We may consider this ‘easy’ training, the type used for recovery or warm-up. This training is still quite limited in terms of the benefit to the aerobic capacity of the muscle fibers. However, 60-90 minute training sessions are still useful, though less so than 60 minutes of ‘steady’ which we’ll get to in a bit. But first…

The 40m/min protocol reflects a training level approaching the ‘athletes’ functional threshold. Clearly, this is not only a powerful stimulus for the fast oxidative fibers mentioned above, but also these slow twitch fibers. In fact, according to the data, 30 minutes of threshold training is more beneficial to the slow twitch fibers than 60 minutes of steady training.

However….

The benefit of threshold training to the slow twitch fibers is ‘maxed out’ at ~60 minutes of training. Looking at the trend of the 30m/min curve (an intensity approximately equal to ‘steady’) it is clear to see that while 90 minutes of steady training only equals 60 minutes of threshold training, in terms of relative benefit, the ‘steady’ curve is still on the up and up.

In other words, we would expect continued benefit at 2hrs and potentially 3hrs and maybe even 4. In fact, this has been confirmed by a study by Harms and Hickson (1983) who found this near linear relationship existed through to 2hrs/day of steady training. However, despite the fact that we subject 10 year old swimmers to ‘2-a-days’ of 3-4hrs of training, we are yet to subject the rats to the same fate. So we can only guess on whether this trend will continue to 3 and 4 hours. Elite athletic practice would say yes!

In summary, the greatest aerobic benefit to your slowtwitch fibers will be had from the following sessions in order of importance:
- 2-4hrs of steady training
- 45-60 minutes of mod-hard to threshold training
- 30 minutes of threshold training
- 60 minutes of steady training
- 60-90 minutes of easy training

Of 4 intensity levels examined, only one offered continued benefit for the athlete willing/able to train for more than 90 minutes per day – steady. Not too easy. Not too hard. Steady is ‘just right’ :-)

Train Smart.

AC

wko+: Speaking the Lingo

2009-07-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

“SPEAKIN’ IN ENGLISH….?”
- Jeannie from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

While my athletes are far too polite to express themselves in the way that Jeannie does in that legendary movie, I am sure that on more than one occasion, when I go off on one of my wko+ related rants with a lot of terms and vernacular that they don’t 100% understand, they have felt the same way. So, this is for them, a (hopefully, somewhat) concise list of definitions of terms associated with the training software wko+. I was asked to put together a wko+ for Dummies. I’m not sure this qualifies, more like a ‘wko+ for quite intelligent folk who have some questions :-)’ A more thorough explanation can be found here...

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/power411.aspx

So let’s dive right in with the ‘mother of them all’ – Normalized Power.

Normalized Power:

Normalized Power (NP) is a similar statistic to average power but is calculated a little differently. While average power simply takes all of the samples from your powermeter and divides them by the number of samples, Normalized Power uses a tricky little weighting system to come up with a number that is more in line with the true physiological effort of a given session.

The calculation:

Let’s say we do 2 rides – one that is completely even paced (on a trainer or velodrome) such that if we took a random sample at the beginning, the middle and the end, they would all read 200 watts. The other ride is an extreme ‘poker paced’ ride where we focus on being strong at the end. We ride the first 1/3 at 100W, the second 1/3 at 200W and the last third at 300W.

Average power for both rides is identical:
(200+200+200)/3 = 200
(100+200+300)/3 = 200

However, from a physiological perspective, they are quite different (especially for an athlete with say a Functional Threshold of 250W!!), with the first being much more ‘pleasant’ For this reason, Dr. Andy Coggan came up with a formula to weight this variability according to its physiological difficulty. In this case, samples are raised to the 4th power, an average is taken and then the fourth root is taken of that. From our example above:

(200^4+200^4+200^4)/3 = (1600000000+1600000000+1600000000)/3 = 4800000000/3 = 1600000000

Then taking the 4th root of 1600000000 = 200NP (the same as the average power)

However, in the second scenario:

(100^4+200^4+300^4)/3 = (100000000 + 1600000000 + 8100000000) = 9800000000/3 = 3266666667

Then taking the 4th root of 3266666667 = 239NP (39 watts greater than the average power).

The 4th power curve (above) looks a lot like a lactate curve, doesn’t it? This general trend of physiological effort, measured by things like blood lactate increases exponentially with increasing workload. This is the very concept behind Normalized Power – if you put out double the wattage, say go from 200-400W, anyone who has trained with power can attest that it is a whole lot more than twice as hard. Furthermore, when an average athlete jumps from 200-400W, the time to exhaustion is significantly more than halved.

Variability Index (VI):

A follow up term from the above, initially coined by Charles Howe, is the Variability Index.

The calculation:

This is simply the normalized power divided by the average power. So, in the scenario above, we would say that the 100/200/300 ride had a variability index of 1.20 (239NP/200AP).

This is a good indication of how ‘smooth’ the ride was. In an Ironman context, VI numbers are typically low, ranging from 1.0 to 1.05 for flat courses and 1.05-1.1 for hilly courses.

There is an optimal VI for each athlete on each course that gives the athlete the greatest speed for the lowest effort. This is related to course factors such as the number and grade of hills, which reward the athlete with more relative speed for a given power and the physiological peculiarities of the athlete – while it may be tactically optimal to put out 300W going up the hill and 100W descending for an average of 200W, if 300W puts the athlete over their threshold and the descent isn’t long enough to clear the lactate, tactically optimal doesn’t matter!

For this reason, the best way to determine an optimal VI for a given athlete is with multiple race sims on a given course using differing power output strategies and seeing which affords the athlete the greatest speed/power combo.

Intensity Factor

Also related to Normalized Power, the intensity factor is simply the Normalized Power of a given ride divided by the athlete’s Functional Threshold.
By most definitions, Functional Threshold refers to the athlete’s maximal power output over 1hr. In some sense, it is a proxy for the athlete’s power at a maximal lactate steady state. In other words, it typically represents a power level in which blood lactate levels begin to plateau and thus exercise duration is no longer limited by lactate accumulation, but rather begins to become limited by glycogen depletion.

In real world competition, durations in excess of 90 minutes (e.g. half marathons for good athletes) typically elicit lactate levels below the athletes maximal lactate steady state, and are thus not limited by lactate accumulation, but rather glycogen depletion, while for competition durations of <60 minutes, e.g. 10K run races, lactate steadily accumulates throughout the race and the associated acidosis ultimately limits performance. Personally, I think a 90 minute power is more truly indicative of this ‘functional threshold’ but the 1hr mark is more consistently used, is near enough and is easier to work with, so it gets the ‘thumbs up’.

So, if we accept 60 minutes as the point at which this ‘functional threshold’ from cardiovascular to metabolic limitation occurs, the intensity factor represents the % of functional threshold power for the ride. From the example above, if we assume the athlete has a functional threshold of 300W, the intensity factor of the ride would be 239W/300W = 0.80

Training Stress Score (TSS)

Here is where the real fun begins :-)

Training Stress Score represents a number combining the volume and intensity of a given ride to give a summary of how “hard” the ride was in an overall sense.

Because it represents volume and intensity in an appropriately weighted number, it can also be considered a proxy for the glycogen (energy) cost of a given ride.

Calculation:

It is calculated as IF^2*100*Ride Duration in hours.

The IF^2 represents the relationship between glycogen depletion and training intensity and it agrees very well with what our lab results would suggest for an average athlete.

Because TSS is a relative rather than an absolute measure, perhaps the best ‘rule of thumb’ way to look at it is:

100 TSS = ~100% of your personal glycogen stores.

If you have 1000kcal of glycogen at your disposal then each TSS is worth ~10kcal of glycogen.If you have 1500kcal at your disposal then each TSS is worth ~15kcal of glycogen.

In this way, athletes can have rides with very different work (kj) and power outputs but the same relative training stress.

From our example above, if the 100/200/300 descending ride was a 2hr jaunt for an athlete with an FTP of 300W (culminating with 40mins at FTP), the training stress of that ride would be:

IF^2*100*Ride Duration in Hours

= 0.8^2*100*2 = 64*2 = 128TSS.

Because this represents 128% of the athlete’s theoretical glycogen stores, this would be a very tough workout to complete without supplemental carbohydrate. While, by using 60mins rather than 90mins as the ‘functional’ threshold, we likely ‘low-ball’ the athletes true glycogen capacities to some extent, (with a true starting # probably closer to 150 for well trained athletes), for most athletes a 128TSS ride with no carbs is going to have the athlete on the verge of seeing stars :-)

In a ‘chronic’ context, trained athletes can replenish ~60% of their glycogen stores within 12hrs and ~85% within 20hrs (Casey et al. 1985). Therefore, from a training prescription stance, athletes should be wary of unsupplemented sessions that use more than 85% of their energy stores/85TSS per day. These can be supplemented at a rate of ~240-300kcal/hr (25TSS/hr) at low intensities (IF’s of ~0.7) and therefore, in practice, with appropriate nutrition, we see, providing intensity is kept moderate, repeated training days of up to 160TSS (3hrs/day) are possible over the long term in well trained athletes. Which brings us to our next term….

Chronic Training Load (CTL)/”Fitness”

The chronic training load simply represents your long term tolerance to a given relative training stress.

In its simplest sense, CTL can be thought of as a rolling long term average (the default is 6 weeks) of the athlete’s relative training load.

In this sense it is often used synonymously with fitness, assuming that fitness is related to long term work capacity and indeed, for a given athlete on a given season it has been empirically validated that the athletes highest potential performance will occur at their highest CTL. In my opinion, it is certainly a good indicator of “base fitness”, where increasing the long term capacity to do work is a major training objective.

Using this simplified model, we would expect that after 6 weeks of a given training load, maximal fitness is attained. However, in ‘real world’ studies comparing mathematical modelling with actual performance, the true ‘lifespan’ of performance improvements from a given training load is actually much longer than 6 weeks (Good news for the time limited athlete committed to consistency!!) so the model is modified with an exponent.

This is where the math starts to get a little complicated:

Chronic Training Load = [Todays TSS * (1-e^(-1/42)] + {Yesterdays CTL * (e^(-1/42)]

In this series, as time goes on, and yesterday’s CTL gets bigger, the relative benefit to today’s CTL gets smaller. This can be expressed graphically as follows in response to a constant training load of 100TSS

This model follows the actual empirically validated time course of aerobic training adaptation. In other words, if you are following a training program in which the workload is not consistent enough to put together 4-6 months of consistent training, the fitness benefit of a given training load will not be realized. In other words, you will be training excessively for the fitness adaptations that you are achieving – you will be overtraining. Likewise, if a given training stimulus is continued for too long, the fitness benefits will plateau, while fatigue will continue to accrue. In this sense, you are also ‘overtraining’. Monitoring Chronic Training Load helps to give a big picture appraisal on both fronts.

In terms of specific values, as mentioned in the section on TSS, most novice to intermediate athletes will be able to handle a long term program of 100TSS/day providing intensity is kept moderate and nutrition is good. Top age group athletes will typically be in the range of 120TSS/d Elite/pro very well trained athletes may be able to put together 6 months of 150-160TSS/d training to achieve a CTL approaching 150. However, achieving a given CTL is no guarantee of performance. You can have great base fitness, but without a corresponding high workrate/FTP, it will not reflect in performance. Both are needed.

It is useful to look at CTL along with FTP. For instance, if an athlete’s CTL is 100TSS/d in season 1 with an FTP of 240W and remains at 100TSS/d in season 2, but with an FTP of 280W, despite the same relative workload, their absolute workload has improved by 290kj/day!!

Considering the risks of inconsistency associated with ‘overdoing it’. Those who monitor CTL will quickly realize that a very moderate, long term approach to training is best.

Acute Training Load (ATL)/”Fatigue”

The acute training load represents your short term training loading in TSS/day. In this sense it is a good indication of how much load you’ve put yourself through over the last little bit.

Mathematically it is expressed the same way as CTL, however, the default constant is now 7 days instead of 6 weeks.

In order to gain fitness, ATL (fatigue) must exceed your current CTL (fitness). By how much is the million dollar question which is frequently only answered by experimentation.

Tolerance to fatigue will change with each athlete and with the point in the season, with athletes typically tolerating greater levels of fatigue after coming back from a recovery period and lower levels as the season goes on.
Additionally, tolerance to fatigue will be greatly impacted by the type of training (intensity) and by the athlete’s nutrition.

Training Stress Balance (TSB)/”Freshness”

The difference between ATL and CTL alluded to above has a mathematical equivalent: TSB.

Training Stress Balance is simply CTL minus ATL or, the difference between what you can tolerate long term and what you put yourself through (short term). Thus it is a good indication of how ‘fresh’ you are at any one point.

If your ATLCTL then you are training more than you can tolerate and are ‘digging a hole’. Providing you give yourself a chance to climb out of that hole in a timely manner by not digging too deep and by incorporating planned rest periods, this is the key to improvement.

Over the course of a season, TSB will typically initially ramp down as the athlete gets back into training after a worthwhile break, will hit a season low during the early season “base” period then will progressively rise as the athlete approaches the competitive period. This pattern is shown below in response to typical season loading below:

The athlete’s ‘freshness’ is indicated by the yellow line.

At the start of the season, the athlete starts from a freshness of zero after an off-season (not fit or fatigued). The first month of training is taken gently (30-60% of peak load) but still elicits a good chunk of fatigue. You can see the effect of the unloading weeks on the athlete’s freshness. The 2nd month is the toughest of the season in terms of fatigue. Despite a greater load in the third and fourth month, the athlete is better able to deal with the load and so ‘freshness’ is higher. By the third unloading period, the athlete’s freshness is back to the zero baseline and they are ready for a C competition. After another loading phase, the athlete unloads and then seeks to maintain their fitness through the length of the competition period. At the end of this, the athlete further unloads during the taper and gets ‘super fresh’ for the main competition of the year.

As mentioned, ‘optimal TSB’ will vary for different athletes at different times of the year. However, when the athlete has had a good season, it is nice to have a ‘blueprint’ of what fitness and fatigue dynamics led to this result.

Hopefully this article will answer some of the many questions out there surrounding wko+. It is an incredibly powerful coaching tool when used consistently and appropriately.

Train Smart.

AC.

Talking the Torque: Strength-Endurance Training for Cyclists

2009-07-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

“My Strength is my Strength”
- Matt Reed

The introduction of power meters in cycling has not only led to significant improvements in training and racing execution but it has also led to a bit of a paradigm shift from a ‘physiological’ model of race performance to a more ‘mechanical’ model.

Let me explain, when it comes down to ‘nuts and bolts’ in order for a cyclist to produce more power he must either increase his cadence (revolutions per minute) or increase the force that he is imparting on the pedals (his torque). While cardiovascular capacity clearly plays a role in the cyclists ability to remain ‘aerobic’ while producing the requisite force, it does not change the fact that there is a minimal force that is required in order to produce competitive race powers and consequent speeds.

Irrespective of how ‘fit’ an athlete is, if they lack the necessary strength reserve to produce this force, they are out of the game (picture a Kenyan runner in a Tour De France prologue).

So, a distinction has been made between strength-endurance sports and ‘pure’ endurance sports, with accompanying physiological distinctions separating the two. In the world of strength endurance sports such as rowing, cycling and cross-country skiing, physiologists have identified an optimal muscle fiber ‘make-up’ that distinguishes those successful in these sports from their ‘pure endurance’ cousins.

Specifically, Neumann (2000) through extensive muscle biopsy studies of strength endurance athletes has identified an optimal fiber composition ratio of 1.3:1 between fast and slow twitch fibers. This is distinct from the ratio of the percentage of slow and fast twitch fibers, but instead, refers to the size difference if two representative fibers, one slow and one fast were compared side by side. See figure below:

In an average young, untrained male, typical FT:ST ratios will be 1.1:1. On the flipside, world class powerlifters, Olympic lifters and sprint runners exhibit ratios in the neighborhood of 1.5:1. As mentioned, the optimal number for a strength endurance athlete is 1.3:1.

Clearly then, taking an athlete from an untrained state to a trained state in a strength-endurance sport requires some training designed towards FT fiber hypertrophy.

Of course, the caveat in this training must be that size does not come with a decrement in the aerobic capacity of the fibers. In other words, any hypertrophy that occurs must be able to be functionally supported by the aerobic energy system. This represents a challenge from an exercise prescription stance. As strength-endurance coaches, we want a stimulus that is sufficiently ‘easy’ that it can be supported aerobically (and ideally not chew through a whole chunk of the glycogen that is intended to fuel the rest of the weekly endurance training) but sufficiently ‘hard’ that it results in significant FT recruitment. The good news is that, despite the name, fast twitch fibers do not require high movement speeds in order to be recruited, but they do require relatively high levels of torque.

Specifically, FT recruitment begins at approximately 40% of MVC and peaks at ~ 80-85% MVC (Fry, 2004). Obviously, these numbers can be easily transferred across to %RM numbers for an array of gym exercises, but they can also be applied to set specific ‘on the bike’ strength workout prescriptions for those athletes training with power.

For example, for an athlete with a peak power output of 1000W at 100rpm, has a peak torque of 95 Newton meters or, 845 inch-lbs

Therefore, if we want to design a workout that significantly recruits his FT fibers we want torque numbers of ~340-680 inch-lbs (40-80% of peak torque). This leads to two distinct workouts that I consider absolutely integral to my athletes’ strength development:

At the lower end (40-50% of max torque) this takes the form of long strength endurance work, e.g. long rides in the mountains with extended periods at low cadences … (in fact, Reiss (1992) discovered that professional cyclists perform 30-50% of their basic endurance work as strength-endurance climbing). In my training prescriptions, I will often program 20-90min periods at very low cadence (30-50rpm) and moderate force. These are typically (though not necessarily) easiest to do as long moderate climbs.

At the upper end (80-85% of max torque) these workouts take the form of big gear hill repetitions. These can also be done as long sub threshold intervals on a long climb or as repeated VO2 efforts (at a higher cadence) up a shorter hill.

A couple of specific examples of these 2 workouts from power files of an athlete that I coach. This particular athlete has max power #’s of ~880W at 90rpm or 825 inch-lbs.

