Another year has flown by—we are heading into the new year and all the challenges it will bring. Making New Year’s resolutions can be very rewarding and actually lead to significant change—however, for 99 percent of us it is just a thought that lasts a day and then is forgotten as we go about our daily lives.
Time for the next session—but you’re tired and unmotivated to head out of the door. You’re not sure if the fatigue comes from having had a stressful week at work, or if you went a bit too hard at those weekend sessions. You are a dedicated athlete who feels very guilty whenever you miss a session. At the same time, you know that training through fatigue or illness is bad for your health. So what to do?
For this scenario, The Method athletes are given a few simple guidelines to “test drive” their bodies to help decide if they ought to skip a training session on any given day.
The key? WHEN IN DOUBT … try it out!
This does NOT mean that you train when you’re sick.
But on those days when you’re unsure whether your should train, or not, The Method encourage athletes to simply try out your body to see what it tells you. Start the session with a very, very easy 20 to 30 minutes before making that call.
If you feel better, continue your session as planned. If needed, back off and take it easy later in the set if you find that you’re deteriorating.
If after that initial 20-30mins you feel the same, i.e. neither much better nor much worse, modify the session so that it places less strain on your body. For example, if you’re to do a long endurance effort, cut the duration. See how you feel later in the session before deciding if you’ll carry on. If you’re to do a lactate-tolerance session, greatly moderate both the duration and the intensity of the efforts and give yourself a lot more rest between each effort. You still engage your high-end aerobic system and fast-twitch muscle fibres, helping to maintain your accumulated fitness gains until you feel strong again.
If you feel worse after testing your body for that very easy 20-30mins, pack it in and head home. Your body’s telling you that it’s not prepared to train today; you might be fighting an impending illness or simply need to recover. Heed the warning and take the day OFF.
A stitch in time saves nine—if you’re ill or fighting illness, having a few days of rest from training will prevent a prolonged forced break from training and racing.
Use these simple guidelines to judge the most appropriate response on days when you feel sluggish or off. Often, you’ll have a great training session on a day you might otherwise have written off.
And on days you feel great?! Go for it! Just remember, the goal is not to deliver hammer blows to the body, but to generate a long-term, consistent training stimulus.
Illness
Try as we might, there is simply no way to avoid getting sick once in awhile. For these times, The Method stipulates you take time off and recover. Remember: With The Method everything is relative. When you’re sick, the body is weakened and needs to recover from training. The goal is to achieve maximum, effective consistency.
Rest
With all that said, The Method doesn’t set in stone when you’re to take rest from training. Unfortunately, this heretical notion of The Method has led to more misinterpretation than any other of its principles.
Life has a funny way of throwing curve balls at us: work, family and community commitments often cause us to miss out on training. Rather than worrying about missed training when this happens, take comfort from the fact that you’ve been training consistently and diligently until then. Your days off due to commitments elsewhere become your rest days from training, and are automatically suited to your life schedule since they come when you truly need the time elsewhere, rather than when a schedule hammers them out.
You can also look at it this way: No schedule can accurately predict what you’ll be doing each day for months down the road. Quite simply, what The Method tells an athlete is rest when you need it.
Many amateur athletes spend the better part of their day physically recovering from their training at a desk or otherwise in their daily work. The Method accepts that most amateur athletes do not have the luxury of a daily routine dedicated to sport alone.
For this reason, The Method distinguishes between mental rest and physical rest. For example, a stressful work-travel day on which you can’t train may cause you much mental fatigue while your physical training systems have been resting. Consequently, that stressful day counts as a rest day, even though you might be tired from it.
Keep in mind that everything is relative in The Method training. The hormonal context in which The Method places you determines how you ought to train subsequently. If the stressful travel day
comes on top of a lot of other stress in your life, it can create a significant catabolic experience for your body. In this situation, The Method’s approach advises you to avoid endurance work or excessive lactate-tolerance training immediately following or during this (or other) high-stress period.
After taking a day off, be smart when getting back into the training. If circumstances required you to rest, use these simple rules to get back on the plan:
* Add some volume to the start of the workout in order to kick start your body again before trying any intensity. You don’t want to go too hard while being too rested. Rather, add volume to tire yourself a little bit without pushing the intensity. Then do your intervals. For example, add 30 minutes of easy running before the main set.
* If you are a performance-oriented athlete, then take an easy day in each of the sports after your day off. The reason is that you probably needed the day off due to deep fatigue levels, and the extra bit of easy training will help you recover back to normal fatigue levels. Then you’re most likely good to go again!
