TRAINING BREAKDOWN
"Change your training forever."
By Emma O'Toole
Hello,
I think today’s newsletter could be one of the very best to date because it answers the question all runners and cyclists want answered: “How do I get fitter?”
We’re covering these 2 topics:
1. Your training needs to progress (whether you like it or not).
2. Improving your fitness for ZERO extra hours to your training week.
Progress your training:
Whether you like it or not, you training needs to progress in order for you to get fitter.
When your body is placed under some form of stress, it starts to make adaptations that allow it to get better at withstanding that specific form of stress in the future. This is the SAID principle (Specific Adaption to Imposed Demands).
The opposite works too: if we don’t use it, we lose it.
Compare the first time you ever ran to where you are now. Quite a bit different, right?
Similarly, a triathlete training for a ironman who stops cycling or decreases their volume to nothing over 50km rides, will lose their endurance to ride long distances.
What about other areas of life? What “fitness” is being worked for?
The musician- Practices different pieces, performs at concerts.
The outcome: Plays music better.
The learner drive- Drives in different areas, under different weather conditions.
The outcome: Passes their driving test.
The chef- Cooks different recipes, serves their food to different audiences.
The outcome: Tastier food and maybe a Michelin star!
The transcriber- Practices transcribing at different cadences, listening to different accents and intonations.
The outcome: Transcribes more fluidly and proficiently.
Once you embrace that in order for you to get fitter, your training needs to progress, it gets a lot easier and things start to happen quickly!
How to progress your training:
If you were to lift the same weight every week for the next year, you would not continually make progress. Just as if you were to run the same 5km loop at the same pace every week for the next year, you would not run much faster or be able to run a marathon.
We need to expose the body to new training stimulus to allow for that adaptation, and lucky for us, we have 2 areas of our training that we can progress: Endurance and strength training. This is concurrent training and circles back to our SAID principle.
The way we can progress both is 2-fold:
1. Volume:
This could be anything from longer runs/rides to more training sessions throughout the week. Or, more sets and reps, more strength sessions in the week.
2 Intensity:
Think: faster paces, higher power output, intervals, lifting a heavier weight, lifting with more intent…
Want to improve your speed?
Intervals are a fantastic way of doing so, but you need endurance and the strength in your body to be able to handle that intensity loads and be able to carry that speed over your chosen distance.
Want to improve your power?
Power = force x velocity.
How quickly, and with how much force, we can move an object (the pedals, our legs) is our power output. We can use both our strength training and our endurance training to support his adaptation and become more powerful. Think about the difference between grinding your way through a set of 5 goblet squats compared to powerfully exploding upwards for 5 goblet squats. However, our power is capped by the first part that equation: force, aka our strength. We need to develop maximum strength to express more force.
Want to reduce your risk of injury post rehab?
You need a progressive strength training plan that goes beyond banded corrective exercises and instead stresses the body in new ways to adapt to those specific demands. That doesn’t mean stability and corrective exercises go out the window, we just need progression.
What this doesn’t mean is going headfirst into one area and letting all others fall by the wayside, nor trying to add in loads of new training stimulus at once, eg. adding intervals, hill work, tempo work, strength training all at once.
We also absolutely must NOT ignore recovery. Recovery is vitally important to allow for continual progress. We need to give allow our bodies time to recover in order to adapt to the specific demands we have placed on it. We cannot push volume and intensity week on week without allowing for this. We allow for recovery through changes to our training with deload weeks, training periodization and keeping on top of our pillars of athleticism: sleep, nutrition, hydration, stress management.
How to improve your fitness for zero extra hours to your training week:
Last week we saw the REPS IN RESERVE tool in practice and how we can use it to gauge our strength sessions and know when to challenge the weight. That is a fantastic way to improve your your fitness for ZERO extra hours to your training week.
So many runners and cyclists get frustrated with their progress because they think they need more hours in the week to get fitter.
Whilst, it would certainly be nice, you don’t need more hours in the week, you need to do what you’re already doing, only better.
It takes zero extra training hours to challenge your body with new stimulus:
Walk into every training session with a focus/plan.
Swap a run/ride for a strength training session.
Train to different metrics: pace/power/RPE.
Go on a shorter, more intense run/ride.
Go on a different route with more hills.
Go on a longer run/ride.
Don’t stop at the café.
Attack up those hills.
No more holding back and no more settling for less!
Have a great day!
Thank you!
Emma x
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