Workout 1 is a long (60min) aerobic climb @ 160-180W (tempo intensity for this athlete) with 2x20 minutes done as strength-endurance work @ 40-50% peak torque (330-420 inch-lbs – indicated by the two dotted blue lines). In real world terms, this means 160W-180W @ 40-50rpm. This represents a pretty moderate strength-endurance load, one of the early workouts in this athlete’s strength endurance block, and, providing the athlete tolerates this well (which is largely dependent on the gym work that is done in the phase preceding ‘on the bike’ work), I would look to extend this to a 2x30-40min set, even for an intermediate athlete.

As you can see from the file, the athlete gets a little over-ambitious by taking the cadence down a little too low, below 40rpm, which takes the torque a little above the target upper range of 420 lbs/in but overall this is a pretty decently executed workout.

The second strength workout is the latter type – short hill reps at 80-85% peak torque and VO2 watts. The athlete in question has a VO2max of 4.1 L/min @ 300W and a peak torque of 825 lbs/in. Therefore the target for hypertrophy development is hitting 80-85% of this for at least 30s per rep or 660-700 inch-lbs. At VO2 watts, it will take a cadence of 35-40rpm to achieve this. Therefore, the workout becomes: 6x30s standing hill reps @ 270-300W/35-40rpm.

In this particular case, the workout was done on a hilly circuit, hence the long recovery periods,. Ordinarily I would prefer more reps (10-20) with relatively equal work:rest periods, but it still serves to illustrate the core concept of a torque vs a power goal for the key strength workouts.

I will typically program the first type of workout 1-2 times per week depending on the phase of training and the needs of the athlete and the second 1-3 times per week depending on the same (hopefully this conveys the importance I place on strength for strength-endurance athletes!!). The second type of workout is best preceded by a phase of gym training with similar movements and loads in a more controlled setting. Even when doing 3 strength workouts per week, doing at least one of them as a form focused workout in the gym is good practice.

In summary, I think the simple fact that in order to go faster in your Ironman bike split requires the strength to push a bigger gear at the same or better cadence is often forgotten. Competitive Ironman bike splits require the strength to push a gear in the vicinity of 53/12-15 or 225-275 inch-lbs for very long periods of time (and then run well after that!!). Even if an athlete currently lacks the requisite fitness to attain these levels of competitive race power, by slowing down the cadence, they can train their strength reserve to the point that they can easily accommodate competitive race force. In this way, for endurance sports, the development of aerobic strength endurance is a performance reserve. For an athlete must have sufficient muscle mass to propel the body at competitive race velocities even if they cannot yet do so aerobically or lipolytically. Developmentally, strength is the first step.

Train Smart.

AC

Body Composition and Performance

2009-07-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

Hey Gang,

New article on Xtri on Body Composition and Performance:

http://www.xtri.com/features_display.aspx?riIDReport=5743&CAT=21&xref=xx

Enjoy!

Meatheads rule! :-)

AC

Energy Pacing your Ironman III

2009-06-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

"Although mechanical energy is indestructible, there is a universal tendency to its dissipation, which produces throughout the system a gradual augmentation and diffusion of heat, cessation of motion and exhaustion of the potential energy of the material Universe"
- Lord Kelvin

Today I would like to address the last piece in the puzzle of optimally pacing your Ironman. So far we have looked at how to go about determining the optimal bike/run energy allocation for different courses and athletes. However, we haven’t yet looked at how to go about determining how much actual energy you have at your disposal, i.e. how much potential energy do you have available in your personal system, or put more succinctly, what are your energy reserves?

This is a more complex question than it appears at face value and is a function of things like:
• Training
• Nutrition
• ‘Freshness’
• Muscle Mass
• Duration of your event.

Let’s take a look at a couple of these factors individually.

Muscle Mass/Training

Well trained muscle typically stores ~700mmol of glycogen (per kg of dry weight) (Starling et al 1997, Adamo et al. 1998). This equates to ~20kcal/lb of muscle. So, for a mesomorphic (Muscular) 165lb male with 75lb muscle mass, typical muscle glycogen stores are in the range of 1500kcal.

Add to this liver & blood glycogen and glucose stores of ~500kcal and a well trained athlete of average size has approximately 2000kcal at their disposal. It should be noted that an untrained individual typically stores approximately half of this amount.

Duration of the Event

In addition to having access to these stores at the start line, the intelligent athlete will take in an optimal amount of carbohydrate during the event that will lead to an additional 240-280kcal/hr of energy at their disposal.

This implies that the longer the event continues, the larger the total energy pool that the athlete can draw from assuming all other factors (such as rate of CHO absorption) are equal. This is important to remember when we are comparing the energy demands of athletes with different race durations and has practical significance when attempting to define a TSS ‘budget’ for the athlete.

In power training terms, some coaches have hypothesized that there is a TSS ‘budget’ that is optimal for all athletes to observe during the bike portion of the event. This is generally recommended to be in the vicinity of 280TSS. Thus, depending on anticipated bike split duration, the intensity of the bike leg is manipulated to assure that the athlete doesn’t exceed 280TSS over their total race duration. For athletes in the 5.5-6.5hr bike split range, this then results in an intensity factor of 0.65-0.71, or, with typical Ironman variability indices, an average power of 60-68% of FTP.

However, while this is a good starting point for many athletes, it does not take into account some of the individual considerations mentioned above.
A good rule of thumb that I have found to work quite well when comparing power data in the field with lab data is:

1TSS = 10kcal of glycogen.

In other words, a bike of 280TSS would be approximately equivalent to 2800kcal of glycogen/glucose output. So, for our hypothetical 165lb guy above, riding at an IF of 0.68 for an ~ 5:43 bike split, he starts with 2000kcal and gets 240-280kcal/hr on the bike. His input would be 2000 (starting energy) + 1500 (@260/hr) for a total of 3500cals. With an output of 2800kcal, this leaves him ~700kcal or 70TSS when starting the run. Even with an extra 260kcal or 26TSS/hr in exogenous CHO during the run, the picture isn’t pretty. For a 4hr run this is 180TSS or 45TSS/hr @ an IF of 0.67. Unless you’re working with an FTP pace of 6:15 or better, ain’t gonna happen.

Nope, far more typical is the 5hr marathon that allows for an extra 26TSS and a more manageable IF of 0.64 for an athlete with an FTP of ~7:20. As outlined in my previous blog, a 6hr bike/5hr run is not the best way to distribute your energy, yet it is almost inevitable for the average athlete who approaches the bike with a desire to ride at the typically recommended IF/AP power numbers.

In my experience, for the majority of courses, a far better way for most athletes to distribute their energy is to split their TSS budget down the middle and devote half to the bike and half to the run (for most folks, the swim should be done so easily that it’s energy output is non-significant). So, for our hypothetical lean mean 165lb male Ironman with starting glycogen stores of ~2000kcal/200TSS and a predicted finish time of ~12hrs (meaning an additional 11x260kcal/hr in exogenous glucose), his energy reserves are in the range of ~480TSS. If this is split at 240 for the bike and 240 for the run, we would expect our ‘average’ athlete with an FTP of 7:20/mi on the run and 240 on the bike to run a 4:25 marathon at an IF of 0.72 and bike a 6:05/144W bike at an IF of 0.6.

So, to summarize the difference in approaches:

Typical (Bike-heavy energy split)
Bike = 280TSS @ an IF of 0.68
Run = 200TSS @ an IF of 0.64
Splits: 1:00/5:45/5:00 = ~12:00 :-(

Optimal (Even energy split)
Bike = 240TSS @ an IF of 0.6
Run = 240TSS @ an IF of 0.72
Splits: 1:00/6:05/4:25 = ~11:45 :-)

As outlined in a previous blog, the effect of holding back 10% on the bike is magnified for faster athletes, with differences of 30 minutes or more expected at the pointy end of the field. Plus being the passer rather than the passee on the run is a much more enjoyable way to race :-)

So, to summarize the 2 steps are:
1. Determine your total energy reserves
2. Split it down the middle and devote half to the bike and half to the run.

While the theoretical considerations mentioned above provide a good starting point in coming up with pacing targets for the limited number of race simulations that you do prior to your event, the best way to fine tune your pacing targets is to prove their validity in training and C races.

Athletes can expect a 20-30% supercompensation of glycogen stores when tapering for their A-race (Shepley et al. 1992). Therefore, the best way to verify your true energy reserves is with slightly under-distance time trials of >2/3 race distance/duration.

In the above example, where we are targeting a race day energy output of 480TSS, I would expect the athlete to PROVE their ability to perform a big day of training of at least 320TSS (2/3 race duration) at the target racing intensities prior to their event. If the athlete is only able to manage a big day of 280TSS in the context of a normal training week, then I would amend the target race intensities accordingly.

As mentioned above, novice athletes or detrained athletes can have <50% of the glycogen storage capabilities of trained athletes. In practical terms, this manifests as 150 or 200TSS being a ‘big day’ in the early season. It should not be assumed that the athlete has a tolerance to 280TSS, 350TSS or 500TSS. It should be PROVEN.

In this way, theory meets practice and the athlete’s actual energy reserves are assessed.

Hopefully, this article will provide athletes with the final piece in the puzzle when determining how to optimally pace their Ironman. There is a lot of free speed out there for the athlete who is brave enough to bet on their ability to finish strong by holding back on the bike. However, like most things related to Ironman, while this is a simple principle, it is anything but easy. But, as Gordo is fond of saying, there is no easy way!

Race Smart.

AC

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back.

2009-06-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

While in the midst of preparing a couple of lengthy articles on anatomical considerations in bike fit (and the midst of a bit of personal overreaching :-), I thought I would post a short but (if I do say so myself) profound article on a key concept that I have come to realize and implement with my athletes over the previous year.

The concept is simply stated as: The optimal load for a given athlete is one which allows that athlete to take at least 2 steps forward (in fitness) before taking one back (in recovery).

A short wiki search revealed that the origin of the term – 2 steps forward, one step back, is found in a very apropos metaphor of a frog trapped in a well. For every 2 jumps forward, he slides down the slippery wall and loses some ground, but even so, with determination, net progress is made and there is a happy ending to the tale as Kermit makes the final leap out of the well.

The concept is equally applicable to athletics, as, just like a slippery well, taking time to fall back and lose some training load as the body converts the previous load into fitness is inevitable & necessary.

Additionally, the concept is applicable on all levels of the training cycle.
The most obvious 2:1 application to the training cycle is at the mesocyclic level, i.e. the coach/athlete should select a training load that allows the athlete to put forth at least 2 good weeks of training before a week of lower volume is needed. In a former post, I outlined just how much fitness is lost during long periods of rest/reduced training. The serious athlete should be very careful to limit the frequency of back to back recovery weeks to no more than 2-3 per year (at the end of each season). 2 weeks of de-training in the middle of the season will result in an ~30% fitness loss. A loss that will take 6 weeks of training to merely get back! I have personally experienced this in my 09 prep. After a challenging camp in April (31 hrs of training in a week), my CTL and my aerobic time trial numbers peaked up nicely. However, after being forced to take 2 weeks of recovery after that camp with some lingering lethargy, even now, 9 weeks post, I am yet to return to my camp fitness. A more moderate 20-25hrs, while still challenging, would probably have enabled me to limit recovery to one week and thus enable me to continue building on this fitness.

Perhaps more significant to the world of age group athletics, this principle is even more important in a microcycle/weekly context. The serious athlete should never do a mid-season training session that requires more than 2 days/48hrs recovery. For a typical AG athlete in the middle of the season, 50% of the fitness benefits of a given key workout is lost within 24hrs. However, this still represents a 1-3% net fitness improvement so it’s a good deal. However, if the athlete goes just a little too hard, necessitating 48hrs of recovery almost ALL of the fitness benefits are lost. For this reason, no workout should come close to the demands of a race no matter how much goading your training buddies are capable of. Save racing for races! (And save racing until you’re fit enough to keep race recovery to a minimum).

On the macrocycle level, that athlete should never have 2 months of training lower than their average training volume. IOW, the athlete should take a short rest after each season and before experiencing long-term burn-out. After a demanding season, it will typically take an athlete 4-6 weeks to completely shed the accumulated fatigue. At this point, the athlete is still holding onto ~40% of their accumulated fitness from the season. However, if the athlete extends the transitional period to 2 months instead of 1, only 20% of fitness remains. In a long term developmental sense, it is this small year to year carry over in fitness that builds champions. On a related note, the athlete should do all that is necessary to minimize the risk of a long-term injury. Any athlete who is forced to take a multi-month (3mth+) break is ostensibly ‘starting from scratch’.

The great Emil Zatopek once likened the training process to pulling on a spring. Pull just the right amount and POW, the spring will retract beyond it’s starting point. Pull a little too much and you break the spring. Take care of your springs and…

Train Smart.

AC

Checking the Box

2009-06-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

“Although Seb was quite nimble, due to his slim physique, his running showed a significant lack of endurance. To remedy this, some distance training and participation in cross-country was indicated…… As Seb progressed, a positive effort was made to improve the balance between his speed and endurance but neither one at the expense of the other”
- Peter Coe (Coach and father of running legend, Sebatian Coe)

There are a number of decisions that we must make as coaches and self-coached athletes including
• How Much? (Volume)
• How Hard? (Intensity)
• And, not unimportantly, what type of training should make up this volume/intensity mix.

There is much debate on which training form/intensity is ‘ideal’, ranging from the low intensity advocates , the medium intensity ‘sweet spot’ group and the high intensity/threshold proponents.

Additionally, orthodox proponents of the periodization faith recommend that the form of training emphasised should change through the training cycle in accordance with the competition calendar.

Regular readers of this blog will hopefully have come to the conclusion that I am not a proponent of emphasizing any one intensity zone. Rather, I believe that long term athletic development is contingent on a very balanced training approach, with a vigilant, conscious effort being made to never over-emphasize one physiological quality or zone at the expense of another. I am not alone in this stance. Rob DeCastella’s coach, Pat Clohessy was one of the pioneers of this multi-speed approach. Likewise, Peter Coe used a similar approach to train his son, Sebastian, in an event that was over 2hrs less than Deek’s.

Additionally, on the whole, I do not believe in arbitrarily changing the training mix just because the calendar ticks over into the next month. While for advanced athletes, there are advantages to sharpening training, most athletes will be better served spending their precious time and training energy focusing on addressing their specific limiters unless and until they are ‘fixed’.

I have seen far too many athletes come through our lab with either a very strong top end/very weak base or vice versa to conclude that any one training intensity is right for all. There is no ‘right’ intensity, only a right prescription for a given athlete at a given time.

So, this is all fine and dandy if we have the means to undergo rigorous lab testing each mesocycle but if we don’t have access to this, how do we go about determining how ‘balanced’ an athlete is at any given time in the field?

I like to look at each athletes power-duration and pace-duration curves as a good starting point. In a previous post I looked at what an ideal pace-duration curve looks like and how it slightly differs for Ironman athletes. My ideal ‘ironman’ curve is presented below.

I have had a number of real ‘aha’ moments during my coaching journey. One key revelation came when I came to the realization that there is only a slight difference in threshold abilities of the very best ultra-distance athletes and the very best distance athletes. IOW, it is important to every athlete’s long term development that appropriate attention is given to functional threshold development.

The differences between a distance curve and an ultra curve are slight and are primarily related to the ‘tail’ of the curve, i.e. for very long durations, I expect an Iron-trained athlete to better be able to hold a higher % of their threshold pace or power (see below). However, just because these differences are small, this does not diminish the fact that they are crucial to the athlete’s target event.

This expectation is not particularly revolutionary. Of course, we would expect that an Ironman athlete will be faster over distances that come closer to race duration providing they are appropriately trained. This small print is included in many of the training systems out there, usually in the form of, ‘the athlete with the highest functional threshold pace/power will also be faster over all greater distances – providing they are appropriately trained. The difference between my system and the others is that I demand my athletes PROVE they are appropriately trained before moving up to the next level.

It should be noted that while the 'tail end' demands of athletes training for shorter distance events are less challenging than for long distance events, at least in my world, they are still DEMANDS. IOW, even a short course athlete must prove the ability to execute a medium-long run at an appropriate intensity before moving up, irrespective of what they can do for a 5K test.

Let me provide an example for an Ironman athlete taken from the curve above. Rather than scheduling an FTP test every 4 weeks and moving all training paces up in accordance with this one point on the curve, I expect my athletes to complete all appropriate points on the curve before moving up. This does not mean that an athlete must complete a race pace session over full race duration before moving up. If this were the case, the athlete would constantly be tapering for and recovering from his test sets and never have time to train :-) But it does mean that the athlete will complete an appropriate % of the target race duration at the appropriate pace without it destroying their week before we raise the top end goals. Some examples of macrocycle goals from one of my top AG Ironman athlete’s run training (FTP pace = 6:30):

• 50mi week in <6:40
• 20mi Long Run (day after long ride) in <2:30
• 20mi Quality Long Run w/last 10 @ 7:00
• 2x3mi tempo in 19:30 w/5min recovery
• 10x800 in 2:50 w/3min recovery
• 10x200 in 40s w/50s recovery

Depending on the type of training emphasized, a ‘top end’ fit athlete may achieve the last 3 goals and a 6:25 FTP test within the first mesocycle. But if the athlete can not hold an appropriate % of that FTP for near race durations, what is the point of moving up? Indeed, what is the point of even testing again until the athlete can do so? If an athlete is ‘unbalanced’ with respect to their event, it may take 2 or more seasons, to bring the curve back ‘in balance’. I am fine with that. Because not allowing time for your bottom end to catch up to your top end fitness is a dangerous slippery slope to failing development that has been proven time and time again. Think back to the negative effects on US distance running when threshold and interval training was emphasized to the exclusion of the LSD miles that made up a high proportion of the training regimens of America’s most successful distance runners (to date!!!)

So, let’s get down to brass tacks. What does this look like in terms of a mesocycle? Put simply, the athlete winds up repeating the sessions that they are most weak in several times within the mesocycle(or macrocycle) until they have ‘checked the box’. For example, in the first week of the cycle, the 2 key sessions may be devoted to a functional threshold bike and a repetition run workout. If the ‘box is checked’, these workouts shift to maintenance emphasis in the following microcycle while another goal is targeted. For argument’s sake let’s say a tempo bike. If the box is not checked on the tempo bike, for example the athlete is scheduled for 3x25min @ LT watts and flunks the last, the next key workout will again be devoted to tempo with a more manageable duration. So the athlete may wind up with 3,4,5,6 weeks of tempo emphasis within a macrocycle. In this way, the athlete’s key sessions are devoted to their personal weaknesses (with respect to their event) and long term balanced development in ensured.