Learn how to read your body and stay consistent to your plan!
Enjoy your training,
the ironguides team
ironguides is the leading Lifestyle Facilitation company for athletes of all abilities. We provide coaching and training services, plans and programs, as well training education, health and fitness products to help you learn and live a healthy lifestyle. Come get fit with one of our monthly training subscriptions, event-specific training plans, coaching services, or a triathlon training camp in an exotic location! ironguides also provides Corporate Health services including Corporate Triathlons, Healthy Living retreats and speaking engagements. At ironguides, your best is our business!
–
Train with ironguides!
Personalized Online Coaching: Starting at USD190/month
Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months
Event based training plans:
Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)
Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)
Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
If you have a mid-year Ironman race, there is no better time to start building your routine for the long Ironman training ahead. This is the base period, and if you are an intermediate athlete, and have not lost much fitness in the off-season, this phase will allow you to immediately jump in a formal structured training plan. For intermediate athletes who have been doing this for years and have several ironman finishes on their resume, it is important not to start early and immediately build it up, to prevent an early peak and burnout prior to your A race.
In contrast, if you are an ironman newbie, it is imperative to train the body first before jumping to the formal 20-week ironman training ahead. That means a 8-12 weeks of basic training that will serve as a foundation in developing the motor skills needed in building up in intensity in later phases of the training.
Since more than 50% of your ironman training will be spent on the saddle, we will give out 3 key bike workouts in this building-a-routine phase of the 20-week ironman training plan. The repetitive nature of this period will teach your body to acquire the motor skills and improved strength that you will definitely need in the build stage of the program. The following workouts will be your staple for the 1st 4 weeks of your base period or Building-A-Routine part of your Bike Leg ironman training:
1. Bike Power Intervals
On stationary bike, do:
20min easy warm up
Full session: 20x POWER Intervals [1min at 40-50 cadence HARD RESISTANCE / with 1min VERY EASY recovery]
Cooldown: 10min EASY
Tip: Make each effort ALL OUT against VERY HIGH resistance! The cadence should be low (40-50 rpm per leg per minute) because you can’t push any harder because the resistance is so high! We are aiming for rubbery legs.
Note: Build up to the full session: On your 1st week, start with 5x interval. By the 4th week you should be able to do the full session. You can also do this interval set on a steep hill, seated on your bike with a very gentle touch of the brakes to stop forward momentum. This session works your cycling-specific strength without stressing your aerobic system too hard – so it’s important that you make each effort count! If you find your knees are sore after this, raise your bike seat slightly and ensure you use ice (see http://www.ironguides.net/all-about-ice/) and keep your muscles loose between sessions with gentle stretching and easy self-massage or a treatment from a masseur.
2. Weekly Time Trial Effort
60min on road or stationary, as:
20min easy w/u
Main Set:
WEEK 1: 60min easy cycling on stationary or outside
WEEK 2: 75min moderate cycling on stationary or outside
WEEK 3: 6x [3min FAST / 2min easy]
WEEK 4: 6x [5min FAST / 1min easy] •
Ride in Heavy Gear, cadence 70-80 • Easy gear for VERY EASY
Recovery 20min easy cooldown
Tip: You will build this, the week’s only high-intensity session on the bike, into a weekly Time Trial effort. When it says ride Fast – make it count!!! This is your only opportunity all week to push a hard time trial effort. You can ride this on a stationary or on the road, but try to hit a known, measured course that you can test yourself on once every 3-4 weeks after Week 4.
3. Long Bike
WEEK 1: 120-180min easy and flat
WEEK 2: 120-180min easy and flat
WEEK 3: 180min as 120min easy / 60min moderate
WEEK 4: 190min as 90min easy / 90min moderate
Tip: Push a bigger gear and keep your muscle tension high – but not maxed out! Aim for cadence around 70-80 – this will mean pushing quite hard at times.
This bike workouts if done in the first month of your ironman training will adapt your body and help you cope with the more demanding phase of the plan. The key tip here is to build it slowly. If you missed a workout, no need to make it up or add to the next work-out.
Enjoy your training!
Time for the next session—but you’re tired and unmotivated to head out of the door. You’re not sure if the fatigue comes from having had a stressful week at work, or if you went a bit too hard at those weekend sessions. You are a dedicated athlete who feels very guilty whenever you miss a session. At the same time, you know that training through fatigue or illness is bad for your health. So what to do?
For this scenario, The Method athletes are given a few simple guidelines to “test drive” their bodies to help decide if they ought to skip a training session on any given day.
