The Physics of Performance
Block Periodization & Dynamic Loading
May was my first 100+ hour training month in a long time.
Both volume and intensity work, but only if we tolerate them. Tolerating requires giving ourselves the opportunity to adapt to stress. Getting tired is the easy part. Most athletes love to train. The challenge lies with adaptation.
Hopefully, this article will give you ideas to get more benefit from your training. You don’t need to be training like a pro to benefit from what follows. I’ve been using these principles since my first season back, when I was training in the 12-15 hours per week range. My results have been exceptional.
Learning To Race vs Learning To Train
Last week’s article explained a progression for Ironman racing:
Establish general capacity.
Benchmark in low-priority races and lab testing.
Improve specific capacity with race simulation workouts.
The race simulation workout was explained as a case study. The goal being to set ceilings underneath which we operate on race day.
The case study was about learning how to race. Today, we discuss how to train.
Hallmarks of Effective Loading
To perform better we need to do more training…
…and adapt from that training
…while keeping our lives in order
…for a long time
Do More - Adapt - Stability - Time
Half My Days Are Easy: If you look at May (top of the article) you will notice slightly more than half of the days are easy days. Easy being a low stress day, in the bottom half of the distribution.
As we gain fitness, and come into race shape, it is tempting to reduce the number of easy days.
Don’t.
Overcoming The Compulsion To Train: We need our easy days for two main reasons:
The fitter we become, the greater the stress required to move the needle.
Greater stress requires increased attention to training response. Put another way, if we are giving ourselves more stress then we better be darn we aren’t simply getting more tired. We need to see improvements.
If you are training hard and plateaued then you are doing more than required. Further improvements will require you to shed chronic fatigue and set up recovery minimums.
My Recovery Rules
Two back-to-back easy day every week.
Two back-to-back days off running every week.
Half my days are easy.
Unload running every third week.
Deep unload once a year (four weeks).
Shallow unload whenever I suspect I’ve gone stale (two weeks).
Like most top amateurs (and elites), my challenges lie on the recovery/adaptation side of my program.
The Combination of Load & Intensity is powerful and risky: Use it sparingly.
In the section on Setting The Duration of Blocks, I told you to keep your Race Specific Block short.
I made the point that most readers will get the best result from continuing an Endurance & Strength focus.
The intensity component of their program coming from low-priority events and race simulation workouts.
Most athletes underestimate their capacity to tolerate race specific stress. Their challenging training lifts them initially, then they go stale. A shorter Race Specific block reduces the risk of going flat before your key event.
Load, Stress and Strain
Two concepts for competitive athletes to apply:
Low Stress Doesn’t Mean Low Volume
High Stress Doesn’t Mean High Load
Low Stress: John Hellemans was the first coach I heard say, “Elites Can Recover While Training.”
Not just elites.
If you apply The Four Frameworks of Chapter One then you will build bottom up fitness and tolerate a lot of easy volume. Having a truly easy zone (internally, metabolically, biomechanically) unlocks the ability to recover while moving.
Early in your season, during the first Endurance & Strength block, keep volume moderate. Focus on keeping your life, and relationships in order.
Later in your season, during the Endurance & Strength block immediately prior to the Race Specific block, use easy training as supplemental, low stress volume. Make sure this supplemental volume is adaptive and does not interfere with the quality of your key loading days. You are likely to find this volume needs to be very easy with peak heart rates 50 beats below max.
High Stress: At the other end of the spectrum, highly stressful sessions need not last long. We can wreck ourselves with 10-40 minute main sets. This risk increases as our fitness improves. Much of the Race Specific Block will be spent holding yourself back when heart rate rises and you are feeling great.
The inability to accurately measure stress is an important limitation of the TrainingPeaks model. Sessions that beat us up, or create deep fatigue, don’t necessarily come with high TSS scores.
For your stressful sessions:
Notice what happens afterwards, particularly in the 24 hours post-workout.
Watch your sleep, mood, cravings and morning metrics.1
When you do the work, make sure you get the benefit.
Stephen Seiler’s video (below) goes deeper. For his latest thoughts, listen to his interview on The Real Science of Sport podcast (the best stuff was contained in the second half). Polarized training (AKA dynamic loading) is about stress management, not workout classification.
Real Talk
It’s difficult to watch some of y’all try so hard and fail to get a return on investment. To perform better, we need to be willing to change the habits holding us back.
Three simple questions:
Am I getting better?
Am I fun to be around?
Am I enjoying my training?
Number 2 is the tough one for me (and my kids let me know it).
We can answer “no” to these questions for a few days but if we fall into a pattern of stagnation in a low emotional state… then the clock is ticking and we are no fun to be around. This will lead to social isolation, low quality relationships and bad outcomes.
Rules For A Better Life
Take these and make them your own:
Two back-to-back easy day every week.
Two back-to-back days off running every week.
Half my days are easy.
Unload running at least every third week.
Deep unload once a year (four weeks).
Shallow unload whenever I suspect I’ve gone stale (two weeks).
When you build your system, here’s what you are looking for:
Feel superb at least once a week. If that’s not happening then boost your rule for easy days and drop the stress associated with your easy days. See: How Do I Know I Need An Easy Day.
Improve. A lot of my friends try too hard. The try-hard phase of our programs should be infrequent. It’s going to be a handful of sessions, focused mainly in the 2 to 7 weeks before our A-Event. Outside of that timeframe, relax and enjoy the benefits of having a fit body. Being consistent and healthy should be your North Star.
Sustainable. You are going to be doing this for the rest of your life. Long before you realize your program is unsustainable, it has become maladaptive.
Just because you are winning, doesn’t mean you are on a sustainable trajectory, or a path that will bring you lifelong satisfaction.
Endurance sport attracts personality types that are prone to unforced errors. More tomorrow, on my other publication.
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John wrote The Tired Athlete and my sections of Chapter Ten explain monitoring & loading in detail.
Your messages really ring true for me:
1) keep compounding;
2) loading is the “easy” part - what’s difficult is knowing & following through on not taking on risks that don’t have much chance of delivering;
3) monitor for signs that you might be overreaching, taking on too much risk
Those coincidentally tied in with the very next thing I read this morning:
“Skill is important in everything we do, but few of us, including the most intelligent and best educated, are possessed of skills that no one else has.
“We mistake [our surviving] for superiority.
“Yet what makes the difference between success and failure comes down to the opportunities we grasp and the risks we take. Success is often the result of choices we made a long time ago, and which set us up for life.*”
- Wolfgang Munchau
* or at least long stretches of it
I had a forced week off after my left quad tendon went on strike after a PR split squat followed the next day by a 2ht ride I should have left out. Had no more than 10 degrees leg flexion. I was horrible to be around due to zero training 😅 I think performance objectivity is really important. I had trained quite hard for my standards and Garmin was telling me my FTP was dropping. And in winter, when I did more strength and less bike, Garmin was saying FTP is up, which at the time I dismissed. But it probably says a lot about adapting or not adapting. I fall into the trap of seeing what others do and thinking my training is a joke