I’m sure that if you were to ask 5 athletes that I work with to give a concise description of what my training plan is like, you would get 5 different answers. To some, I’m probably seen as a mileage junkie, while to others, the chief of the intensity police :-) The secret is, I don’t have a universal training philosophy other than to mirror the athlete’s needs. The only universality that exists in elite coaching is a universal ability of the best coaches in the world to ‘size up’ an athlete, determine their personal strengths and weaknesses and apply this information to selecting an appropriate training means and an appropriate event.

Train smart.

AC

Energy Pacing your Ironman II

2009-05-18T15:32:00.000-07:00

“To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first”
- William Shakespeare

The pic today is of James Watt, the ‘brother from another mother’ of the inspiration for my previous post, James Prescott Joule and the guy, I guess, who we can very indirectly thank for our power meters :-)

I received some good feedback from my last post on Energy Pacing your Ironman. I also received a number of questions that the article left unanswered. One, in particular, got my attention:

Alan,

very interesting concept, and - as usual - a very well written post. One more thing (for clarity) can you add a similar table mapping the watts and body weights to IM bike splits (assuming these are the main areas of influence)? I know that this will be a gross simplification as there are quite some differnces in hills, aerodynamics etc. (I've seeen some rought tools that would allow to build such a table, but I'm hoping you've something like that already prepared.)

Such a table could be a great tool to provide a comparison between bike and run times - something better than "your run time should be 2 hours faster than your bike split" ..

Thanks
Thorsten
http://EnduranceNut.blogspot.com

I did comment in the last post that:

“ Truth be told, there is a speed advantage to a slight negative bike:run split (more so for bigger athletes!!) due to the energy on the bike that is ‘wasted’ overcoming aerodynamic drag. Put plainly you get more speed bang for your energy buck on the run where extra energy goes to increasing speed rather than overcoming additional aerodynamic drag. So, the athlete should seek to slightly exceed these run standards.”

This law of aerodynamics is termed the theoretical square law and it basically states that the resistance increases with the square of the velocity. Or put another way, the faster you go, the more the energy demands increase – exponentially!

This begs the question, if our energy stores are finite, and are best devoted to the slowest speed/lowest drag discipline (i.e. running), what is the optimal bike/run allocation?

As Thorsten correctly points out, there are numerous considerations that make a truly accurate assessment of an equivalent bike speed vs power difficult to ascertain. Still, that won’t stop me from trying :-)

Below you’ll find a table that looks at energetically equivalent bike splits for a given power output for athletes of different stature on a flat and a hilly Ironman course.

The data are derived from Bassett’s (1999) power equations using the appropriate elevation and climbing data and a constant wind speed of 6mph.

The CdA for each of the different athletic height:weight combinations are from Bassett’s recommended estimates multiplied by an arbitrary Ironman adjustment factor of 1.1 based on the more conservative positions of Ironman athletes.

The following charts use the above data along with the power vs run speed data from last week's blog to illustrate the difference between bike and run splits for a given bike and run power output.

a) 80kg flat course

b) 60kg flat course

Looking at the 2 charts, the first shows a comparison between prospective bike and run splits for an 80kg athlete averaging a nominal power output for the bike and run resp. It is clear that as average power goes up, the athlete gets more ‘bang for their buck’ by distributing more of their energy to the run.

The second chart shows a similar scenario for a 60kg athlete. From the charts, it is clear that,

a) All athletes who average more than 130W (~13:30 Ironfolk and better) across the course of their race will benefit from holding back a little on the bike to distribute more energy to the run.

b) The faster the athlete, the more that they benefit from holding back on the bike (with the exception of fast bike pros who must weigh this benefit with the potential benefit of the pack draft)

c) The smaller the athlete, the more they benefit from holding back on the bike.

So this gives some good general guidelines, but in terms of race strategy we need some specific power and pace guidelines for a given athlete. This brings us back to the question, for a given athlete, how do we determine what mix of bike/run output is optimal?

The following is a graphic representation of the bike/run relationship derived from the tables for an 80kg athlete putting out an average 200W/720kj per hour on a flat course over the course of the event, with their respective finish times (with an arbitrary 1:15 added for swim and transitions) for each strategy:

Over an hour separates the different pacing strategies for an athlete with the same fitness/energy output. Clearly, pacing is a critical aspect of Ironman racing.

From the graph it can be seen that, as highlighted in my previous blog, an even energy split of 200W is not a bad way to play things. The more typical 220W bike + ~180W (4:40) marathon results in a split some 16 minutes slower. The also typical 240W bike + 160W/5:15 ‘blow up’ on the run results in a 36 minute slower overall time for exactly the same total energy output.

But can we gain even more ‘free speed’ by saving more energy for the run?
The real ‘sweet spot’ for an 80kg athlete on a flat course begins to occur at a 180/220W energy split or 180W bike/3:51 run. Marginally better results can be had at a 160/250W (~3:30 marathon) providing this pace is below the athlete’s anaerobic threshold and the athletes CHO/Fat oxidation threshold (the point where fat burning begins to shut down).Remember, this effect is amplified for smaller or faster athletes.

With the possible exception of the leading pro males who must weigh the relative benefit of staying with the group vs saving some energy for the run, nearly all of us can benefit from taking the theoretical square law of aerodynamics into account when formulating a pacing strategy. Remember that any time you (or your competition) decide to ‘put the hammer down’ on the bike you are (exponentially) throwing energy into the wind that you could be using to fuel propulsion on the run.

Race Smart.

AC

Energy Pacing your Ironman

2009-04-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

One of the most difficult aspects, when it comes to pacing a triathlon is the fact that it is a multi-modal activity. It is very easy for an elite 10,000m track runner or 1500m swimmer to ascertain how ‘evenly’ he paced his event. He and his coach simply sit down and look at lap splits.

In the world of triathlon racing, however, it is a little more difficult. What’s the running equivalent of a 200W bike? For the pointy end of the field, is the all-too common 5:30 bike/4hr run an optimal way to race an Ironman? What if I’m a strong biker and a crappy runner? Does that give me carte blanche to take advantage of my ‘strengths’ on the bike, or vice versa for that matter, if I’m a 2:30 marathoner, how much will I slow down for my Ironman run split?

The guy pictured above, James Prescott Joule has some answers.

The first thing to realize is that, by and large, for both bike and run, the body is pulling energy from a single, finite energy pool. A fixed amount of calories or kilojoules, stored as fat, glycogen and protein.

The second thing to realize is that Ironman is an energy limited, not a fitness limited event. In other words, just because you can run a 40 minute 10K or bike 300W for an hour doesn’t mean that you have the ability to fuel this rate (or an arbitrary percentage of this rate) of performance in the context of an Ironman.

No, your best Ironman performance will come from a conscious, even, metering of your energy resources with only slight regard given to your personal strengths and weaknesses.

So, let’s get down to it. What is the run equivalent of a 200W bike split, or the bike equivalent of a 4hr marathon? The numbers may surprise you.

I have prepared a table below, comparing the energy equivalents of a 140-300W bike split for a 60, 70 and 80kg athlete.

The numbers are based on ‘average’ economy numbers of 21% gross economy on the bike and 210 ml/kg/km on the run. In other words, if you have extraordinary run economy due to superior technique &/or muscle composition, your optimal splits may be marginally different, but marginal is the key word.

So, assuming a flat run course, the above represent equal energy splits for bike and run. To put it bluntly, if you are a 75kg athlete, you have no business biking 200W on the bike unless you’ve proven your ability to run <4:00 off the bike. How do you ‘prove’ this? By exceeding these standards in your Ironman.

Truth be told, there is a speed advantage to a slight negative bike:run split (more so for bigger athletes!!) due to the energy on the bike that is ‘wasted’ overcoming aerodynamic drag. Put plainly you get more speed bang for your energy buck on the run where extra energy goes to increasing speed rather than overcoming additional aerodynamic drag. So, the athlete should seek to slightly exceed these run standards.

Looking at the table, it is clear that body type comes into play, with smaller athletes expecting a faster run for a given bike power split. Thus smaller athletes need a better speed reserve/run fitness than larger athletes.

So, what about the ‘strong bikers’ who make the argument, “Well, I’m not a fast runner so I need to make my gains on the bike?” 3 points to these guys:

1. You’re drawing from a common energy pool for both bike and run and if you’re a crappy runner, that is even more reason to leave some ‘gas in the tank’. I’ve seen good runners coast at <8:00/mi on fumes. Sub-par runners don’t have that luxury.

2. Speed benefits decrease as power rises on the bike, due to aerodynamic resistance, while you always get good speed benefit from increasing energy on the run.

3. If you’re a big, strong guy, you don’t have to be a ‘good runner’ in order to pace appropriately. An 80kg guy biking 200W need only pull off a 4:14 marathon (9:40/mi). In other words, enough energy to jog (not walk) the marathon.

And what about the flipside, a very strong runner, say a 65kg, 2:27 marathoner. Let’s name him, Kyle . Obviously, Kyle has the fitness to run a very fast 26mi. But what bike+run distribution will give him his best Ironman time? Or put another way, how close to his open marathon time should Kyle expect to run?

Let’s take a look at some of his test data for some more info we can use to structure some race simulations. ….

As I have previously stated, I generally find that top age-groupers can fuel 11-12kcal of carbohydrate per minute over the course of an Ironman. From Kyle’s previous FUEL test we see that, with his exemplary FUEL profile, this point occurs at 220W(NP) of power on the bike (see below).

Looking at the table, an even distribution of energy from a 220W bike split would result in a marathon time of ~3:10. More than 40 minutes slower than his open marathon time!! And this is a best case scenario assuming optimal fueling on the bike and a marginally better lactate curve than the last time we tested him.

Clearly, there are many athletes from a running background who have more run fitness than they have the energy to use (ditto for the swim, btw). This has big time implications on training – specifically, the amount of training devoted to improving run fitness.

When it comes down to it, if you are looking for your best possible race performance don’t listen to Mr. Hellriegel or Big Jurgen Zack and ‘make zem suffer on ze bike’. Nope, if your overall time matters to you, take the lead from my bearded friend at the head of this article. Use your energy wisely.

Race smart,

AC

The Protein Bonk

2009-04-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

“After competing in the Hawaii Ironman in 1980, I was intent on racing the Ultraman (3.1mi swim, 156mi Bike, 32mi Run). I was one of the first athletes to compete in an Ironman back then and there were no specific guildelines to follow so my training was largely trial and error. To get in shape for this race, I trained 3 times it’s distance every week – 15mi swim, 450mi bike and 150mi running each week. Plus, since I was on the SEAL team, I was required to do SEAL training 5-7 days/wk. I went from a strong 175lbs to a sickly 138lbs…..

One night I went to take a bath but I had trouble standing and walking, so I crawled to the tub and eventually passed out. My wife took me to the emergency room, where all kinds of troubles were revealed. When asked to lift my head for a spinal X-Ray, I couldn’t do it. My vertebrae in my neck and back were compressed causing a restrictive range of motion. The blood tests revealed that my liver and kidneys were on the verge of shutting down. My left rotator cuff was torn and my left quadriceps was torn. There was severe plantar fasciitis in both feet. My body was literally eating itself for energy.”

- Don Mann (Adventure racing legend) from the book ‘The Complete Guide to Adventure Racing”

If you’ve been involved in this endurance training game for some time now, chances are that you have, at one time or another, gone a little too far, on too little carbohydrate and experienced the sensations of the dreaded bonk - when you call down to the power-house in the legs and Scotty replies back “I’m givin’ her all she’s got Cap’n”. If you haven’t experienced it, no doubt you’ve seen the results via Julie Moss (pictured above), Paula Newby-Fraser or the dramatic crawl off between Wendy Ingraham and Sian Welch. Either way, it becomes readily apparent that when blood glucose becomes dangerously low, the body will shut you down – quickly! Considering that the brain can only function effectively on glucose, this is an important protective mechanism.

There is, however, a different, far more dangerous kind of bonk for the endurance athlete – the protein bonk. This ‘bonk’ doesn’t possess the same drama or protective mechanisms as the glucose bonk and therefore has more long reaching, dangerous effects as described by Don Mann, above. Fortunately, most of us do not possess the same resolve as a Navy SEAL. However, even the serious recreational athlete can do serious (athletic career ending) damage if the warning signs of a protein bonk are not observed.

A little background physiology: When you take in dietary protein it’s initial fate is to be broken down into an amino acid pool that lies in wait within the blood and muscle tissue (see below).

This pool of amino acids can basically undergo 2 basic fates:
1. It can be taken up by the muscles to aid in rebuilding of muscle structures.
2. It can be broken down into an energy source to supplement the body’s energy needs.

Obviously, it cannot do both and these 2 objectives are somewhat antipolar. One is an anabolic (building up) process, the other is a catabolic (tearing down) process.
Additionally, if this amino acid pool becomes low (due to stress or inadequate dietary intake to meet energy needs) the body can break down muscle tissue into it’s amino acid constituents to supplement this pool. This is catabolism at its finest. It should be noted that this is hastened by stress hormones which are released in response to physiological OR psychological stress. Or put another way, it is very difficult to grow and improve if you are swimming in work related, sleep deprived cortisol.

However, even if you are the coaches pet and do all of the little things that hasten recovery (as outlined in my last blog on Serious Recovery for Serious Athletes) there will always be a gap between the time required for metabolic recovery (refilling glycogen stores) and structural recovery (repairing muscle). In fact, muscle recovery can take 3-5 times as long as substrate recovery. Or, put another way you cannot afford to rest long enough between sessions for the muscle to repair itself structurally 100% after a hard session. After 2-3 days, you will have the energy to ‘go again’ even though the muscle is not 100% repaired. And so, there is residual ‘structural fatigue’ that is carried across from session to session and week to week.

This residual fatigue places progressively greater demand on the amino acid pool and thus less amino acids will be available for energy within the plasma, as more is going to the muscle for re-building. However, with sufficient motivation, you can rally the troops for a period of time by calling in Mr Caffeine, Mr Work Stress, Mr Family Stress to join your tug of war team and give some additional strength to the “break down amino acids for energy side”. However, this is a short term (ultimately destructive) solution. Eventually, the body calls on a weak but eventually effective protective mechanism to shut you down.

It’s actually a pretty neat protective mechanism. As it turns out, the same blood-brain transporter that carries essential amino acids also carries an amino acid by the name of Tryptophan. The same Tryptophan that makes you sleepy after a Turkey dinner. So, less transporters being devoted to Essential Aminos and more devoted to Tryptophan = Alan sleep now.

Put more succinctly, when available amino acids start to run low, you get sleepy – The Protein Bonk.

The extent of this lethargy can range from mild, for the astute athlete who recognizes the warning signs and incorporates a recovery period, to chronic in the case of the athlete who pulls out all the stops to ‘keep it rolling’ in spite of being tired. In fact, while Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is still largely a mystery, the 2 most pervasive markers are an increase in plasma Tryptophan concentrations and a decrease in plasma Glutamine (one of the essential Amino Acids) concentration. While scientists have discovered this correlation, some have been surprised to see that glutamine supplementation, while bringing the amino acid pool back to normal does not immediately abate the symptoms. Duh! While a relatively ‘deep’ amino acid pool is needed for muscle recovery, if you allow your body to drop 30lbs of lean tissue, like Don Mann, it will take a long time before there is enough amino acid surplus to bring plasma tryptophan levels back to normal. Or, in other words, you’re going to be tired for a long time. Even dropping one or 2lbs of LMM can create sufficient disruption to alter energy levels for a long period of time. For this reason, monitoring bodyweight over the long term is an important preventative overtraining strategy.

So, what can the intelligent athlete do to ward off the protein bonk?

1. Recognize that even with appropriate energy replacement, residual fatigue will be carried across from session to session and week to week. Therefore long term mesocycles and macrocycles that incorporate longer recovery periods are necessary.

2. Monitor bodyweight (and anthropometry) and learn the difference between short term fluctuations (day to day) related to glycogen depletion and hydration and long term changes (week to week) that indicate structural changes.

3. Be proactive in utilizing recovery strategies to assist the muscle repair process (see Serious Recovery for Serious Athletes)

4. Eat more protein. Elite ultra-endurance athletes experience a lot of muscular damage, both energetic and impact-related, therefore, high protein intakes are necessary, somewhere in the vicinity of 1.6-2.0 g/kg of bodyweight.

5. Pay attention to your body. If you are already tired (via training or work, travel etc) don’t reach for the caffeine and dig a deeper hole. Stop. Revive. Survive. 

Train Smart,
AC

Serious Recovery for Serious Athletes

2009-04-15T08:07:00.000-07:00

"Ignoring regeneration techniques can have an adverse influence on supercompensation. In fact, without adequate regeneration, it will be non-existent"
- Tudor Bompa

It’s been a little while since my last blog post. I’ve been jet-setting across the U.S. from a training camp in Tucson to a vacation trip in San Francisco. Somewhere along the way the calendar ticked over one more click to initiate the start of my 33rd year on this Earth. As my own age advances, one aspect of my training is beginning to become more important – Recovery.

My hunch is that this attention is going to need to become ever more vigilant as I approach my 40’s. Gordo has certainly seemed to pay more mind to recovery over recent years and he is not alone. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to chat a little with Greg Bennett at Gordo’s 40th birthday party. Of course (like most of you would, I’m sure) I did my very best to segue, as quickly as possible, from pleasantries and commonalities (primarily related to our motherland) to the ‘secrets’ of his training. Unsurprisingly, as Greg will more than happily point out, while there is some very intelligent planning, there are few secrets, just executing a very good plan over a very long period of time.

If there were any ‘secrets’ or ‘short cuts’ that seemed to keep cropping up in the conversation, they were not directly related to training but instead to that oft skipped over chapter in the training books – Recovery.

