The Basic Week Philosophy

For All Athlete Types

John Hellemans (in black) racing AG Worlds in Vancouver. John used the 4-4-4 formula to win many amateur titles.

John and I started by introducing the Basic Week for a Recreational Athlete.

We then gave you an example of the sort of week required for an amateur athlete who wishes to compete at an event.

Today, I want to step back from the specifics of week structuring and discuss how to apply the Basic Week Philosophy.

The Philosophy

As John outlined, there is a minimum weekly frequency, and volume, in order to…

• Maintain

• Progress

• Compete

To those, I’d add another level => Winning

That’s going to result in a table that looks like this…

Single sport athletes, remember we’re working with three sports here. So we’re looking at anywhere from 9 to 18 sessions per week.

The correct “minimum” frequency depends on many factors, including:

• Your Life Structure

• Your Race Goals

• Your Capacity To Recover

As well, there are diminishing returns as athletes move up the performance hierarchy. Each level requiring more commitment given, than performance gained.

Let’s repeat that, differently:

• More sessions result in smaller gains

• Two many sessions result in excessive fatigue and maladaptation

So the optimal strategy is to set the Basic Week under what the athlete can tolerate. From this well-tolerated baseline, the athlete can cycle load upwards.

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Minimum Frequency

Minimum frequency applies in two important situations:

• The Off-Season

• When Pushing Load

No Long Gaps - if you want to improve at something, then do it year-round. Swim, bike, run, strength… it is much easier to “stack the seasons” if you maintain minimum year-round frequency.

Hit Your Minimums - drop volume in your “favorite” and “focus” sports to ensure you hit the minimum frequency in all your sports. Swimming, and running, can be ignored at bike-focused camps. An easy fix is to do-it-first. Start your day with a short session of your “off-sport.”

John adds, in your typical week:

Focus on priority discipline(s) first (often that is in the morning) and do the lower priority sessions later in the day, if you run out of time, it matters less.

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Multisport Days

As we outlined in Combination Workouts, a training triathlon is an effective endurance session.

• Single-sport athletes can embrace this principle by using crosstraining to create well-tolerated long days.

• Multisport athletes can combine shorter sessions to make is easier to hit minimum frequency targets.

Three favorite examples:

1. Runners: A bike-run session where the bike is used to create a total session duration equivalent to the athelte’s running race.

2. Recreational Triathletes: Alternating bike-run days with swim days.

   1. This gives a swim, a bike and a run within a 24 hour period.

   2. It can also be used to create a lower-body rest day (swim only).

3. Competitive Triathletes: Using multiple swim-bike-run days within a training week.

Starting, and ending, the microcycle¹ with a Multisport day takes the pressure of the workout frequency within the rest of the training block.

An example for a competitive amateur:

• Tuesday - SBR, separate workouts, faster or specific work

• Wednesday - Swim

• Thursday - Brick, strength

• Friday - Swim

• Saturday - SBR, training triathlon, endurance

• Sunday/Monday - lighter

In the above, Tuesday (Day 1) and Saturday (Day 5) are the key training days. Days 2-4 can be adjusted based on athlete status.

John adds, in your typical week:

For Runners: Use cycling as a recovery exercise on harder running days or rest days.

For Recreational Athletes: There is nothing wrong with bike-run days alternated with swim days. I usually alternate a swim-run day with a bike day, as biking is the most time-consuming.

For Competitive Athletes: In practice, in the weeks leading up to an event, we alternate: a weekly race-specific swim-bike session and a race-specific bike-run session.

To illustrate, Tuesday would be a race-specific session.

• It would alternate between a swim-bike (Week 1) and a bike-run (Week 2). Race specific brick sessions are hard, so doing both options in a single week can be too much.

• Two brick sessions per week is sufficient when one session contains a race component, e.g. ride 90 mins with Zone 3 up hills, then run off the bike include 4 minutes Zone 4, 8 minutes Zone 3, the rest Zone 2.

• Build on that for the next bike-run 2 weeks later.

Another example is Bike-Run Reps. These can be alternated with a race specific swim-bike session, e.g. 400m freestyle followed by 6 min on bike trainer and repeat that x4, descending, Zone 2, Zone 3, Zone 4 and Zone 4+. Warm up is 1km Swim, Cooldown on bike.

The second brick session in a week is the more aerobic SBR on Saturday

However, if the bike-run and swim-bike are mainly aerobic you can fit both in a week as well as SBR on Saturday. I bike to the pool, swim, bike home via the hills and boom, 2 sessions done, if staying aerobic recovery will be within 24 hours, if some specific race pace in there recovery will be more like 48 hours.

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The Big Picture

Remember general principles:

1. Do work when ready to absorb.

2. Start & finish each microcycle with a key loading day.

3. Maintain mid-cycle flexibility to adjust loading based on athlete status.²

Save your best performance for race day.

Back To Table of Contents

1. Microcycle : typically a week but can be 4 to 14 days duration based on an athlete’s schedule, experience and recovery status.

2. See our section on Fatigue & Readiness for ideas on how to track day-to-day. See John’s Chapter on The Tired Athlete for more information, especially his section on Prevention & Monitoring.