Get Stronger and More Resilient in the Endurance Phase of Training

The majority of Northern Hemisphere athletes face an interesting training conundrum at this time of the season. Athletes are ramping up early season training, aiming to build endurance and create the 'platform of base fitness' for the season ahead. Often they are limited to the short hours of daylight and cold weather that the season brings. For many, this signifies the least enjoyable time of training, despite their excitement and motivation for the big season ahead. "You need to build your base!" - this is the message most athletes hear. What this has traditionally meant is that one must place a strict limit on global intensity, keeping heart rate low in many sessions, and aim to accumulate hours of swimming, riding and running at low intensity. Athletes think that this type of training will improve mechanical efficiency, fat utilization and will create a fitness platform that will maximize the benefits of the higher intensity training coming later in the season.

We know that this type of training approach does not make sense for the typical triathlete nor does it acknowledge the reality of most people's lives. Not only are you committing to long, boring hours on the trainer but the salt in the wound is that you are not following the optimal route to performance development.

PURPLE PATCH APPROACH TO ENDURANCE PHASE OF TRAINING:  

1. Review the training behaviors of the dedicated amateur triathlete. We know that the vast majority of athletes never lose their 'fitness base', as they never take enough time away from structured training to experience a full fitness decline. The majority of amateur triathletes take a few weeks of lower-stress training at the end of the season, with most of them remaining somewhat active during that time. This type of continuous training is vastly different behavior from the triathletes of yesteryear, who would step away from the sport for up to two months. These athletes required a steady rebuild of general fitness, before layering hard work, so some 'base building' made sense. Today's triathlete typically requires a few weeks of build before baseline fitness returns to a stable place.
2. Reflect on the focus of the middle and back end of the previous season. Triathlon is an endurance sport and with more than half the season typically focusing on race-specific training intensity, the athletes have just spent months and months preparing for races. The training for these races includes a massive amount of fitness base building, as the outside riding and running miles are endurance focused. With the fitness base firmly established in the summer months, the athlete finishes the season, has a little break, and within a few weeks ramps back up into training. With this approach, most triathletes are fit once again early in the year, with that 'magical fitness base' still intact.
3. Think about the race plan for the current year. Realize that at this phase of the season, the athlete is likely a long way from key races. Therefore, the Endurance Phase of training presents an opportunity to focus on overall athlete development, and to improve areas that are less directly related to race specificity.  

Benefits of High Intensity in the Endurance Phase of Training:

• Maximal intensity training: To improve overall cardiovascular capacity and the ability of the muscle to do work.
• Progressive 'end of range' strength-endurance bike work: Very low rpm and very high rpm higher intensity intervals on the bike. This type of work develops capacity and range of operations and it promotes resilience and improves your awareness of the tools you have available on your bike.
• Strength and high intensity hill running: We mix very short and high power hill running with progressively building efforts on the treadmill. Beyond acting as a driver and educator to proper posture and form, we increase the muscles' capacity to do work and improve strength-resilience.
• Short interval and max effort swimming: Many swimmers struggle to connect with the force that is required to create propulsion in the water, as they don't have the particular strength or capacity to 'hold water' and move it back with high force. Swimming up and down easy, working on endurance, won't help. Instead, we blend lots of short-interval endurance work with maximum effort fast intervals. This approach to swimming is introduced to retain focus, intent and proper rhythm and force.

You can see what bubbles out of these few examples of the building phase of training: high intensity. While we absolutely progress fitness and endurance, we don't achieve this through simple accumulation of long hours at low intensity. Instead, we create a sustainable training program for you, focusing on developing endurance through the patient layering of training while also focusing on training that improves your overall capacity in each discipline.

This is your platform

By creating a platform of shorter and higher intensity training sessions, you will enter the spring (and its longer and warmer days) with a progression of capacity. When you do begin to layer on that all important endurance training, you will experience an optimal yield of physiological adaptations. Add to this that your winter training has been fresh, different and challenging through a very different lens, you will avoid getting stale, miss those pesky and boring low intensity hours on the trainer, and retain motivation throughout the season.

Fitness is seldom the limiter for athletes. We need to keep mixing it up, keep it fresh, and ensure you arrive at your races fit, fast and resilient.

Cheers,

Matt Dixon