If there is one lasting impression that you get from Greg, it is that of a professional athlete – in every sense of the word. He points out that while he may only be training 3 or 4 hours a day, he is an athlete 24/7. I would go so far as to suggest that it is this attitude that has contributed to his athletic longevity and performance level that he has built over many years. A key component of this professionalism for serious athletes is active recovery.

As my brother from another mother (and father :-), Josh, pointed out to me , while lip service is paid to the benefits of active recovery in the various training texts, serious practical instructions as to ‘what to do’ and ‘when to do it’ is lacking. In this blog I want to point out some of the things that have been shown to work to hasten recovery and when and how to do them in the context of your training plan.

First a quick primer on fatigue and recovery:

Generally speaking, fatigue in long duration endurance sports is the result of energy depletion. This energy depletion takes several forms. To name a few:

- Metabolic: Running out of hepatic glycogen, blood glucose, intramuscular glycogen or (possibly) intramuscular lipids.

- Structural: Muscular damage that decreases contractile ability and elasticity of the muscle

- Neural/Central Fatigue: Depletion of dopamine and an increase in tryptophan (the ‘sleepy’ amino acid), depletion of electrolytes that slow neuromuscular firing.

- Neuroendocrine: Recent research has focused on reduced catecholamine uptake or production following long term stress that may adversely affect energy liberation and neuromuscular drive.

In any of these situations there is both a limiting amount of good stuff (an energy medium) coupled with accumulating bad stuff (waste products) that must be set right before the athlete is ready to go again.

Thus, a good portion of recovery is about getting good stuff (glycogen, oxygen, lipids, anabolic hormones) into the muscle and getting bad stuff (lactic acid, muscular waste, catabolic hormones) out of the muscle.

Now, the anatomical superhighway to our muscles is blood. To a large extent, specifically blood plasma. Plasma carries a lot of the good stuff into the muscle and all of the bad stuff out. Thus, one of the things that can slow recovery down is if your plasma is not where it should be. Two things that can dramatically affect how much plasma you have in your blood:

1. Dehydration
2. Increase in intramuscular fluid during exercise.

Mission critical is rehydrating. Fluid intake after key sessions should begin immediately and not finish until bodyweight reaches pre-session values.

Mission #2 is decreasing intramuscular fluid:
During exercise we lose fluid volume from the blood due as fluid is pushed into the muscles from the increased arterial pressure gradient that comes with exercise. In other words, our capillaries ‘leak’ fluid into our muscle. So, first step in recovery is to get blood volume back to where it should be as quickly as possible, via rehydration and normalizing the intramuscular pressure gradient, i.e. decreasing muscular swelling. While swelling may not be obvious (like it is following more serious injury), any blood that is not circulating through your circulatory system is ultimately slowing the process of recovery.

Means of mitigating swelling are well known:
• Rest
• Ice
• Compression
• Elevation

The latter 3, in particular can also be used in recovery. A fourth modality that is particularly useful is hydrotherapy, i.e. submersion in water. The hydrostatic pressure of the water weight can greatly assist in normalizing the intramuscular pressure gradient and get blood fluid back where it should be. Combining this with modality #2, we get the best of 2 worlds in every athletes favorite recovery tool – the ice bath :-)

For those with access to the appropriate facilities, e.g. cold pool + hot tub, an alternative, marginally better protocol is a contrast bath, i.e. alternating hot and cold submersion. This adds using alternating vasodilation and vasoconstriction as a pumping method to assist the hydrostatic pressure in ‘pumping’ the blood back into the central cavity of the athlete. There is good research support to the efficacy of both cryotherapy (ice baths) and contrast baths (French et al., 2008, Kuligowski et al. 1998, Burke et al., 2001,2003)

Compression (via compression garments) is a new increasingly popular recovery therapy that has received mixed research reviews. It seems to have good support in attenuating muscle soreness but the jury is still out on performance benefits for endurance athletes(Pro-Ali et al, 2007, Gill et al. 2006; Against – French et al. 2008). My opinion is that compression therapy makes good intuitive sense as a recovery aid (esp when coupled with elevation), however less so than those modes that utilize thermodynamic means to hasten the process. Sorry, in my mind and the literature, the ice baths win out.

So, that’s step #1, clean up the super highway. Step #2 is fill the delivery trucks with the good stuff. Namely:

• Carbohydrate
• Minerals
• Protein/BCAA’s
• Oxygen
• Anabolic Hormones

The most important recovery strategy bar none is rapid restoration of the body’s glycogen stores via quick carbohydrate replacement after exercise. Numerous studies have shown a maximal glycogen resynthesis rate of ~45g/hr by consuming 0.8-1.2g/kg/hr in small meals every 15-30mins for the first 3 hours after exercise (Van Loon et al., 2000, Burke, 1996)

Additionally, protein synthesis is enhanced when it is taken close to exercise (Rasmussen, 2000). It appears there is an optimal quantity of essential amino acids (Glutamine, Phenylalanine, Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Valine), that leads to the highest rate of amino acid uptake without compromising glycogen resynthesis. This appears to be in the vicinity of 6-20g/hr of EAA’s for the first 3hrs after exercise. Amino Acid uptake, like glycogen uptake, is elevated by ~3.5x the normal rate at this time (Borsheim et al, 2001).

Oxygen is an interesting one. In the grand scheme of things it is best enhanced by getting blood volume back to normal. However, additional techniques such as supplemental O2 and hyperbaria have been shown to be advantageous under certain conditions, notably high altitude training. Under most endurance training conditions oxygen saturation is not limiting, however, if SpO2 is compromised, the time required to fill the EPOC can be decreased with these strategies.

Finally, and probably most important, is the impact of stress hormones on recovery. In order for growth to occur, whether it be actual growth of muscle in the form of hypertrophy or growth of muscle structures that are advantageous to endurance performance such as mitochondria, a pre-requisite is that the muscle is ‘primed’ for growth via the growth hormones HGH and IGF-1. These hormones are particularly enhanced during sleep and particularly suppressed during periods of stress, whether physiological or psychological. For this reason, both naps and sport psychology strategies that promote arousal control can play a valuable, often overlooked, part in recovery.

So, putting the above together, what would a serious athlete do after a key training session (TSS>~150)?

1. Perform a 15 minute cooldown at a very low intensity (<60% max HR)
2. Have sports drink mixed to 75-90g of Carbohydrate and 10-20g or protein at the ready.
3. Finish your session at the health club and head for the deep end of the cold pool (or prep an ice-bath if at home). Continue to sip sports drink for 20-30min while ‘flopping’ around in the pool.
4. If not excessively sore, do 2-3 cycles of alternating 2mins in the pool w/8mins in the hot tub.
5. Get changed, put compression garments on and head home, continuing to sip sports drink
6. Drink a smoothie when you get home containing 40g CHO/10g EAAs
7. Do 20mins of self massage, 20mins of supine yoga and 20mins of meditation/progressive relaxation, incorporating inverted/semi-inverted postures (see Gordo’s post workout stretch routine in Going Long for a good starting point).
8. Eat a snack of 75-90g of CHO and 20g of Protein with a high water content and mix of sugars (e.g. fruit plus yogurt)
9. Take a 1-2hr nap with legs elevated and compression gear on.
10. Eat another snack of 75-90g of CHO and 20g of Protein with a lower glycemic index (mainly fruit & veg) and some healthy fats.
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3-4hrs (including nap). Ideally completed by 4pm.

Following this, relax with family and friends for a few hours, eat a hearty dinner w/an additional 100g of CHO (assuming you took in 400 during breakfast + workout & 200-300 during recovery) and 40-80g of protein.

Then finish the evening with a hot bath, hot tub or sauna (if you have the means ) as a further impetus for Growth Hormone release, before retiring prior to 10:30pm.

For most working athletes, such a routine will be limited to a post workout routine on their biggest training day of the week (for a professional athlete like Greg Bennett, such a routine will be ‘the norm’). However, this frequency does not discount it’s usefulness. Many super-busy working athletes go day to day, week to week without recovery, changing from their running gear to their business suit, slamming a coffee after their long ride to keep up with family obligations. Under these conditions, stress hormones are always prevelant, the body never adapts to the training and growth (on many fronts) is compromised. If not given, the body will take recovery in the form of frequent illness or burnout irrespective of training load. If the athlete allows it to get to this point, fitness has already been sacrificed. There is much to be gained for all levels of athlete, in all life roles, by simply resolving to devote one day per week purely to training and recovery (sharpening the saw), while paying as much attention as possible to fitting in recovery means wherever possible through the rest of their busy week.

Train (and Rest) Smart,

AC

Wko+ for simpletons

2009-03-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

After my last blog entry, my buddy Jaakko advised me to use my skills in translating the complex math of wko+ into terms that the layman can understand, to write a book on wko+ for Dummies. In fear of copyright infringement, I elected to go with today’s title :-)

There is also a little hidden meaning to today’s title. Truth is, there is no negative intent to my use of the word simpleton (or Mr Gump). Au contraire, I deeply admire simplicity in all senses of the word.

As much as I love to deal with numbers and complex theories, the truth is, I abhor complexity. Whenever looking at a data set or a new theory, my driving motivation is to reconcile it with my current view of the simple truth, i.e. to break down complexity into simplicity.

We are all familiar with the term ‘paralysis through analysis’. The corollary to this would be ‘action through simplicity’. In other words, those who most embody action (and who, consequently, generate results) do so through a simple approach – a focus on spending their time DOING the essentials rather than analyzing the inessentials. So, this brings us to today’s blog.

Somebody whose approach I deeply respect is athlete, Tim Luchinske. It seems that the bulk of Tim’s actions are put in place with the aim to bring the essentials more into focus and I’m not talking along the lines of what logbook he selects. Check out his blog to get a feel for what I mean.

In fact, it was reading his blog over the last couple of weeks that partly prompted this post. I want to distance myself from my recent posts that seem to suggest that fulfilling your potential in sport is a mathematical problem. It is not. In order to actually ‘do the math’, requires tuning out the noise and tuning into your passion throughout the day, throughout your life. So, I write this post with that intent.

That said, there are some simple key essentials that have been known to elite coaches for decades and recently confirmed by (and elaborated within) the studies on mathematical modelling of the training process on which wko+ is based. These key principles are so key, in fact, that I have witnessed, on numerous occasions, very passionate, action oriented athletes who fail to observe them consistently perform below their potential.

So, in this post, I want to provide some of the key ‘take home points’ that I have learned from wko+ that can be applied to all athletes, irrespective of whether their training log consists of a docking port for every speed and power measuring device known to man or a writing pad sitting on your bedside table.

1. Every individual athlete has an optimal ‘chronic training load’ for any one season that is the result of their training base and constitution, not their aspirations.

In other words, every athlete has a limit to the training load that they can absorb at any one point in the training season. It is important to note/realize that this number, of what the athlete can absorb over a long term period is significantly less than what the athlete can do over a short term period. It is only through long term monitoring of large scale workload, e.g. month to month workload that a reasonable assessment of optimal training load can be made.

This optimal load will also change over the year as the athlete’s base improves. While a 50hr month may make an athlete tired in the prep period. At the end of the base period, the athlete may be able to absorb a 70hr month with no problem.

Irrespective, the take home message is to stick to one given training load until you have proven that you can absorb it (6 weeks or more) before deciding to up the ante.

2. Every individual athlete has an optimal ‘ramp rate’ to build training load towards this optimal level. Exceeding this rate results in failed adaptation (overtraining)

There are 3 basic scenarios that can arise from the application of a training load:

a) Too much load

If the athlete digs too deep a hole for themselves at the start of the season, by ramping up the volume/intensity too quickly, they will exceed their adaptation reserves and fail to supercompensate, i.e. too much load will make the athlete slower rather than faster

b) Too little load

If the athlete digs too shallow a hole for themselves at the start of the season by ramping up the volume/intensity too gently, they will receive full benefit from the load very early in the training season, i.e. they will ‘peak too soon’. Obviously this is preferable to the first option as it is much easier to maintain a given level of fitness through to competition than it is to shed fatigue, get healthy and get fit if too much load is undertaken.

c) “Just right” load.

Optimal load will have the athlete arriving at maximal fitness shortly before their peak race of the year, with just enough time to taper and freshen prior to the competition.

Fitter athletes (athletes with a stronger consistency base) will generally be able to tolerate more aggressive ramp rates. However, the only way to not risk the fitness that you have accrued in the last block is to plan very moderate volume jumps from month to month until you have a proven baseline ramp rate that you have sustained over the course of a season.

3. Every individual athlete has an optimal season length before load makes them more tired rather than more fit. Exceeding this optimal season length results in failing adaptation (overtraining).

The other time of the season that the athlete risks failing adaptation is in a season that extends too long. When performance begins to drop late in the season in spite of maintained/increasing load, it is time to shut her down and take a worthwhile break. This optimal length also depends on the base of the athlete and how deep the initial hole is dug. Generally, this time period will be in the vicinity of 3-7 months.

4. It’s a lot easier to get fast by getting ‘fresh’ than it is by getting ‘fit’.

While the seasonal gains that an athlete can expect from appropriate tapering are less than those that the athlete can expect from training, the relative benefit makes allowing time for an optimal taper a key inclusion within the training plan. In a wko+ sense, an athlete can, under a good case scenario, expect a 10-20% improvement in fitness (CTL) from month to month. However, freshness (TSB) can improve almost 200% within 1 month of reduced training! This is worthwhile remembering when considering ‘doing a little more’.

*********

Wko+ is a tool that enables athletes and coaches to reconcile the relationship between training load and relative performance. It is especially useful as summary statistics for those athletes who experience frequent fluctuations in training load to keep track of expected fitness and to forecast what load modifications will lead to the best result. However…..

For the serious athlete, controlling variables should always be a higher priority than measuring them.

Train Smart,

AC

Benchmarks and Forecasting

2009-03-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and looked out the window to find a good accumulation of snow on the ground. I was a little surprised. I didn’t remember my local Fox meteorologist, Crystal Egger (pictured) saying anything about an upcoming snow storm. Usually, she gets it pretty right. In fact, if I think back a couple of decades to my childhood, it sure seems that weather forecasting has improved a whole lot. It seems that back in the day, it was a running joke that the weather that we would wind up with was basically the opposite of what the meteorologist would predict.

Of course, like most things, I am sure technology has played a part in the improved accuracy of weather forecasting. Scientists are now able to sample, minute by minute, a myriad of benchmark #’s, from barometric pressure to humidity to minor fluctuations in temperature and furthermore, they are able to summarize this data to create accurate computer models to predict future weather behavior.

If you’re reading this blog, chances are that you’re seeing where I’m gonna go with this.. there are parallels between weather forecasting and performance forecasting in the world of athletics. Similarly, there are those who are understanding and embracing these new technological tools to better forecast their athletes’ performances and there are those who still see this new science as ‘hit and miss’ at best. I want to chat a little, in this blog, about how to go about selecting appropriate benchmarks and how to use them to accurately forecast and plan improvements in performance.

Regular benchmarking is necessary and useful for a number of reasons on a number of levels….

1. Is the training program working?

Clearly, from peak to peak, we want and expect an improvement in performance from the preceding training program. It would be a foolish athlete who would commit to a multi-year training plan without some ‘checking in’ along the way to make sure the program is working. This ‘check in’ may take the form of racing or testing but it is clearly an important component of the feedback loop when it comes to training. You would probably be surprised by the number of athletes that I come across who don’t have regular effective ‘check ins’. It is common for Ironman athletes to race much less frequently than short course athletes, focusing more on work than testing out whether the work is working  Additionally, athletes will often choose different events from year to year in the name of variety and miss the benefit of having a standard check-in at a local event at a given point in each training year. The problem is compounded by the fact that many athletes do not undergo regular field or lab testing.

Clearly, this represents the first and most important level of feedback for the athlete. Are they getting better? In my meteorological metaphor, this level of understanding as akin to having a general sense of what the weather is like in a given region of the Country. When I first moved from Florida to Colorado, I had a sense that the weather would be considerably colder than what I was used to, however, I had limited experience or information to understand how the differences may manifest over the course of a year or to predict the specific temperature on a given day. Which brings us to the second level of understanding…..

2. Is the athlete where they need to be in the context of the training cycle?

Better coaches will have a good general understanding of where they expect their athletes’ performance to be through the course of the training year. This is an important upgrade on the first level of understanding.

Experience has taught us that it is necessary to get ‘unfit’ at certain points in the season in order to get ‘more fit’ at other points. This ability represents a critical distinction between very good coaches and most self-coached athletes. On a lot of levels, many self-coached athletes expect continuous, steady improvement. They do not understand the performance ebb and flow that comes with the training seasons. Good coaches have a good general idea of how ‘out of shape’ they want their athletes to get and what level they expect their training sets to be at through the course of a training season.

It is really important that the athlete and coach establish seasonal benchmarks that are best correlated to their peak performance.

In weather terms, this level of understanding is akin to having local knowledge of the annual weather. For example, when I spent my first year in Colorado, I learned just how warm it would be in Summer, just how short the Spring and Fall seasons could be and just how varied the winter could be, from 60 degrees and Sunny one day to a 2 day snow storm the next. Even with this local knowledge, however, my ability to forecast the actual temperature on any one day is limited at best. Which brings us to the third level of understanding…

3. How can we ‘forecast ahead’ to determine the performance effect of different training strategies – different work:rest cycles, different peak training loads, different season structures.

If an “old school” coach wants to determine if an alternative training strategy is beneficial, they do so via long term trial and error. I have been fortunate to work with a number of truly world class coaches over the course of my career and, to a man, they are very structured, methodical individuals who rarely stray from the well tracked path. Occasionally, however, they will conduct an ‘experiment’ and will slightly modify their core training plan in accordance with the result. I remember during my coaching apprenticeship with Ian Thorpe’s coach, Doug Frost, Doug decided to change from Ian’s usual 3:1 work:rest cycles to a 2:1 structure. I asked him how he would determine whether this strategy was effective and he simply said – by Ian’s race results at the end of the season.

Simply put, the example above illustrates just how limited is the number of ‘experiments’ that the coach can conduct. Best case, an athlete may work with a given coach for 10 years. At most, this represents 10 or so alternative experiments that can be tailored to the individual. What if, however, we had a specific understanding of the fitness and fatigue dynamics for each individual athlete? What if we could predict relatively accurately how a given athlete will respond to a 2 week taper vs a 4 week taper without throwing away a whole season in the name of an experiment? What if we could determine whether an increase in load of 2hrs a week would lead to a new PR or overtraining for a given athlete, without compromising their health and athletic career in the process?

