Training Beyond The Limit
Epic Camp Italy 2026
In his book, How To Skate A 10K, Nils van der Poel makes the point we should respect the Limit. The limit being the point where we fall apart and compound gains are interrupted. Check out Nils’ appendix and you’ll see he became familiar with the Limit along his journey to double Olympic Gold.
Different Limits
With respect to intensity limits, Nils wrote…
But, in order to know how hard was too hard, of course, I had to test the Limit a few times, just to be sure I wasn’t too far from it.
The art of training is testing limits without losing consistency. It takes a lot of general capacity to tolerate the stress associated with approaching intensity limits. Intensity mistakes can end a season.
With respect to volume limits, Nils wrote…
During the Aerobic season the daily performance was not so important (as what was stopping me from sticking to the Limit was not physical ability, during the low intensity period, but rather my psychological ability), and in line with that, our measurements became inferior to the joy of training.1
What prevents us from approaching our volume limits is will. Will is a function of the meaning we associate with task completion, as well as the satisfaction we receive from performing the task.
Be Thankful For Constraints
In our day to day lives, we don’t have the opportunity to come close to our Limits. We might think we’re approaching our limits but, in reality, we’re still a long way away. This is because of the life structure we’ve built around ourselves.
In a recent article, Joe Friel, relates our stress bucket to the life we have built. Joe lists the contents of our stress bucket as:
Training
Work
Family
Finances
Travel
Poor sleep
Illness
Heat or altitude
Relationship problems
And countless other challenges
Early in my triathlon career, before I’d done my first pro race, I realized I could supercharge adaptation by emptying my stress bucket of as many things as possible. I even realized that thinking slowed my adaptation - a recent article by Joel Filliol explains this phenomenon.
The training camp effect is about clearing out our stress bucket. When we empty the bucket, adaptation is supercharged. As an elite, I spent most of my year living like I was at a training camp. These days, if you follow the best Norwegian athletes then you’ll see they do the same.
Occasionally Remove All Constraints
When Scott Molina and I set up Epic Camp, the idea was to take experienced amateurs and show them they could perform at levels far above what they thought was possible. Then, and now, the camps were designed to take everyone past the Limit.
We helped many athletes take themselves to a completely different level of performance.
We also watched a few athletes to ruin their health. The Limit must be approached with respect, it is not a place to set up permanent residence.
Over the last 20 years, John Newsom has continued the tradition of Epic Camp providing athletes with an opportunity to test their limits.
Most of the camps he offers are a “lite” version. That’s the style I attended in 2024 that ended with the Alpe d’Huez triathlon. The camps are massive, but not extreme.
In 2026, John created a “full” Epic Camp. When I received the camp schedule, I fed the cycling through Grok. Nine days, 961 km, 25,000 meters of climbing. Plus the running, plus the swimming.
On top of earning points for volume, there is a tradition of special events which are races where the campers compete for bonus points. The camper with the most points “wins” the camp. The points system (outlined here) has a fascinating psychological effect on people.
The lack of distractions, the group environment, and the points system… ensures that everyone touches both their volume and intensity limits at camp, sometimes on the same day. Day Two at camp took me as deep as I can remember going outside of an Ironman marathon. You’ll find my daily dairies in the supplemental resources at the end of this chapter.
