If you're going to focus on building your aerobic metabolism, focus on building your aerobic metabolism.
Don't give your body mixed messages!
2/ Find joy in the process!
99% of your athletic life is training and it's likely the epic training experiences that you'll remember most.
You have limited control over whether you win or lose a given event, but you have complete control over crafting those experiences.
3/ Fuel the work!
"Aerobic season is food season!"
I think there are a lot of athletes who don't realize that the thing truly limiting the amount of training they can do is simply that they don't eat enough. Either through fear of weight gain or just poor planning.
4/ *After* the aerobic base is laid, a period of high volume, intensity controlled (via lactate monitoring) threshold work.
It is not difficult to see the parallels with the similarly successful Norwegian approach here.
High volumes of work at just below the lactate threshold
5/ Finally, use that massive work capacity that you've built to push the top end performance to new levels
Don't 'muddy the waters' here. Train very hard to push the top end or very EZ (to recover so that you can push it again!)
This is the sexy training but you have to earn it
6/ Don't stay with the anaerobic work too long!
Even if you have a massive aerobic base, your time at the peak is limited. You have to return to "base camp" periodically to keep topping up your reserves.
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* Up to a limit, providing the right altitude is used and the athlete is healthy, IME, *everyone* is a responder.
* That said, there's large variability in response to a given altitude & elevation must, therefore, be individualized according to resting SpO2 (<95%)
* The required elevation to elicit this drop in SpO2 can change with repeated exposures & even with adaptation during long exposures, therefore it's useful to have various elevation options.
While most athletes have a training plan, few have a well thought out nutritional plan.
This is a big mistake as nutrition is absolutely integral to improved performance and health!
Keeping track of your nutrition is not that hard.
Ideas to get started
1/ Categorize your current training volume. For me:
- Recovery Day ~1hrs
- Normal Loading Day: ~2hrs
- Long Day: ~4hrs
2/ Come up with appropriate energy and macro targets for each day. You may want to get your BMR tested & work with a nutritionist on this, but my *personal* targets:
- 50-100g CHO + ~100g/hr of training
- 1g/lb BW protein per day
- 0.5-1g/lb fat per day (lower end for wt loss)
The geometry that all endurance athletes need to understand (with apologies to Osler)..
A brief thread 👇
The all too common pattern...
- Athlete begins aerobic base work & is frustrated by slow rate of improvement.
- Athlete ratchets up HIT & is impressed by how quickly they improve.
- The proverbial bubble bursts and the athlete is back where they started.
We could add an additional step here...
- Athlete doesn't learn their lesson & only remembers how quickly they initially improved with HIT and so returns to it with the hope of the same improvement!
Of course, they're further down their base triangle right now, so the peak is⬇️
While it depends on definitions to each of the above, generally VT1 is defined via the ventilatory equivalents method:
"A rise in VE/VO2 *without* a rise in VE/VCO2"
In practice, this means the grade of VE goes up, the grade of VCO2 goes up but the grade of VO2 remains the same
You can see this it the VT1 point in the chart above.
- VO2 (top line) doesn't change
- VCO2 (next line) changes course & approaches VO2 line
- VE also changes gradient (slightly)