By assessing the performance dynamics of an athlete over the course of their training, we are able to get a firm handle on how quickly a given athlete acquires and loses fitness in response to a given training load.

I have presented the following figure a number of times now – Selye’s GAS curve.

Usually when this curve is referenced, it is done so in a general, theoretical sense of how a general athlete responds to training stress. However, like any curve, we can generate an actual, real world, mathematical expression for the curve and by using criterion performances, or Benchmark tests, we can change the constants of the formulae to create a curve that best fits the athlete’s specific response to training load.

When this is done, we can provide a relatively accurate performance forecast for a given athlete in response to different training protocols.

However, generating an accurate performance curve for the athlete demands that we have a good number of accurate criterion performances or ‘benchmarks’ for each athlete. We have a couple of options on this front (each with it’s own strengths and weaknesses):

a) “Flat Out” Criterion Performance Tests

In ‘pure’ terms, it is hard to beat regular races or time trials to answer the first of the questions listed above: Am I getting better?

However, there are a couple of problems with the use of time trials that compromise their effectiveness in answering the other questions. The first of these is assessing fitness at various points in the season. While theoretically possible to run time trials throughout the training year, many coaches prefer a progressive ramp up in the preparatory phase before including any ‘flat out’ work. It can be biomechanically and physiologically risky to throw a time trial in in the very early season. Therefore, we can miss out on assessing how fit the athlete is when ‘kicking things off’, or more importantly, how much fitness has been maintained and carried across from last season.

Additionally, the frequency that would be demanded to create sufficient samples for an accurate forecast model is prohibitive if the athlete wants to actually perform some training in addition to the testing trials. Or, put another way, flat out tests tire you out and wind up compromising total training load.

b) Critical Power/Pace monitoring.

Wko+ provides the weekly and monthly metrics of power and pace ‘bests’ for a given duration. IMHO, using these as a benchmark is a mistake because they do not take into context whether these were a 100% effort, an 80% effort etc.

Take for example, an athlete who performs a regular 2x20min session at a moderately-hard effort on a weekly basis. This is prescribed as a session at roughly the power than the athlete could sustain for 3-5hrs. Week after week, the athlete completes a pretty standard basic week, with a tolerable load and a similar (though slightly increasing) power level for this session. Then, 8 weeks out from their peak for the year, the coach decides to up the ante and rapidly increase the load, in addition to adding some races. With the addition of more load, the athlete’s fatigue #’s go through the roof (and their TSB sinks to -50) but, with the addition of a flat out race, they experience their highest 20min power for the season. A less than astute coach may attribute the highest power of the season to the increased training load, when in fact the 20min power best is actually the result of a change in training content rather than fitness.

Of course, the coach could include a critical power ‘best’ set each week however this brings with it the same issues as the ‘flat out’ time trial mentioned above.

c) Power or Pace vs. Heart Rate.

My preferred primary method of benchmarking is using power or pace vs heart rate for given aerobic sets throughout the training week.

The primary advantage to this method is the pure frequency of sampling. Several times per week I can look at the power:HR relationship for a given set and I can establish an improvement curve without compromising or affecting total training load. Additionally, I can assess performance throughout the training year, testing at times of fatigue as well as peak form to establish both fatigue and fitness components of performance with respect to a given training load.

Of course, this method has it’s shortfalls also. Heart rate is a physiological measure that is affected by many non-training related environmental factors. However, when it comes down to it, the pure number of data samples that I am able to accumulate with this method outweighs the standard error associated with the method.

A couple of key sessions that I like to use for the Bike and Run:

Run (Track Workout):
2mi Easy (@130bpm)
2mi Steady (@140bpm)
2mi Mod-Hard (@150bpm)
Record 400m splits for all.

Bike (Long Workout)
1hr on the trainer (30min easy w/up, 30min @ 135bpm) Record power
2-4hrs on the road
1 hr on the trainer (30min @ 135bpm, 30min cooldown) Record power

As mentioned, these workouts should be done regularly and during hard weeks as well as easy weeks so that the both the athlete’s fitness and fatigue responses to a given training load can be determined

Stay tuned in coming weeks for more on how you can use your training benchmarks to ‘calibrate’ your CTL and ATL constants in wko+

Train Smart.

AC

Do work, Son!

2009-03-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

I had to include a pic from one of my favorite shows from last year, Rob and Big, when I decided to write a post on that 4 letter word – work. Big Black had a recurrent catch phrase on the show – “Do work, Son!” that I thought was particularly relevant to this post. So there you go. This one’s for Rob and Big.

It can be tempting in this world of relative measures to lose sight of the absolutes. This is just as true in triathlon training as in any other field. Doing your best is great but in the world of competition, being the best is better.

I had an interesting question from one of the athletes that I work with that went along the lines of,

“Coach, I just had a look at Joe Blow’s performance manager chart from last year (Joe Blow is a top AG athlete). I almost put in the same amount of work as him. Our CTL #’s were almost identical but our performances were a world apart. What gives?”

And so, in one key sentence in the above passage lies the problem, “I almost put in the same amount of work..”. The problem is that TSS may be a measure of stress, but it is not a measure of work. CTL, ATL and all of the other metrics associated with TSS management are relative, rather than absolute measures related to each individual’s personal functional threshold pace or power. Just because you deposit a similar TSS workload to the pro of your choice doesn’t entitle you to withdraw a similar race result. No, if you want a similar result you need to compare apples and apples, i.e. absolute measures. Or, put another way – Do work, Son!

I could see that my explanation wasn’t entirely satisfying my athlete who was still of the mind set that 120 TSS/d for one guy is the same as 120 TSS/d for another. So, I pulled up the wko #’s of the other athlete in question and we looked at another number – kilojoules of work.

Athlete A experienced almost the same training stress (~5%) less than athlete B but experienced a performance that was ~35% slower than athlete B. Coincidentally, he did ~33% less work than athlete B. Hmmmm.

My point is not that Athlete A should have ‘sucked it up’ and done more work (irrespective of the fact that matching Athlete B’s workload would have probably take him an additional 5 hours a week, not to mention burying him in the process), but rather that, when comparing across athletes, the absolute work is ultimately more of a determinant to performance than the relative training stress.

Relative training stress for a given session may not change a whole lot over the course of an athlete’s development. However, total work will. A long ride of 250TSS (5hrs at an IF of 0.71) will represent a total workload of 2500kj to a newbie athlete with an FTP around 200, however this same session will represent a total work of over 3500kj for a top AGer. For this reason, when planning long term TSS, it is not always necessary to ‘up the ante’. Providing the athlete is improving, the ante will be uped quite naturally.

All of this is not to say that an increase in CTL should not occur from year to year. Because CTL is ‘carried over’, if the season is timed appropriately, a slow and steady increase in the athlete’s CTL over the course of their development should be noted. However, this is a function of appropriate recovery and consistency within the sport, rather than a conscious choice to increase training stress. Increasing training stress is, well, stressful and is not conducive to the long term, steady progression that those seeking to discover their potential in the sport should adhere to (for more on Long Term Athletic Development, check out my article on Xtri.com)

However, when you’re consistently seeing high TSS weeks and the frustration starts creeping in that you’re not ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, it is worth remembering that there is really only one number that counts and one way to the top (for a very long period of time) – Do work, Son!

Train smart.

AC

Raise your standards.

2009-02-24T17:31:00.000-08:00

I was re-reading Tony Robbins “Awaken the Giant Within” book earlier this week. I am a big fan of his. I like the whole concept of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and it strikes me that there is great benefit to being an active programmer vs doing what most of us do and let society type the code for our lives. But I digress….

In the first chapter of the book, Robbins makes the following statement:

“If you don’t set baseline standards for what you’ll accept in your life, you’ll find it easy to slip into behaviours and attitudes and a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve”

This past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how this applies to athletics. The concept of setting minimal standards, expectations that you resolve to hold yourself to seems like a very common trait among winners.

Gordo has spoken frequently about the importance of out-performing the expectations that you set for yourself. And yet, so many of us keep falling into the same habits and making one of the 3, what I consider, critical errors that hold us back from expressing our potential:

1. Failing to set standards
2. Setting unachieveable standards
3. Setting overly complex standards

Let’s look at the first. For many of us, triathlon represents a recreational pursuit or a hobby. In the big picture of what’s important in our lives it may not rank at the top of the list. Because of this, many of us don’t get to the point where we set the same standards for the athletic role in our life as we do for some of our other roles.

For example, you may have impeccable work standards (whether implicit within your employment or not) that include:

* I will be on time for work each morning
* I will be productive throughout the day
* I will dress professionally

Maybe even:

* I will move up the corporate ladder by consistently out-performing my peers

Likewise, at home you probably have standards for yourself as a father or mother that ensure that your end goal of raising a happy and productive child is reached.

In both of these roles, the end goal dictates the standards that must be followed. If you stop showing up on time for work each morning, your goal of a long and happy career will probably be compromised.

Yet, all too often, as athletes we set goals with passion and good intentions but no accompanying standards.

Not only do I find this to be a shame as a coach, but I also think it largely ignores the importance of physical fitness to your larger goals. It may be worth checking out the angiograms of the CEOs of the fortune 500 before deciding that you want to join them!

Put simply, irrespective of how important triathlon as a sport is in your life, the importance of physical fitness to your larger life demands that you set some minimal standards for yourself.

************

Now, on to the second common error when setting standards, the all too common “New Years Resolution” syndrome…..

The couch potato rises from the sofa on January 1st and declares: “This year I’m going to work out 4 hours every day and race the Hawaii Ironman.”

Honestly, this is a better goal than most folks set because it at the very least contains some assessment of what the goal setter ascertains the ‘cost’ of the goal to be. We could say that this is a SMAT goal, but it’s missing one key element that would make it a SMART goal – Realism :-)

And so, the goal setter is left with a good intention rather than a standard and so the goal is abandoned and the cycle goes on.

Appropriate standards are built upon previously demonstrated performances not pipe dreams.

*************

And, finally, the problem of setting overly complex standards. This stems from not having a firm understanding on what elements are essential to the goal.

First a personal anecdote on this one: A couple of years ago I went through the goal setting process with the G-man. I rocked up to our meeting with notes and notes about what I thought I needed to do to achieve my goals. I took out what I had written on health and nutrition. I’m sure I had set goals for every macro and micronutrient known to man. Gordo took a pen drew a line through it and wrote this:

“Eat more. Eat more often.”

Point taken.

Occasionally I will have a novice athlete tell me that they couldn’t complete a workout because they; forgot their heart rate monitor, didn’t have access to a pool to complete the scheduled swim workout, weren’t able to run on their usual measured course etc.

To be sure, I love data and equally love measured, controlled workouts, but even I would be ready to admit that these elements are not essential to achieving your athletic goals.

A standard such as: “I will achieve 2hrs of aerobic training each day” is much more likely to happen than a standard of: I will accomplish:
- One threshold swim per week for 3000m at 1:30/100
- One hilly bike w/10x30s hill repeats at 200-240W
- One track workout of 10x800 with each under 3:00
- Etc.

This is not to say that these session goals are not appropriate or optimal but, in the name of compliance, especially when starting out, it is most important to distinguish the optimal from the essential by answering that one important question “what will it really take to make me a better athlete?” As Pareto observed, where my athletes are concerned, 80% of their improvement in results will be explained by 20% of the suggestions that I give during our many hours of conversations. While I spend a lot of my time optimizing my athletes’ programs (largely because I get a kick out of it) hopefully I also do a good job of distinguishing ‘the essentials’.

Put simply, the essentials that matter for most of my guys are:
- Doing more work than last season
- Focusing more of the work on your weaknesses
- And for more advanced athletes, distributing the work more intelligently, with more attention given to appropriate recovery

This leads to the following list of day to day standards that really do matter….
· I will get 8hrs of sleep every night
· I will eat real foods away from training and only use sports nutrition for the long stuff
· I will get 2 strength sessions completed each week
· I will do yoga 3x per week
· I will do 1-3hrs of aerobic training each day
· I will do one big day each week.

While standards should be set based upon a 100% compliance intent, it is important for the sake of your own integrity that acceptable exceptions be ‘put on the table’ from the outset. Often these exceptions can be headed off at the pass before they become an issue. Either way, the important people in your life (your partner, your boss, your kids, your coach ;-) need to know what they can expect from you and more importantly, you need to know what you can expect from yourself.

For the closing word, I turn back to Tony, somebody who transformed his life from that of a depressed, unemployed, out of shape, single guy living in a run down studio apartment to living the life of a multi-millionaire with wife, family and all the trappings….

“When people ask me what really changed my life 8 years ago, I tell them absolutely the most important thing was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all of the things that I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things I aspired to becoming”

When it comes down to it, the key to every PR you set in life doesn’t come from discovering a new secret tool or program, but rather from progressively raising what you expect of yourself.

Train Smart.

AC

Recovery/Timing

2009-02-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

“The hardest thing for an athlete to do is not train. You can’t sit still. You feel like you should be out there working”
- Graeme Obree (former 1hr cycling world record holder-pictured left)

“The bottom line is that the body does not get fitter through exercise. It gets fitter through recovery”
- Peter Keen (coach of Chris Boardman)

“Recovery. That’s the name of the game in cycling. Whoever recovers the fastest wins”
- Lance Armstrong

“I have had many outstanding races after a forced rest. This illustrates the crucial role rest and recovery play in getting the most from training”
- Emil Zatopek (18x World Record Holder)

“There is a time to train and a time to rest. It is the true test of the runner to get them both right.”
- Noel Carrol (Irish Olympian and running coach)

“I take a nap almost every day. I couldn’t do without my nap”
- Scott Molina

Among the core training principles, perhaps the least understood is the principle of recovery. I know that, personally, it has only been relatively recently that I have come to fully understand the importance of getting work:recovery cycles right.

I think back to a comment on one of my older blogs from a reader making the observation that my posts tend to focus on that 4 letter word – work. Make no mistake, I still see total workload as a central, almost determinant factor in endurance sports. However, I am now much more tuned into the intelligent distribution of work (and my athletes are seeing faster progress because of it!)

One of the hardest things for an athlete to grasp is that, like the ever-shifting economy, your training ‘buck’ differs in value throughout each training cycle. Let me elaborate….

We are all familiar with Hans Selye’s stress curve, or, in other terms, the curve of diminishing returns (see below)

Work applied at the beginning of a cycle (whether the first key session of a microcycle, the first week of a mesocycle or the first month of a macrocycle) initially has a net negative effect as the body experiences an ‘alarm reaction’ to the load.

Following the alarm reaction, the body summons it’s adaptation reserves and (providing the workload isn’t excessive) overcomes the resistance of the stressor (for our purposes, the stressor = Coach AC :-). This key period, the second half of the ‘A Block’ on the chart represents the point in the training cycle that the body is most able to deal with load.

Following this, the body progressively habituates to the stressor and, gains less and less performance benefit from a given stressor. Until, eventually, the chronic training load surpasses the body’s adaptation reserve and performance begins to plateau, then drop, and if the training stress is continued, chronic fatigue eventuates.

At the extreme, planned recovery obviously helps to avoid reaching this chronic fatigue state. However, the benefits of planned recovery within each cycle extend far beyond that.

The Macrocycle (Season)

As mentioned above, if the Macrocycle (or season) is excessively long, eventually the athlete will experience a plateau, a performance decline and eventually chronic fatigue. Obviously, the time span before this happens is related to individual peculiarities with regard to absolute load, constitution, level of the athlete, even the sport in which the athlete participates. However, generally speaking a relative plateau can be expected after 3-5 months and a relative decline in performance can be expected with 5-7 months if no recovery cycle is planned (Morton, 1991).

Even if the athlete is smart enough to include recovery within the season before chronic fatigue is reached, this still does not necessarily equate with optimal training. In accordance with the principle of diminished returns, a given session offers less performance benefit as the season continues. For a given training load (e.g. 100TSS/d), the relative fitness benefit to a typical athlete at different points in the season is shown below.

Or, put another way, by 3 months of a given load (or when a plateau is observed) the athlete has usually habituated to the load and is receiving little fitness benefit. At this point, it is time to either:

a) Peak up the central systems and compete
b) Insert recovery and begin a new cycle at a higher level.

We all know what my preference is for a developing athlete ;-)

You may have noticed that to some extent some of the core training principles are contradictory. For example, recovery can be considered somewhat antipolar to consistency. Variety can be considered somewhat opposite to specificity. In all things, balance is key. So, this bring us to some practicalities: What is the optimal balance between consistent training and recovery blocks?

The optimal length, volume and intensity of this cycle is a function of the level of the athlete and the training load. In practical terms, long term monitoring of fitness and training load offer the coach/athlete the opportunity to optimize this cycle for each athlete.

For example, below, I have a summary chart of my own training volume over the past 2 and a bit years with a line chart showing how my run fitness has changed over this time (for my key aerobic sessions in m/heart beat)

My recovery blocks are clear. Month 7, 12, 18 and 23-24 represented significant reductions in training volume. As you can see, in my case, a reduction in monthly volume of ~40-50% seems to keep my fitness at or above the starting level of the previous cycle (a key long term training objective). Whereas, my last recovery block after Ironman Arizona (3 week taper + 5 week recovery) seemed to be too little volume (~20%) for a little too long. These #’s fit in nicely with those of Troup (1989) who found that performance can be maintained for 5 weeks on 60% of normal training volume in elite swimmers.

Microcycle/Week

The same principle applies to structuring work and recovery within the week.
I have used the following chart from Olbrecht in past blogs about applying the adaptation curve to structuring weekly sessions.

I often have athletes asking the question “is it OK to move my sessions around this week due to some work conflicts?” The short answer is, in most cases, no. It’s not OK. The timing of your weekly sessions to allow appropriate recovery between them is one of the key elements of training smart.

There is an individual window after each key session in which the following key session must be completed if improvement is to be expected.

For example, for a typical athlete, a basic ‘medium’ aerobic session (total CHO cost of ~700kcal) should optimally be planned for every 8-12hrs. If more than 24hrs passes without basic aerobic work then the athlete returns to homeostasis and the previous day of training is essentially wasted. Hence, the importance of consistency (no zeroes!!)