The key? WHEN IN DOUBT … try it out!
This does NOT mean that you train when you’re sick.
But on those days when you’re unsure whether your should train, or not, The Method encourage athletes to simply try out your body to see what it tells you. Start the session with a very, very easy 20 to 30 minutes before making that call.
If you feel better, continue your session as planned. If needed, back off and take it easy later in the set if you find that you’re deteriorating.
If after that initial 20-30mins you feel the same, i.e. neither much better nor much worse, modify the session so that it places less strain on your body. For example, if you’re to do a long endurance effort, cut the duration. See how you feel later in the session before deciding if you’ll carry on. If you’re to do a lactate-tolerance session, greatly moderate both the duration and the intensity of the efforts and give yourself a lot more rest between each effort. You still engage your high-end aerobic system and fast-twitch muscle fibres, helping to maintain your accumulated fitness gains until you feel strong again.
If you feel worse after testing your body for that very easy 20-30mins, pack it in and head home. Your body’s telling you that it’s not prepared to train today; you might be fighting an impending illness or simply need to recover. Heed the warning and take the day OFF.
A stitch in time saves nine—if you’re ill or fighting illness, having a few days of rest from training will prevent a prolonged forced break from training and racing.
Use these simple guidelines to judge the most appropriate response on days when you feel sluggish or off. Often, you’ll have a great training session on a day you might otherwise have written off.
And on days you feel great?! Go for it! Just remember, the goal is not to deliver hammer blows to the body, but to generate a long-term, consistent training stimulus.
Illness
Try as we might, there is simply no way to avoid getting sick once in awhile. For these times, The Method stipulates you take time off and recover. Remember: With The Method everything is relative. When you’re sick, the body is weakened and needs to recover from training. The goal is to achieve maximum, effective consistency.
Rest
With all that said, The Method doesn’t set in stone when you’re to take rest from training. Unfortunately, this heretical notion of The Method has led to more misinterpretation than any other of its principles.
Life has a funny way of throwing curve balls at us: work, family and community commitments often cause us to miss out on training. Rather than worrying about missed training when this happens, take comfort from the fact that you’ve been training consistently and diligently until then. Your days off due to commitments elsewhere become your rest days from training, and are automatically suited to your life schedule since they come when you truly need the time elsewhere, rather than when a schedule hammers them out.
You can also look at it this way: No schedule can accurately predict what you’ll be doing each day for months down the road. Quite simply, what The Method tells an athlete is rest when you need it.
Many amateur athletes spend the better part of their day physically recovering from their training at a desk or otherwise in their daily work. The Method accepts that most amateur athletes do not have the luxury of a daily routine dedicated to sport alone.
For this reason, The Method distinguishes between mental rest and physical rest. For example, a stressful work-travel day on which you can’t train may cause you much mental fatigue while your physical training systems have been resting. Consequently, that stressful day counts as a rest day, even though you might be tired from it.
Keep in mind that everything is relative in The Method training. The hormonal context in which The Method places you determines how you ought to train subsequently. If the stressful travel day
comes on top of a lot of other stress in your life, it can create a significant catabolic experience for your body. In this situation, The Method’s approach advises you to avoid endurance work or excessive lactate-tolerance training immediately following or during this (or other) high-stress period.
After taking a day off, be smart when getting back into the training. If circumstances required you to rest, use these simple rules to get back on the plan:
* Add some volume to the start of the workout in order to kick start your body again before trying any intensity. You don’t want to go too hard while being too rested. Rather, add volume to tire yourself a little bit without pushing the intensity. Then do your intervals. For example, add 30 minutes of easy running before the main set.
* If you are a performance-oriented athlete, then take an easy day in each of the sports after your day off. The reason is that you probably needed the day off due to deep fatigue levels, and the extra bit of easy training will help you recover back to normal fatigue levels. Then you’re most likely good to go again!
Learn how to read your body and stay consistent to your plan!
Enjoy your training,
Vinnie Santana,
ironguides Head Coach
ironguides is the leading Lifestyle Facilitation company for athletes of all abilities. We provide coaching and training services, plans and programs, as well training education, health and fitness products to help you learn and live a healthy lifestyle. Come get fit with one of our monthly training subscriptions, event-specific training plans, coaching services, or a triathlon training camp in an exotic location! ironguides also provides Corporate Health services including Corporate Triathlons, Healthy Living retreats and speaking engagements. At ironguides, your best is our business!
–
Train with ironguides!
Personalized Online Coaching: Starting at USD190/month
Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months
Event based training plans:
Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)
Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)
Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
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