ironguides

One of the most important aspects of training is to ensure proper recovery between sessions and ongoing, while allowing maximum training for the goals and abilities of each athlete. With proper recovery you'll train more consistently and will be to keep the quality of your workouts higher on an ongoing basis. The Method allows athletes to recover better and train harder by incorporating rest directly into the training structure

With The Method, we focus on all aspects of the recovery: the hormonal, the aerobic and the muscle and joint recovery. All of these are very important to the success of any training program, but what we see out there is coaches and athletes overlooking the hormonal and the aerobic recovery. This article will cover the aerobic recovery aspect while hormonal recovery will be discussed in Part Two.

Endurance athletes have in mind that the bulk of their training should be on developing aerobic capacity and that there's no damaging to the body in over-doing it. Guess what? They're wrong! Taxing your aerobic system too much could be as detrimental to you as trashing your muscles/body with a hard speed set. Athletes should pay more attention to the risk of overloading the aerobic system as it is not as easily felt as with your muscles/body, where you feel muscle soreness, for example.

The Method structures your training into "Five Systems." Recovery is built into your training by rotating training through these Five Systems using the three component sports -- while one System rests the others recover. In this way you can train hard each day while resting at the same time. Explained below is an example of how we plan our workouts so as not to overload the aerobic system.

If on Thursday morning we have planned a lactate tolerance run session, we know that this workout will not only impact your body with the pounding, but will also tax your aerobic system due to the intensity and length of the workout. If we want to plan a second workout that day, this workout would be focused on keeping the heart rate down and should be done at a low intensity. A good example would be an easy swim session using paddles and pull buoys. This equipment will aid you with flotation, reducing the effort, allowing you to focus on skills while gaining a bit of strength as well. All this while keeping your heart rate down, thereby letting your aerobic system rest.

Planning the order and structure of workouts is very important and it can make a big difference in your performance and recovery. The Method has a scientific relevance that is used when planning workouts, but it's brought to you in a very simple and effective way.

Sergio