Obviously, on the flipside, if the athlete tries to fit in the second session of the day while still in the recovery window from the first (0-6hrs), the athlete is merely digging a deeper hole rather than hitting the training at the right time to ensure a ‘bounce’ to a higher level.

Of course, if a harder session is undertaken in the am, then the pm session becomes a recovery/maintenance (~400kcal CHO) session rather than a developmental session.

The timing of training and recovery for each individual athlete is one of the most important training principles to get a handle on. As Noel Carroll observed, “There is a time to train and a time to rest. It is the true test of the runner to get them both right”.

Train smart.

AC

The Wisdom of Johan Bruyneel

2009-02-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

The book, ‘We might as well win’, authored by the mastermind behind Lance’s 8 (and possibly more :-) TdF victories, Mr Johan Bruyneel, made it to my reading list this week. The book is a (necessary) departure from my regular reading list of ex phys journals and texts that can sometimes leave me forgetting the cold hard truth that knowledge is nothing without action and, that the most important knowledge is the one which inspires action. On this front, Bruyneel’s book has so many gems that, as much for my own benefit as anyone else’s, I felt the need to summarize some of them for the sake of posterity.

1.We might as well win.

The title of the book, we might as well win, is also the first lesson. Bruyneel explains it as follows:

“…if you’re going to try something, if you’re going to expend that first block of effort and energy to participate – whether it’s riding the Tour, applying for a new job or coaching your daughter’s soccer team – you might as well go ahead and do whatever it takes to win (whatever ‘winning’ means to you). I mean, I’m going to be there no matter what, right? Why not go ahead and get the victory?”

A twist on the old theme of, if a job’s worth doing….

In a lot of ways, we are a society that emphasizes participation above excellence. I am not sure if it is an extension of the tall poppy syndrome, or a genuine societal humility, but we habitually understate our ambition (and potential) to be great in those fields that we are the most passionate about in order to remain good in all of the fields that fulfill societal expectations. I am here to remind you that there is nothing wrong or anti-social about making the commitment to identify your true passion/s and commit to them 100%.

2. Follow your heart, but bring your head along.

Passion is a great starting point, but as Johan points out, our moments of true magic occur when we equally utilize our heads and our hearts in pursuit of a goal.
He provides the example of his stage win in the 1995 Tour De France and how, despite possessing a physiology that was inferior to a good portion of the peloton, he was able to ride off the front of the pack on that fateful day via a combination of 100% belief and a superior, almost obsessive attention to detail that few choose to possess.

Our true power as Human Beings is so much greater than our physiology. In fact, compared to our mammalian brothers and sisters, physiologically, even the best of us are kind of the runts of the litter and yet, from an evolutionary perspective, we were able to overcome much stronger competitors via our mental faculties. The same is true in sports.

As a sports scientist, my greatest source of frustration comes from seeing athletes with unquestionable physical strengths fail to address their weaknesses. Even at the elite level, most athletes are far too proud of accomplishing things ‘their way’ to consider the possibility that to move to the next level they may need to try another way.

Like making hard decisions (see below), thinking - analytical, unbiased, completely open thinking is real work and it demands a maturity that few possess. That is why most folks are unable to do it. However, being one of the few athletes who not only takes the time to continually get information, but also act on it, will enable you to evolve beyond those who rely solely on the innate strengths of their physiology.

3. Don’t be afraid to leave a few dents.
Johan talks about some of the hard decisions that he has had to make in order to lead a Tour winning team. Decisions that while not popular, were always right (in alignment with his personal mission).

The harsh reality is that, in this world, there are some very strong willed folks with very strong personal agendas that we bump against on a daily basis. It is also often true that if you are not diligently heading toward your own goal, you generally wind up supporting someone else’s.

Making hard decisions is…well…hard. That’s why many folk avoid doing so at all costs. I know that in my own life, in order to continue to follow my passion, I have sacrificed a marriage, 3 well paid jobs, being geographically close to my family, not to mention the numerous little sacrifices that happen every day. and, despite these necessary dents, I don’t regret a single one of these decisions. Life is about enjoying the ride, not arriving at the end-point in pristine condition. A few dents are inevitable!

4. Lose a little to win a lot.

“Avoiding the complete loss of all you’ve worked for can be a sweet victory amid even the cruelest defeat”

We all remember Lance’s toughest hour on a bike, as he slowly ascended the Joux Plane and fought valiantly to minimize his losses as his body simply ran out of juice.

As Bruyneel points out, it is not the sprinkling of moments of domination that define a champion, but rather the many more plentiful small acts of courage that we make each day that minimize our losses and keep us on the path.

The decision to down a recovery shake and take a nap after a disappointing ride rather than writing it off and heading for the nearest Mickey D’s are the kind of decisions on which champions are based.

5. Trust people not technology

“For me the real million dollar pay-off was the reminder that at the heart of winning lies heart. Technology can help you win. So can a team bus. A solid recruiting program. An inspiring mission statement. But none of these things actually do the winning. A million dollars can’t ride a bicycle. Neither can a million bits of data. It’s people who perform – out on the roads and all across the world, whether their ambition is to win the Tour De France or open a restaurant. And it’s the people who have the heart to ignore the distractions - of money and technology and managers and everything else that clamours to be a part of our lives – who wins the most.”

This is one of my favorite passages from the book. A reminder that winning is a verb. It is not a noun that can be bought or recruited. Nor is it some secret short cut. It is bred from the daily actions of winners, folks who have defined their personal victory and spent their days all-encompassed in the necessary actions associated with it, sometimes at the expense of the desires of those they bump into along the way but never to the detriment of their personal destiny.

6. Find a victory in every loss

“Sometimes if you stare long enough at a loss without blinking, you see an edge that you might have missed if you merely excused your failure and moved on”

Truth be told, I hate to lose. I have always hated losing. Growing up in the world of competitive swimming, losing is an amplified experience. After all, in a typical swim race there are only 7 other kids in the race. Statistically, there is a much better chance of winding up last or close to last than there is in mass start triathlon. I think my sensitivity and this background led me very quickly to coming up with reasons for each major loss as quickly as possible after it occurred. Note that I distinguished reasons from excuses. Excuses are justifications attributable to the world around you. Reasons, on the other hand are the causes of the loss. Excuses should be avoided whenever there is an inkling of even a possibility of personal responsibility for a loss. To voluntarily give up responsibility is to give up personal control. Chronic learned helplessness is but a step away.

Johan comes to the same conclusion when relaying the reasons for Lance’s loss in the 2003 in the long time trial. Fans will remember the picture of Lance with white salt caked around his lips finishing obviously dehydrated, a close second to big Jan Ullrich (in the process losing 15lbs over 1hr of racing!!) It is probably surprising that rather than spending the evening purely relaxing and rehydrating, Lance and Johan spent the evening ruminating over time splits and data. It was absolutely crucial at that point in the race that Lance came to the conclusion that he was the best time trialist in the field despite some bad hydration choices in that one time trial. In Johan’s words, it was important that he “admit the loss” so that they could go about identifying the reason before “crafting their next victory from the ashes of this defeat”.

This acuity and consequent pure confidence is a trait of all champions and it stems from never admitting the words “it just wasn’t my day” but instead “I will achieve my goal next time by correcting the following mistakes…”

7. Everything but winning is a distraction.

Do what is necessary to foster belief, lest you wind up a self-fulfilled prophecy.
Bruyneel talks openly about keeping the faith in a sport in which it is generally acknowledged that a portion of the upper echelon of the professional ranks are ‘on something’. We all face similar challenges, whether we see our competitors as superhuman due to ergogenic aids, superior constitutions, superior genetics, take your pick. Whether real or not, once a commitment is made, any focus that detracts from your belief in your own abilities is a harmful one.

Truth be told, nothing, save the extent of your resolve to overcome limiters, is absolutely deterministic in the world of endurance sports. Even, in the scientific fraternity, it must be understood that the conclusions that researchers have arrived at on the ‘trainability’ of a given individual inherently infer trainability, often for one measure of fitness, with one short term training protocol. Personally, I’m going to need a lot more than that to give up on my athletic dreams. What about you?

Well, that's enough potential copyright infringement for one article :-) So, I’ll close with a recommendation. Buy the book. Johan is one of those positive voices that you can never have enough of, whether on the bookshelf, or in your life.

Train Smart (and think smart :-)

AC

Planning your Season

2009-02-04T06:52:00.000-08:00

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes, but no plans”
- Peter Drucker

The pic above is of one of the foremost experts in the field of seasonal planning, Professor Tudor Bompa.

I spend a lot of time writing about the ‘whys’ of my particular training philosophy, the scientific rationale behind some of the decisions that I make in my day to day dealings as a coach to a wide range of athletes. I presented a summary of these ‘why’ considerations in regards to planning a season, a month and a week in previous blogs.

I thought it might be timely in this blog to talk a little more about the ‘how’. How I apply the research and training theory into a step-by-step approach to formulating the athlete’s Annual Training Plan.

So let's roll up the sleeves, leave the theory behind and dive into the practicalities of constructing your 2009 training plan.....

Step 1: Determine cycle volume

Look at last years volume, your non-training life, your fitness level and your recovery profile to determine volume goals in 2009. Some general recommendations on typical volume increases from the previous season:

- Novice: Plus 20-30%
- Intermediate: Plus 10-20%
- Advanced: Plus 0-10%

So, that’s step 1. Come up with a realistic # that’s not based on your goals or what you think you may be able to do, but is instead based on what you’ve proven you can do. In this way, both your habit, your body and your belief in yourself are progressively strengthened.

Note: While volume increases represent the central component to your long term development as an athlete, they must not occur at the expense of recovery (sleep, good nutrition, stress management etc.) for some athletes who are already pushing their recovery limits, their best route to further improvement will come from addressing specific limiters rather than simply adding volume.

Step 2: Determine phases in line with non-training calendar and competition schedule.

As mentioned in a previous blog, I favor a 5-7 month cycle with a basic structure along the lines of the following:

Month 1: Transition (Objective: Shed fatigue)
Month 2: Preparatory (Objective: Very gently progress back to normal training volumes – at reduced intensity)
Month 3-5: Basic (Objective: Build fitness with an appropriate maximal yet chronically tolerated training load)
Month 4-6: Specific /Sharpening (Objective: Consolidate basic fitness and maximize central fitness and specific race execution)
Month 5-7: Taper/Competition (Objective: Freshen up for your best race result)

For advanced Ironman athletes, particularly for later cycles in the year the basic and specific cycles can be consolidated to allow for 3 annual peaks.

One Annual structure that I particularly like, because it goes a long way towards maintaining athletic 'balance' is a longer cycle with a short-course or HIM focus early in the year followed by a shorter dedicated IM prep later in the year.

Of course, the race distance that the athlete should focus on for each peak will ultimately be more related to their preferences and (more importantly) their personal strengths and weaknesses.

Step 3: Determine performance goals (along with physiological component goals)

Probably the most important thing for the athlete to track throughout the year is performance. It is only by monitoring performance that we are able to accurately assess the relative benefit of different training means for an individual athlete.

In absolute terms, it’s a pretty simple matter to determine reasonable performance goals for the season based on average rate of improvement over the previous seasons.

In a general sense, performance, like most physiological mechanisms follows a curve of diminished returns. Similarly, performance response, like most physiological mechanisms is quite individual. However, based on what I have seen, some typical seasonal rates of improvement (in relation to training age)

Year 1: 10-15%
Year 2: 5-10%
Year 3-5: 3-5%
Year 5-10: 1-3%

It is also important that the athlete understands how performance is likely to change over the course of the training season. In particular, intermediate to advanced athletes can expect performance dynamics along the following lines:

Start of period: Last season peak performance minus 25-30%
End of base period: Last season peak performance minus 10%
End of specific period: Equal to last season best performance
End of peak period: Last season best +3-5%

Expecting big early season performance decrements and expecting relative mid-season plateaus can help the athlete maintain confidence throughout the season despite some apparently ‘funky’ performance responses to similar or increased training loads.

Over the long term, the best indicators for an Ironman athlete are aerobic (steady-moderately hard) testing. This testing can be done throughout the season and is also the most specific to actual Ironman performance.

While general performance dynamics are illustrated, these are very individual and it is only through watching the athlete over a number of seasons that a true ‘feel’ of an individual athlete’s performance dynamics and consequent performance goals is established.

Step 4: Determine volume for each week and phase

The optimal volume distribution will differ with the athlete. However, general guidelines would be to start the volume during the preparatory period at 30-50% of the peak volume for the season and to build to at least 80% at the culmination of the prep period. That steep ramp rate (~10%pw) is (contrary to popular belief and popular literature) not maintainable ad finitum. It is important to remember that maintainable long term volume increases are in the vicinity of 10-20% per season, not per week!!

With the exception of your initial volume ramp during the prep period, any volume camps and your planned rest/test weeks, your weekly volume should remain relatively stable throughout each respective phase.

Step 5: Determine time in zone and consequent intensity for each phase.

Look at your training threshold, last year’s intensity, your volume limitations and your fitness level to determine intensity goals for 2009. Some intensty suggestions based on what I’ve found to typically work for various phases:

- Prep Weeks: 70% intensity
- Base Weeks: 72% intensity
- Specific Weeks (IM): 72-75% depending upon race demands/level of athlete
- Specific Weeks (HIM/Oly): 75-78% “ “ “ “
- Sharpening/Peak Weeks: 78-80% intensity
- Transition/Off-Season Weeks: ~60% But wearing a HRM in your aquarobics class is kind of dorky :-)

Visually, if we compare volume and intensity for an early season peak into a traditional Bompa Chart of the Annual Training Plan, it may look something like this:

With volume (hours) along the left axis and intensity (% max) on the right.

Look at specific limiters to determine how this breaks down into personal time in zone. Some typical e.g’s:

Prep week (70% average intensity)
Easy: 75% of total volume
Steady: 25% of total volume
Mod-Hard: Zero volume (i.e. Mod-Hard cap)

Basic week (72% average intensity)
Easy: 55% of total volume
Steady: 25-40% of total volume
Mod-Hard: 5-15% of total volume

Specific week (advanced age-grouper: 75% average intensity)
Easy: 30% of total volume
Steady: 40-50% of total volume
Mod-Hard: 15-20% of total volume
Hard: 5-10% of total volume

Step 6: Determine weekly structure based on life, single sport limiters and physiological objectives of main sets.

As a general rule, my main sets will fall within the following ranges:

Steady: 45min – 4hrs
Mod-Hard: 45-90mins
Hard: 20-40mins

These should be sprinkled through your week in accordance with your own zone breakdown (derived on the basis of personal limiters) and your own life schedule.

In my opinion, a hard-easy approach is an absolute necessity, with only 2-3 ‘serious’ workouts per week, 2-3 maintenance workouts and 1-2 easy or OFF days. For this reason, it is all the more important to determine what the athlete's personal limiters are and what physiological quality the 'serious workouts' should focus on.

Step 7: Test the plan.
Keep track of what you actually achieved vs what you plan to achieve and what impact this has on your performance dynamics and modify as needed.

A plan is only good if you can:
a) Do it
b) Get better by doing it.

The plan needs to be flexible enough that you are able to modify it through the year in accordance with your life and personal training response.

*******************************

If you are looking for some help in formulating (and sticking to) your training plan for the 2009 season, drop me a line. I have 2 athlete openings on my roster for 09. I work with a wide range of athletes from first time IMers to pro’s and welcome the opportunity to work with you!

Train smart.

AC

The Mothership Is Calling!

2009-01-20T16:20:00.000-08:00

"Have fun, stay liquid, laugh alot but stay ready for the call from the mothership...then we fight. Then you'll see Dupree come in here throwing seven different kinds of smoke"

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/you-me-and-dupree-the-mothership/3589045731

The last blog that I wrote implied that genetic determinism was an ‘unpleasantry’. I have been thinking about that a lot this past week and have come to the conclusion that the line between genetic determinism and a spiritual calling is a fine one.
Jung, in developing the theory of the collective unconscious coined the notion of biological destiny. The idea, that somewhere, deep within our genes lies the answer to our destiny both as individuals and as a species. Of course, our greatest inner guidance system with respect to our destiny is our passion. Often there is no rhyme or reason to explain the things we are most passionate about. We just are. I can’t explain to my non-athletic friends the joy that comes from a 6hr ride through the mountains. There is just something inside me that determined that that action would elicit great joy.

The other ‘yang’ biological entity that comes into play to affect destiny is ability. Failure is a powerful negative reinforcer that will often, eventually, outweigh passion.

At one point in my life I had dreams of becoming an architect. However, after walking away from my technical drawing class with a less than exemplary grade and the associated feelings of failure, I realized that maybe architecture wasn’t my destiny.

Nope, embracing the true joy of life comes from finding those things that we are most passionate about and are (at least somewhat) inherently good at.

This post will talk about the athletic side of things, because that happens to be my passion but the principles apply equally irrespective of what your personal calling may be.

We all want to be good at what we love. I am assuming that if you are reading this post it is because you have a love of endurance sports. Make no mistake, a love of endurance sports and the process of training therein will take you far in the world of endurance athletics. At some point however, for many of us, love is not enough. Love without ability can lead to frustration. So, this post is about your own personal discovery and determining, from an athletic stance what plans the mother ship has for you.

In the single sports, the concept of talent identification is as old as the hills. For years, in swim squads around the country, gruff old coaches have been making arbitrary distinctions to ferry the little tadpoles in the right direction as they move through the squads, ‘Yep, you’ve got the shoulders of a backstroker’. ‘Yep, you’re a born breaststroker’. In most successful squads, the notion that an athlete should “choose their event” is laughable. Ask any coach worth his weight and he will tell you that the swimmer doesn’t choose the event, the event chooses the swimmer.

This mindset is not confined to the pool. In athletics, a pretty successful guy by the name of Arthur Lydiard made the comment that ‘for middle distance through to marathon, the training is fundamentally the same. The right event for a given runner is not determined by the training but rather their inborn basic speed.’

