As endurance athletes, sometimes we get into the mindset of “more is more”. While there are times during the year to train longer hours with limited recovery, this should still be done in a structured way to ensure progress is actually taking place. One of the worst things you can do as an athlete is to get into the mindset that I always have to be doing more.  That isn’t the case and over-training can often lead to weaker results.  The content below is just a snapshot of why recovery and rest is so important to your progress as an athlete. 

Rest = Strength Building
    While at rest (sleep), your body recovers in a way that isn’t fully maximized if continuously moving or exercising. During your deep sleep cycle, the natural hormone (Growth Hormone) is released and allows your muscles to recover and body to heal from training. Have you ever heard of professional cyclists/runners/triathletes taking their sleep very seriously? Its because without this sleep and rest, they couldn’t handle the training load or their body wouldn’t adapt fully to the stressors being put on it!  Sleep is very important and if you aren’t getting quality sleep then you're not fully maximizing your training. 

Over-training Injuries
    Beyond the sleep, many athletes fall into the training rut of always looking to do more. This is a common mistake made by many athletes looking to get into fantastic shape.  This is often the case for athletes that don’t track training load or any metrics. While I am all for a free-spirit and letting your body tell you how to run/ride… the mind can often play tricks on these athletes and tell them that they can handle more. As the athlete continues to train and mentally push for results, they don’t allow their muscles the days to recover and therefore miss the entire point of training. We train so we can rest, we rest so we can get stronger. One of the largest side-effects of not resting is injuries and this is often where you find the running injuries with athletes. They didn’t track their training load, their mind told them to keep pushing, and their body broke down. This is common but it doesn’t have to be! Learn how to track training load and learn when to recover!  Recovery is when you actually get stronger!

Burnout
    While sleep is important and overtraining injuries are painful, burnout may be the worst thing possible for any athlete. As competitive individuals we are constantly seeking an upper hand in any situation and that is no different for athletes. We look to train more so we can be faster. When we get fast we want to keep getting stronger and we have these unrealistic expectations for ourselves. I want athletes to read this part carefully… ITS NATURAL TO HAVE AN OFF-SEASON… AND NEEDED!  If you are constantly maintaining a high level of fitness, your body will eventually push back and you won’t be able to maintain your results. With more training you will start to stress yourself out and question why are you even training if you can’t get faster. This is a slippery slope and will eventually lead to burnout and not wanting to ride your bike or run.  Unrealistic expectations made entirely by you due to your lack of rest and recovery. 

Conclusion
    This is just a small glimpse into why rest and recovery may be the most important part of your training. It will allow you to adapt to your training and actually see the gains. It will allow your muscles to recover to limit risk of over-training injuries. It will also allow you to enjoy the rest days and relieve some mental stress from your training which could lead to burnout. For any athlete seeking top end performance, it is going to be a process over many years. You can not go from beginner to pro in 1 season and your training should not intend to do so. A well structured training plan will make you much faster in 1 year, but that is only due to the specific builds and rest needed to adapt. For optimal success, trust the rest and recovery process for 3-7 years and be amazed with just how strong you can become as an athlete. 


For more information, Jeremy Brown of MindRight Multisport and I will be hosting a google hangout Wednesday June 1, 2016 @ 10AM Est.  See our Facebook pages for the link. 


For questions, please email me at [email protected]

     Surely if you’re in the endurance world you have heard of training weeks that range from 18-30 hours and all the time athletes are putting into their training. Odds are that you have often told yourself “If I had just 10 more hours a week I would be really fast too!”. I’m here to tell you that you don’t always have to train 18-30 hours a week. You can get exceptionally fast on 6-10 hours. While I do realize that big hours can help for most, it also depends on how long athletes have been in the sport. 

Disclaimer: There are methods of coaching that do call for long hours of training and depending on your race goals, you may need to shoot for over 10 hours/week. However, in my years of coaching Crit Champions to an Ironman World Championship qualifier, each of these athletes has averaged between 6-10 hours/week. 

How Can I Get Fast on Less Time? 
    Does work and family time leave you crunched for training time? Good! You need balance in your life if you’re going to be a successful athlete. How we make you fast on less time isn’t tricky and its not gimmicky. Simply put, it is structured and everything has a purpose. The foundation of our training principles is consistency of training (frequency) and aiming for 6-7 days/week of training. When first starting out, it isn’t about the power of your ride or the length of your run, its simply about getting into the routine of training 6-7 days a week. When you get into this habit (even if its just 45 min/day), your results will start to trend upwards.  

Whats Next? 
    Once you have the 6-7 days a week of training in place, you start to add more specifics required to meet the race demands. This can include either volume or intensity.  Due to time being an issue for most people, we will start with intensity that is specific to the athletes needs. This starts out slow at usually 1 or 2 days a week with plenty of rest between. As the athlete progresses, the frequency of their intensity will increase (on the bike only, running intensity too often can lead to injury). Now the athlete is starting to get in more quality with their limited time and the fitness/results continue to progress. 

Another Step?
    When you have the frequency and the specific intensity workouts in place, we may add some longer days but still keep total training time for the week at just 10 hours. This is the biggest part of the season and usually right before race season for the athletes. If the athlete is given a heads up in advance, they can generally plan for a 3-5 hour workout once or twice a month. By setting up a periodized training schedule and knowing when the big days are coming, it can give the athlete plenty of time to schedule it in with work or family. As these big days are added in, the athletes fitness continues to trend up and they start to near their peak form. 