In recreational sports, however, the decision of what sport to ‘specialize in’ is often made with no particular regard given to the athlete’s biological potential. Rather, the athlete chooses the activity that they most enjoy. This is all fine and dandy until the athlete crosses that hazy ‘no mans land’ between recreational and competitive athletics. When the competitive goals start to come into play: I want to qualify for Kona, I want to win my age group at xyz triathlon.

It is human nature that we want to be good at what we love. For many of us, the ‘what we love’ part is much more plastic that the ‘what we are good at’ part. For instance:

We have an (in-built) love for practicing ENDURANCE ATHLETICS in the great outdoors. We could fufil this love with:
- Running Events (long or short)
- Triathlons (long or short)
- Mountain Biking
- Adventure Racing
- Nordic Skiing
- Road Cycling
- Etc.

Now, of all of these possibilities, you will be more of a ‘natural’ at some than others. This is the flipside of the principle of individuality and athletic potential. For every sport that you absolutely suck at, there is an anti-polar sport that you have the potential to be very good at. The trick is intelligently listening to the ‘mother-ship’ to determine what sport best represents your own athletic destiny.

I explored this concept a little in a previous blog post on individuality and came to a similar conclusion as my last blog on the limitations of genetics, that being that the duration and multi-discplinary nature of Ironman significantly mitigates most of the genetic roadblocks that are common to other endurance sports.
Based on the research and data that we have collected, you should be in and around the following to be in with a realistic shot of reaching the upper echelon of Ironman racing:

• A starting VO2max of 3.8L/min
• Starting lean Muscle Mass of 60kg or more
• Starting bodyfat of <~20% (in accordance with somatotype)

Note: Even these are not requirements, but they represent the sort of long term improvement, the average person can expect with long term training. There will be high and low responders that may begin with notably lower or higher #’s than these benchmarks and still ‘make it’. E.g. the G-man’s weight loss.

Now, for a young athlete this VO2max value represents a percentile rank of ~83%. In other words, there are likely several hundred million young folks walking around out there right now with the physiological potential to climb to the top of Ironman racing. I wonder how many have the passion to devote 10,000 hrs of their life to training?

Put another way, the Mark Allen of tomorrow may be running around at the top of his gym class right now, however, he is by no means necessarily winning Junior Worlds.

But, the other side of that coin is that there are several billion folks who, even if they were to training several thousand hours, are likely to top out in the 9:30 to 10:00 range. What about them?

So, what if you’re the skinny whippet who weighs 100lb sopping wet? There is an event for you too! With a VO2 of even 3.5L/min at 120lbs, your relative values make you a prime candidate for reaching the upper echelons of distance running.

And what if you’re a big guy, a little tubbier than 20% but with the big engine and muscle to boot? A weight supported sport like bike TT/track racing or rowing may be just the ticket.

Now, what if your VO2max just doesn’t cut it? The good news is that the same factors that lead to a less than impressive aerobic capacity lead to a more than impressive anaerobic capacity. Recently there has been a good amount of research into the specific genes that determine aerobic performance. One gene that shows particular promise is the ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) gene, which has implications on vasoconstriction and subsequent blood volume within working muscles. A double dose of the ACE gene has been correlated with high levels of endurance performance in elite distance runners. On the flipside, the polymorphism which results in a double dose of the deletion allele of the gene results in better than average anaerobic capacity. Interestingly, the incidence of the aerobic polymorphism and the anaerobic polymorphism is ~25%. Therefore, 25% of folks are aerobically apt, 25% are anaerobically apt and 50% have a mix of both abilities. Similar distinctions in glycolytic enzyme activity have been observed by the guru in this area, Claude Bouchard.

I guess the point that I keep coming back to is that, unlike other endurance events, Ironman racing is one of those sports that requires little more than ‘above average’ genetic material and the larger point is that we are all athletically ‘above average’ in some sport.

Listen to the mothership, train with passion, and before you know it, you too will be throwing seven different kinds of smoke! :-)

Train Smart!

AC

Genetics, determinism and other unpleasantries

2009-01-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

“Top results are available to anyone who builds up to my training and dedication levels (not an easy thing, I accept, but that’s the limiter, not genetics, not training protocol, not athletic background)”
- Gordo Byrn

We had an interesting discussion going on on the EC web site this past week on the tail of some 2009 training volume totals that I posted from some of my guys (with some additions from other EC members). I’ve reposted these below:

On the whole a pretty strong anecdotal correlation can be observed between training volume and performance. However, a couple of outliers; folks who put in a lot of volume with diminished results and other folks who got great results on minimal volume can be observed. Once again, this brought the aspiring athletes least favorite topic to the fore, i.e. genetics.

So, I thought it would be a good time to throw out a reminder that at least in the world of ultra-endurance athletics you (not your parents) are most responsible for how far up the ladder you choose to climb.

I remember a very heated discussion with a former pro athlete on another tri board a few years back in which the topic of genetics came up. As a confirmed eternal optimist, you can guess which side of the fence I was on. But this guy was beyond vehemently defending his position that the reason that he didn’t make it to the level to which he aspired was all his parent’s fault. What about this study and that study that display the very long time course of training adaptation I would argue, and he would counter with his standard reply – but I tried and I didn’t make it.

Frankly, “I tried and I didn’t make it” is a lousy (and IMHO pretty pathetic) argument. The reality is that any athlete at any one time can only ‘try’ one program and, all that one failure ‘proves’ is failure of that specific program for that specific athlete. The true limiter, in my opinion, is not genetics but mental laziness. Record keeping skills, even at the elite level, particularly in a lifestyle sport like Triathlon, are notoriously poor. I have seen more than one elite athlete (often self-coached) achieve a very high level of performance and have absolutely no clue how they got there (or how to go about reproducing that performance in the following seasons). It brings back memories of the overweight person who would come to me as a personal trainer and tell me that they tried every diet and nothing worked, therefore it must be their thyroid. Really? Show me your food logs!

To complicate matters, unlike collegiate sports like swimming and athletics, in triathlon, the best triathletes rarely have access to the best coaches (whose job it is to keep and analyse these records) because they simply can’t afford them!

My point is not that this guy was going to be the next Mark Allen, had he just ‘trained right’. As you read on, you’ll see that based on the general research, it’s entirely possible that this guy did reach his genetic potential. My point is that he made a conscious decision to jump on a thread and happily adopt the role of ‘dream crusher’ to some poor guy who wanted to discuss athletic potential without any knowledge of the performance curve or training of the guy he was advising and, whatsmore, from the content of his retort, limited knowledge of his own training-performance relationship. For parents, coaches, anyone in a position of authority, do not under-estimate the power of your words. Before joining the ranks of the ‘dream crushers’ seriously consider the information at hand. If you don’t have the information, consider your own motives for wanting to offer an uninformed opinion.

So, disregarding the psychological influence of attribution theory, on what physiological studies are these deterministic beliefs based?

The formative researcher on the influence of genetics on performance is Claude Bouchard. Bouchard’s studies, and those of his fellow researchers have shown the following influences of genetics on various physiological capacities

Initial VO2max
From studies with dizygotic and monozygotic twins, Bouchard concluded that ~40% of the difference in aerobic capacity was genetically based. Follow up studies have confirmed these findings, showing figures of 29-58% (Fagard et al, 1991). Interestingly, the trend seems to be that when true VO2max tests, as opposed to submaximal estimates are used, VO2 is less genetically influenced.

Trainability
After training programs lasting 15-20 weeks in 47 young men, some experienced no change, while other improved by 1L min (all subjects 17-29 males) see below.

In summary, the vast majority of folks can expect a 0.4-0.6L improvement in VO2max after 15-20 weeks of high intensity training. However, there are outliers who will experience less than 0.2L/min or more than 0.9L/min on the same training program.

I know what you’re thinking, the guys who experienced the least improvement were already fit. Surprisingly, no. Initial VO2max accounted for only 25% of the difference in training response.

Anaerobic Output & Fiber Type
In a study by Lortie et al. (2001) 10s and 90s max power improved after 15 weeks of interval training with a difference of 5-9x for high vs low responders, an ~40% influence of genetics (Lortie et al. 2001). This can largely be explained by differences in Fast vs. Slow twitch fiber type. Simoneau et al (1995) found that 40% of the difference in fiber type distribution (ST/FTa/FTb) can be attributed to genetics.

Anaerobic Threshold
Differences in performance in and around the anaerobic threshold closely mirror the relationship of genetics to VO2max. This is of little surprise considering, among a heterogenous sample, central factors in O2 delivery remain limiting. Studies around the anaerobic threshold show the following:

• Similar difference in endurance performance after 20 weeks of training (megajoules of work in 90min ergometer test). Mean difference = 40%, range = 16% to 97% (Lortie et al. 1999).

• Difference in O2 uptake at an RER of 0.95 was 58% explained by genetic influence (Fagard et al. 1999)

Submaximal Work Capacity
Only recently, however, have researchers began to seriously look at the impact of genetics on work capacity below the anaerobic threshold. In a study by Fagard et al. (1999), this question was posed. In the Fagard study, performance at Half Ironman to Ironman heart rates (150bpm) was only 16% attributable to genetics, 11% attributable to body composition, but, the largest chunk of the pie, by far, 34% was attributable to plain old training volume.

Additional studies have shown similar influence (~20%) of heritability on substrate usage (Bouchard et al. 1994) and mechanical efficiency.

************
It is obvious that it is at least somewhat important for the short duration athlete to take care in choosing his parents (or more aptly, choosing a sport and event that matches his parents). Genetic influence in events lasting less than 90mins typically represents ~40% of the performance difference. IOW, if you are not at the top of the genetic pyramid, 40% of a given 5K field could beat you with inferior training. Long course racing on the other hand is different, with, based on the studies to date, only ~16% of performance difference explainable on the basis of genetics.

In other words, even with very poor genetic material, it would not be unrealistic to think that given similar training volume to top age group/pro athletes, the aspirant could make it to the top 16% of the field. Interestingly, in the context of Hawaii, with zero genetic ‘talent’ this represents a 9:55 performance.

Coincidentally, on the EC thread that I mentioned at the start of this piece, Chuckie V commented the following:

"AC,
I'm not entirely sold on the genetic component either, to be honest. I still think anyone who can train 25 hours a week for 25 weeks is capable of cracking 9:30 at an Ironman”

The G-man added the following:

“More than "anyone" to do less than 10 (men); less than 11 (ladies). I tend to see it as possible for the average person”

Coincidence?

Frankly, it would be unusual for a person with zero genetic talent to stay in the sport long enough to develop aspirations of fulfilling their potential. On some level we all want to be ‘good’ at what we do.

In reality, (IMHO) most of us will fall under the meat of the bell curve: ~9:30 performance given optimal training. Incidentally, but of most practical significance, based on the long term performance curves for the athletes that I have long term data on, the asymptote generally lies in this area of the performance curve.

The real trick, as always, comes back to monitoring your own individual response to different types of training. Only then can you determine just where on the bell curve you fall.

Again, discovering what ‘optimal training’ means to you and fitting it into your life is the real limiter. Most folks are unwilling to do this work. The athlete who is willing will have an advantage that outweighs most of the potential that comes from winning the genetic lottery.

Train Smart.

AC

Intervals and Base Training

2009-01-09T10:10:00.000-08:00

“Why should I practice running slow? I already know how to be slow. I want to learn how to be fast”
- Emil Zatopek

Today’s post reflects on what experience and science have to say on the use of intervals during base training, indeed the use of year-round speed/strength work. But before we get into that, I have some exciting news. The G-Man, myself and the EC crew have set up a new website that brings together all of the resources of the EC team: Blogs, articles, etc in one place.

Additionally, you’ll find a subscription based training plan with unlimited training support from Gordo and myself for a very reasonable fee.

To kick things off, you’ll find the rest of this article only in one place (have a look around while you’re there).

http://www.EnduranceCorner.com/ac_blog

Structural Considerations in Planning the Microcycle (Basic Week)

2008-12-17T15:42:00.000-08:00

“Planning training sessions appropriately within a week is like playing beautiful music. If the right keys are played at the right time, it creates a masterpiece. If the right keys are played at the wrong time, nothing but noise”

In this post, I’m going to complete the trilogy of training cycles by taking a look at some structural considerations in planning the fundamental microcycle - the Basic Week.

However, before I get started on today’s post, first a quick summary for those who missed the last couple of entries on the real world application of periodization principles to the macro and mesocycle:

a) There is minimal “real world” advantage (for working athletes) to cycling weekly volume within the mesocycle or month. Rather, a relatively constant basic week for a period of 3-5 months is indicated.

b) There are a couple of noteworthy exceptions within the season/macrocycle in which it makes sense to alter volume from the standard basic week. These would be (in order of importance)
- Tapering volume prior to racing
- Observing an off-season of 2-6 weeks after each season
- Inserting a short ‘preparatory period’ of building volume before really ‘hitting it’ each season.
- (For intermediates) Inserting high volume training camps in the early-mid season
- (For elites only) considering inserting a brief period of sharpening before key career peaks.

Understanding the sequencing of sessions within a microcycle rests largely on understanding and applying one key principle:

Every physiological quality has different rates of acquisition and decay.

The tricky part for the coach is to determine the ones you need for your race, determine the ones that you want to develop vs maintain and put them in the appropriate place in the season and the week. For example, see the chart below by Olbrecht (1998) that shows the different recovery times (hours) between sessions of differing content.

Utilizing the above information, we can deduce optimal frequencies for development and maintenance of the core sessions in an endurance athletes repertoire:

Unfortunately, we simply don’t have the energy (glycogen) to accomplish all of these objectives, so we must, intelligently, ‘pick and choose’.

In order to intelligently do this, we must be aware of the dynamics of aspects of fatigue, particularly glycogen depletion and replenishment and we must be aware of what forms of training are compatible vs. contradictory. We must also, on some level know what reserves the individual athlete is working with and how much a given session takes out of them, i.e. are they a Prius or a Corvette?

A couple of considerations that are particularly pertinent to constructing the microcycle:

1. Fast twitch fibers take significantly longer to replenish that slow twitch fibers (Casey et al. 1995),

For instance, a typical ‘key’ long steady state workout will deplete most slowtwitch fibers, but only 50% or less FT fibers. With this depletion pattern, the athlete could manage a key strength workout after 24hrs recovery. On the flipside, if the first key session is a mod-hard or threshold workout, it will deplete significantly more FT fibers and, due to the different synthesis rates in FT vs ST fibers (Casey et al. 1995), the athlete may not be ready for a solid strength workout until 48-72hrs after the first session.

2. Eccentric exercises require longer recovery times than predominantly concentric (low impact) activities (Costill et al. 1990).

For this reason, extra space should be given to the key runs and strength sessions each week.

3. Glycogen depletion is a whole body process and is not entirely specific to the muscle fibers used (Krssak et al. 2000).

The whole body glycogen store is a finite resource and you need to use it in the mode (swim, bike or run) combination that is most appropriate to your limiters.

So, keeping the above in mind, let’s go about solving one particular puzzle, the Ironman Athlete….

For the majority of Ironman athletes the key objectives are steady-state endurance, skill and strength. For intermediate-advanced athletes, muscular endurance creeps in as a key physiological objective.

To maximally develop steady state endurance we want 4-6 key endurance workouts per week (from the table above). Obviously, a long swim, a long bike and a long run are a starting point. Additional workout(s) in the athlete’s weakest discipline would make intuitive sense for the remaining 1-3 workouts.

Additional to this, the the novice athlete who is still looking to attain Friel’s strength benchmarks should complete 2 key strength workouts per week.

Skill work can be easily incorporated within some of the aerobic workouts.

The following chart provides one example of how these workouts may be placed for a typical Ironman athlete, taking into account the dynamics of glycogen depletion and repletion (shown below). Estimated CHO cost (kcal) for each workout is shown in italics.

This offers 4-6 aerobic workouts and 2 strength workouts in an appropriately placed 15-18hr week.

Now let’s take a look at what’s going on ‘behind the scenes’ by looking at typical glycogen depletion and repletion patterns within a well balanced week like the one above.The blue bar shows expected muscle glycogen stores at the start of each day for an average athlete (whole body glycogen stores of ~2000kcal), while the red shows the amount of glycogen remaining at the end of each day (after training). A blow by blow description is given below:

Monday:
After a day of complete rest, the athlete goes in to Monday with full ST and FT glycogen stores. The athlete performs a tough long run and a moderately tough strength workout on Monday. Both of these are eccentric activities, the latter involving FT fibers. So, despite the time available for recovery within the day, it is likely that the athlete will be able to replenish only 25-33% of the glycogen expended during day 1.

Tuesday:
With the above in mind, leaving a little room for error, we go into day 2 with gas tanks only a quarter full. Keeping in mind that we want to be fully recovered for our key sessions on Wed, and the fact that a best case scenario for glycogen recovery after a session that utilizes a good portion of ST and FOG fibers in eccentric activity is 48hrs (Costill et al, 1990), very little should be done on Tuesday. An optional easy skills swim could be placed here considering most of Monday’s activities were lower body. However, the role of the upper body in replenishing the whole body glycogen pool after exercise should not be discounted. If in doubt, leave it out.

Wednesday:
After a day of focused recovery on Tuesday, the athlete (hopefully) goes into the hard Wednesday sessions with fully topped up glycogen stores. While there is a significant glycogen contribution from FT fibers on Wednesday, at least there is very little eccentric stress. Therefore, even after a good amount of depletion, recovery can be expected within 48hrs. Part of this recovery will occur between sessions on Wednesday, with the balance occurring on Thursday. Important note: The athlete will not be able to do a dedicated Mod-Hard bike set and still recover for the strength workout on Thursday (less than 48hrs recovery).Therefore, a compromise must be reached. For the novice, in favor of the strength workout, for the intermediate athlete, in favor of the muscular endurance set.

Thursday:
Whichever compromise one elects, the athlete arrives at the strength workout with glycogen 50-100% replenished. A moderate strength workout will have the athlete finishing the day with glycogen stores only 30-70% full necessitating another rest day, or at the very least, a very light day.

Friday:
Depending on how tough the Wednesday and Thursday workouts were and on the athlete’s individual recovery profile, Friday can either be an off day or a very light day of swimming or biking. After this light day, the athlete will be going into the big day on Saturday with glycogen stores very close to full. For most athletes Saturday is the most important session of the week and if there is any doubt, it is best to stick with more passive recovery means (sleep, massage, yoga etc) rather than active recovery on Friday.

Saturday:
It is essential that the athlete go into this day with glycogen stores at least full or, hopefully super-full, bursting at the seams via super-compensation after the Wednesday workout. The athlete will exploit these stores to their full potential on the key session of the week. Providing this workout exceeds the athletes minimal training threshold, the longer this workout, the better, as, due to the nature of improved fat oxidation with exercise of increased duration, this workout offers the athlete the most contractions for their glycogen “buck” of any workout in the week.

Sunday:
The athlete is going to be notably tired on Sunday. The good news is that most of the efforts in the Saturday workout were in the realm of slow twitch fibers (which recover glycogen much faster than fast twitch fibers), and, with the exception of the short transition run, created minimal eccentric stress. Therefore, with 36 or more hours of total recovery from the end of the Big Day on Saturday to the start of the long run on Monday, very close to complete recovery can be achieved before beginning the cycle all over again.

A couple of unique situations in which it may prove prudent to alter the format of the week:

1. For the rare example of the athlete with limited endurance but unlimited time, I would consider using the athletes glycogen allowance in the Wednesday session towards longer, steady-state training rather than mod-hard. This is most applicable to the novice-intermediate athlete during a camp period, and more obviously, is the most specific workout an Ironman athlete can do, irrespective of level.

2. For the intermediate athlete, mod-hard sets may also be included on the Saturday session in place of steady state endurance to meet the frequency quota for mod-hard sessions in order to induce a training effect. Of course, this won’t make sense for any athlete who is endurance limited.

3. For the elite/pro triathlete, consideration may be given, particularly in the final preparation to the inclusion of 2-3 VO2 workouts per week in order to spike central adaptations. The very significant downside of this strategy is that Fast Twitch fibers require considerably longer to replenish glycogen between sessions and it becomes next to impossible to do enough work to maintain steady and threshold endurance while building VO2max. For the Ironman athlete, the relative importance of keeping your peripheral adaptations generally outweighs the gain to be had from maximizing your central. Additionally, the time course of adaptation is such that your base qualities (steady state endurance and ‘threshold’ endurance) can be continually improved with 10-20 cycles of progressively increasing demand to effect an increase of 20-25% (Coyle, 1991). The maximal improvement to VO2max, on the other hand (5-15%) is reached after 1-2 cycles with a VO2max emphasis. Therefore, while the rapid performance improvement from VO2 work can be tempting, until breakpoint volume is reached, any time spent maximizing VO2 is essentially time lost from improving the more malleable ‘basic’ qualities.

An important sidenote: Sharpening training, on the whole, falls under the same category as tapering in that the athlete is giving up fitness in exchange for performance. Any athlete serious about discovering their potential cannot afford to give up fitness voluntarily during their key developmental years. Therefore it is important to choose events that you want to really ‘peak’ for in your athletic lifetime very carefully. Again, if in doubt, leave it out.

Regardless of the specifics of the week, the hard-easy format remains an essential principle for all level of athlete. Relative quantities or qualities of the workout will change with the athlete’s improved energy ‘bank’ and substrate efficiency that comes with enhanced ‘base’ but this format will remain.

The efficacy of the hard-easy format is not news. Reindell, Gerschler, Zatopek, Lydiard, Bowerman, etc all used this principle. Recently, mathematical modeling has provided further validation, with models indicating up to a 10% performance benefit to using the hard-easy format vs. flat loading. Looking at the pattern of glycogen depletion, it’s not hard to see that a small change in the scheduling of workouts could result in the athlete going into their key workouts with diminished energy reserves and could significantly compromise their performance.

Clearly, the above provides only one hypothetical pattern of a basic week based on an average athletes fatigue and recovery response to different sessions. If an athlete has a marginally different recovery profile, this week would be entirely useless. For this reason, getting to intimately know an individual athlete’s fitness and fatigue rates is an essential task of the serious coach.

In this age of technology, several applications attempt to help the coach with this task, e.g. in the case of wko+, setting appropriate chronic and acute training load constants. However, this process is complicated enough without the realization that not only does every athlete have different rates of fitness and fatigue acquisition and decay (on a given day!!), but additionally, as Olbrecht’s chart illustrates, every physiological quality also exhibits different fatigue and fitness decay rates. Thus, the coach has two choices, lock themselves away in a math lab and spend 6 months coming up with a myriad of series and sequences, or turn to our good old friend, trial and error.

Make no mistake, the best coaches all have a firm understanding of the theoretical background of how athletes generally respond to different types of sessions but they excel in assessing the individual’s response to a training stimulus by using trial and error to see how long it takes them to get back to (or exceed) normal training performance in the key sessions. This is where coaching ‘art’ meets ‘science’.

Additionally, this readiness will change on a day to day basis and the ‘aware’ athlete has a huge advantage in getting the timing right for optimal improvement. This education (to both parties) should be a high priority in the coach-athlete relationship.

Putting some serious thought and experimentation into coming up with a week that gives the athlete the best possible chance to have the energy to hit the workouts that address their specific limiters as hard as possible should be a key task that is undertaken at the beginning of each training cycle. The gap between maintenance and supercompensation is a small one but identifying and maximizing this gap is one of the key differences between repeating the same performance as last year or breaking through to the next level.

As always, train smart.

AC

*******Update 12/29/2008***********

More good reader questions this week. I felt one in particular was worth adding as an addendum to this piece on building your basic week. SB asks:

“If the most training that we can fit in while still allowing for replenishment of glycogen stores is 15-18hrs per week, then why are most pro’s training 30+ hours per week? Are they training at a lower intensity to accommodate this extra volume?”

The answer to this question lies in 2 key adaptations to endurance training:

1. Elite athletes are able to use a higher proportion of fat as a fuel (and therefore ‘spare’ more glycogen) at the intensities that stimulate aerobic improvements.

2. Elite athletes are able to store much more glycogen than recreational athletes within their liver and muscles, i.e. progressively, with training, their fuel tanks get bigger.

I had used an average glycogen store of 2000 kcal for our hypothetical athlete in the basic week piece. However, the latter adaptation, in particular, can greatly increase this number and result in substantially more fuel to work with for the elite athlete.

Hickner et al (1997) showed that endurance training increases the potential for glycogen storage to ~1.7 times that of a novice athlete. Based on our own lab results, in addition to this, well trained athletes are sparing an additional 20-30% CHO at a given workload compared to novice athletes (due to increased fat burning). These 2 adaptations combined represent an ~2 fold increase in endurance capacity at a given workload. Thus the 15-18hr weeks of your recreational athletes become 30-36hrs (of workloads of similar intensities) for an elite athlete.

It is important to note that this is a long term adaptation and therefore the athlete’s basic week should be built progressively in accordance with their ability to handle work of an appropriate intensity. Sacrificing intensity so that you can throw down weeks of similar volume to the elites makes about as much sense as starting your long runs at 6:00 pace. Just as you must earn the right to train progressively faster, you must also earn the right to train progressively more.

Train smart,

AC.

Structural Considerations in Planning the Macrocycle (Season)

2008-12-10T12:57:00.000-08:00

In my last blog, I gave some perspective to the relative merits of adopting a periodized structure when planning a mesocycle. I concluded that while there is benefit to using a ‘staircase’ structure in planning the weeks within a given training month, in general, the practical limitations of a fixed work schedule and life schedule outweigh the potential 3-5% that can come from using this structure.

So, what about the training season (macrocycle)? Should we adopt a flat loading pattern, where all weeks are the same or are there key points within the season that should have a higher or lower volume than the athlete’s basic week?

In my last blog, I hinted that there may be some substantial benefit for the serious working athlete to be had by utilizing appropriately placed training camps that focus on aerobic volume overload within the training season.

Additionally, it is commonly known that a short period of reduced volume prior to the peak competition for the season provides a better performance than continuing a constant load through to the competition.

Let’s begin by taking a look at the use of training camps. Many working athletes will have the choice of spending a portion of their vacation time on a training camp for the 09 season. How much extra benefit can you expect from inserting an ‘overload’ block and where is the best place to put it?

To answer these questions, I tested various structures of a 5 month macrocycle using Banister’s model, which has been validated in real world training instances a number of times (e.g. Morton et al. 1990, Busso et al. 1994, Mujika et al. 1995)

I selected a 5 month macrocycle because it has been shown to be the optimal macrocycle length (prior to unloading and beginning the next cycle) for an average, intermediate athlete (T1=45, T2=15, k1=1, k2=2) (Morton, 1997). This should be adjusted in accordance with the fitness of the athlete, the fitter the athlete, the longer the season, with novices best served with seasons of 3-4 mo duration and elite athletes best served with seasons of 5-7mo. Of course, this at least to some extent runs counter to the desire to peak many times each year in professional athletics. In these situations, an intelligent compromise must be reached.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at how a training season with 1 x 2 week training camp during which volume is overloaded compares to a flat year-long “basic week”

Same average training load (100 TSS/d) but distributing it with a 200 TSS per day training camp during the second month offers a 5% advantage over flat loading (1519 vs. 1448 units). In other words, a similar advantage to inserting a big week every 4th week of 160TSS per day every in a step loading format but without the stress of trying to do a relatively big week and keep your job and family together at the same time. If you’re going to hit it, get away from your job and family, let us take care of the food and the laundry and just spend a couple of weeks this year focusing on nothing but training with us in sunny Tucson.

So, you may be asking, is the placement of the training camp all that important in the grand scheme of things. Answer: Yes!

I tested a couple of alternative placements for the 200 TSS/d training camp. Results compared to a flat loading 100 TSS/d macrocycle are shown below:

In short, hitting it hard right out of the blocks after a full off-season is a bad idea. If you survive it, you will create a big hole for yourself that will likely take you half a year to climb out of. The first month of training is stressful, irrespective of how easy you take it. It is common practice for swim teams to perform a month of ‘singles’ prior to resuming ‘two-a-days’. Despite this strategy, the return month to training is typically the most tiring.

The best place to insert a camp for the average athlete is month 2 or 3 of the cycle. This is not a revelation by any means. The ‘hell week’ of most swim training programs typically occurs in the third month of training. Likewise, February-March high volume training camps are common practice for professional cycling teams.

Additionally, sports scientists have been aware of this phenomena for some time. Former GDR sports scientist and one of the leading authorities in periodization, Ekkart Arbeit describes the phenomena by using a modified figure of Selye’s adaptation process:

When an organism is exposed to any new stimulus, the first response is alarm. At this point the organism is most vulnerable. After continued exposure to the stimulus, the organism develops resistance or, in other words, enters a phase of adaptation. This is THE CRITICAL PERIOD where the athlete can expect the most (fitness) bang for their (training) buck. This model is applicable across all athletic cycles and is the reason that training load employed in late puberty is so important to the athlete’s long term development (Balyi, 1999). In the case of the training year, load applied in the late preparatory period occurs in the ‘sweet spot’ of this curve and is, therefore, most significant.

Another diversion from the basic week that gives the athlete the most performance improvement is the inclusion of a period of reduced training during the taper period. I have touched on this before so will only briefly revisit it in this post. But basically, the model indicates a 5-7% performance improvement using common taper strategies e.g. 50% average volume reduction in the 30 days prior to competition. This is supported by research by Mujika et al. (1996) who came up with similar numbers in a study on elite swimmers.

Finally, as I highlighted in my off-season blog, the other situation in which a diversion from the basic week is recommended would be for a period of 4-6 weeks at the end of the season.

In summary, intelligent athletes can expect a 7%-13% performance improvement by planning appropriate diversions from the basic week. In particular, early-mid season training camps and pre-competitive tapering are indicated.

If you want a great training camp to kick off your 2009 season click here. Note: The camp is filling fast (that’s not a gimmick. It really is :-)

Train smart.

AC

Periodization vs. The Basic Week

2008-12-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

“There’s more to being a model than just being really, really good looking”
- Derek Zoolander

Wise, wise words from Derek Zoolander. As many of you know, I have been really into models lately – training models that is. I have received some great feedback from you all, including a number of elite athletes that validates some of the theoretical constructs I presented in my last piece on the off-season. My buddy, Mat wrote a great ‘real world’ piece on his experiences with the off-season on his blog.

The past couple of weeks, I have managed to get my hands on a number of studies by the big players in mathematical modeling of the training process – Banister, Busso, Morton, Fitz-Clarke etc. While these studies contain some pretty sexy series formulae that describe fitness, fatigue and performance at any one time, as Zoolander says, there needs to be more to a training model than just being good looking. As coaches, we want more than theoretical constructs. We want a ‘roll your sleeves up’ computer model that allows us to put in data from a given athlete and accurately forecast race day performance using a variety of training methods, so that, as coaches, we can come up with the optimal training program for a given athlete. Software such as wko+ and RaceDay are a step in the right direction, however, they are much more easily used post-hoc rather than as a forecasting tool. I’m an impatient kind of guy and only have so much time to spend on trial and error. So….

I spent the extra time in the first week of my off-season creating a computer model of the impulse-response formulae of Banister (1975). I am not the first guy whose curiosity got the better of him. Rowbottom (2000) used the Banister formulae to expand on Morton's (1991) study and test different training structures. He found a consistent 3-5% performance difference when using a periodized training structure vs. a flat loading “basic week” structure.

A 24 week output of these two training structures with a training load of 100 TSS/d (with average ‘Middle of the Pack’ fitness and fatigue constants of 45 and 15 resp) is shown below (k1=1,k2=2):

X axis is days of training. Y1 axis is training load, Y2 axis is performance in arbitrary units.

Note: Both of these structures have exactly the same total training load (an average of 100 TSS/d) over the 24 weeks. In the case of the first, this is distributed as a the extreme example of a flat-loading “basic week”, same load day-in, day out over the 24 weeks. In the case of the 2nd, the load is distributed as:

Wk 1: 70 TSS/d (~12hrs of easy-steady training)
Wk2: 120 TSS/d (~21hrs of easy-steady training)
Wk3: 160 TSS/d (~28hrs of easy-steady training)
Wk 4: 50 TSS/d (~9hrs of easy-steady training)

The performance difference between the two structures is predicted at 1485 units for the periodized method vs. 1424 for the flat loading, a difference of ~4%.

Now, 4% is nothing to sneeze at. Most 11hr Ironpeople would welcome a 26 minute PR with no extra training load. Seems like a good deal. So, as Joe Friel asks in his latest blog post, “what’s wrong with periodization? “ Faster times for the same training load seems like a no-brainer. However, there are a couple of caveats that you should be aware of when deciding upon whether to use a traditional periodized training plan for the 2009 season.

The most important caveat is that in almost all cases, the structure of the training load is secondary to the quantity of training load.

In other words, there are many training programs that emphasize an arbitrary periodization structure: Dividing the total load for the mesocycle into 18%/30%/40%/13% etc. As displayed above, this is often a superior way to distribute training load providing the load is equal to what would be accomplished with a flat loading basic week. This is an important proviso. If you want to average 100 TSS/d (~17hrs of easy-steady training per week) this season, but the most training that you can fit into a week (without giving up sleep, increasing stress or compromising recovery) is 20hrs/wk, then obviously the training structure, rather than the total training load needs to be amended.

In other words, to answer Joe’s question, the thing that is ‘wrong’ with periodization is that our lives aren’t periodized. If you have the job flexibility to be able to work 50hr weeks on your easy weeks and 20hr weeks on your hard weeks, without significantly increasing job stress, then you should do it. For most of us, however, this structure is not an option and, particularly as the athlete improves, they will be forced to adopt a structure that more resembles a flat loading ‘basic week’ in order to accommodate the extra load. As a footnote, some of the most successful age group athletes that I have worked with are those with the most job flexibility. In other words, if you are serious about climbing to the very top of the age group ranks, finding a job or a position within your current occupation that offers more schedule flexibility should be a high long-term priority.

Obviously, the two examples I have presented here are extremes and deal with only one ‘level’ of periodization. Even those athletes confined to a flat load weekly structure, will likely have days that they can do significantly more work (e.g. weekends) and so the load won’t be constant on a day to day basis.

Additionally, in terms of the macrocycle, serious athletes can get a significant jump on the competition by taking advantage of appropriately placed jumps in the training load via training camps.

However, on a day-to-day basis the most important consideration in determining the optimal distribution of the training load falls not so much in the realm of the mathematician, but rather the realm of the life coach. Or, put another way, look at your weekly planner first and the training texts second when constructing your 2009 annual plan.

Train smart.

AC.

****************Update 12/22/08 ***********************

I received an interesting email from a coach asking about what the model indicates regarding the frequency of recovery weeks within the schedule, i.e. if we do want to insert periodic ‘rest and test’ weeks within the schedule, how frequently should they be planned?

It is not unusual for elite coaches to implemement a ‘recovery on demand’ approach, with the exception of some testing weeks. This approach is used by Aussie Swim Coach Bill Sweetenham to good effect. That said, most coaches will generally want to conduct some tests in a ‘fresh’ state. Additionally, even with a well tolerated basic week, accumulating fatigue is to some extent inevitable and periodic ‘shedding’ of this fatigue is indicated.

Obviously, if an advanced mesocyclic program is used with frequent shock weeks, such as the 70/120/160/50 cycle, more frequent recovery will be warranted. However, in the case of a traditional ‘phase’ periodization approach, the majority of recovery should occur within the week.

I tested a number of different frequencies for the insertion of a 60% recovery week on a 100 TSS/d ‘traditional’ periodized program for an average athlete (T1=45, T2=15, k1=1, k2=2).

I found that recovery weeks more frequent than once every 10 weeks results in a predicted performance decrement if this traditional ‘basic week’ model is used. In general, it is not until the 10th week of a given phase that the addition of a recovery week will actually improve performance. For this reason, I recommend that the coach who uses this model, as opposed to a more advanced ‘stair case’ model (with pretty marked changes in volume from week to week) should only plan to insert ‘rest and test’ weeks at the end of each phase not every 3-4 weeks as needed with the more advanced step loading program.

If recovery is needed more frequently than this then it is a good indication to the coach that the basic weekly load is excessive. For this reason, the coach needs to come up with a basic week that is sufficiently moderate to only require recovery after a prolonged, consistent period of training. The mechanics of this are discussed further in my recent blog on structural consideration in planning the microcycle (basic week)