Final Prep Phase
    You started with the 6-7 days a week easy for low amounts of time. You started to add in some intensity and build your bodies ability to recover from these efforts. Then you were able to mix in some bigger days and stress your body again. Now comes the last part. The peak is when you ramp up training at a high rate for 1-2 weeks and completely crush your body. This again can only be 10 hours if you ramp up your intensity and keep volume up. Following this overreach for 1-2 weeks, you will go into a taper and be in your best shape for top end race results.  There is nothing tricky to this, it is simply structured and has a purpose. 

Real Results
    The amount of time training reflects the average per week for each athlete over a 180 day period. The best results for each athlete come in the 6-9 month time window of when they started their yearly training build under Dalzell Coaching. 

Athlete A: 6 hours 31 minutes/week - FTP 260 to 315  (cyclist only)
Athlete B: 9 hours 08 minutes/week - FTP 330 to 375 and 5 min from 380 to 466 (cyclist) 
Athlete C: 6 hours 20 minutes/week - FTP from 270 to 318 (triathlete)
Athlete D: 3 hours 4 minutes/week - From 2:02 half marathon to 3:40 full (Boston Qualifier)
Athlete E: 7 hours 52 minutes/week - FTP from 275 to 305, PR on 25k run (Triathlete)
Athlete F: 4 hours 49 minutes/week - Sprint from 1120 to 1355 and 1 min from 653 to 713 (cyclist)
Athlete G: 6 hours 7 minutes/week - FTP from 280 to 350 (cyclist)

    These are just a handful of results the athletes have seen. While some of them are new to Dalzell Coaching, others have been on for multiple years. However, regardless of the time they have been training, we have always maintained balance in their life by keeping training averages to under 10 hours a week. The athletes with the best results are those that have been consistent in their training over multiple years and maintain well structured builds each season.

Conclusion
    I’m not here to tell you to train less, and I’m not here to say this is the only way. I simply just want to show you that if you are crunched for time, you can still improve as an athlete. While there should be long slow days mixed into any plan, it should still serve a purpose for the bigger plan as a whole. If you can start to structure training with a purpose you will be amazed at how much progress you can make on such limited time. For those athletes that do very long course racing such as Ironman or Ultra, you still need your big weeks mixed in, but those training plans as well should include structure and a purpose to ensure progress is happening. 

To hear more on this topic, Jeremy Brown of MindRight Multisport will be hosting a Google Hangout session with me Wednesday at 10 AM Eastern. Follow the link in the Dalzell Coaching or MRM Facebook page on Wednesday to listen in.

For any questions, please email me at [email protected]

    As athletes begin to excel in any sport, they will almost always be learning training tactics as they advance. This would lead one to believe that as they get to a certain point, they can surely maintain their fitness on their own. While this is true, I also know that athletes who excel in sports want to continually get better. This is where a coach can come into play for these reasons below. 

Keeping an Objective Approach
    One of the hardest things for any athlete to do is look at their training objectively. Too many times I’ve heard an athlete say sentences such as “I trained really hard Thursday, so I can probably take Friday or Saturday off”. They begin to make deals with themselves and justify their lack of focus or lack of structured training. For this reason alone, a coach who can look at their training objectively can make a world of difference. Having a coach to hold you accountable may be the biggest benefit to any aspiring athlete. 

Continually Seeking Advanced Methods
    While you are surely researching your job as a teacher, marketing expert, physical therapist, or company CEO, your coach dedicates his/her time to researching exercise physiology studies, new equipment, and training methods. If your coach is taking his/her job seriously, then they are going to be up to speed on the most efficient means of training and increasing performance. This will save the athlete from doing long research of their own and instead, the athlete can put that time back into their own training. Simply put, having a coach can help make your time in the sport more efficient.

Managing Life, Training, Responsibilities 
    When an athlete is training themselves, they often have to wear many hats at the same time and continually juggle their schedule. One of the biggest impacts I hear from many athletes is how much  time they have in their schedule due to having a coach with a set training calendar. The coach can objectively look at your work schedule, family commitments on weekends, race selections, and piece together a plan that allows for racing goals to be met without sacrificing other responsibilities in life. By having a coach, you can focus on your training when it happens, but still have plenty of time to manage all of the other important aspects of your life. 

Understanding When to Push, When to Recover
    From keeping an objective approach, training efficiently, and keeping your life in balance, a coach will develop a plan to push your limits and then recover when necessarily. Many self-coached athletes get into the mindset that more is always better. This just isn’t the case. When you have someone that is dedicated to monitoring your training load, you are continually being analyzed for whether you can keep pushing your training or if its time to back off and recover. What most self-coached athletes get in the habit of is chasing a number and wanting it as fast as possible. This number chasing can lead to over-training and eventually injury or burnout. By having a coach in place, the athlete will methodically advance towards their training goals in a safe and efficient manner while also maintaining the balance of their day-to-day lives. This sort of balance is key to success and something that is OFTEN overlooked by self-coached athletes. 

Conclusion
    Is coaching for everyone? Maybe not. However, I do know that if you are serious about your training/performance then a coach will do nothing but help enhance your abilities. I know from a personal standpoint that when I get ready for a big event I want to do well at, I seek the abilities of a coach to help keep me honest and moving forward. Regardless of how much we may know or how much we may help others, we often need someone else to analyze our training from an objective angle to ensure that we are progressing as athletes. Hiring someone who can objectively look at your training mixed with your responsibilities of life may be the most powerful thing you can do for your athletic career. 


If you have any questions, please reach out to me at [email protected]