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ironguides: Triathlon Secrets, Part 5
By Marc Becker
7/29/2008 |
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In the previous installment of Triathlon Secrets we looked at the tendency of unprepared athletes to do too much easy volume in their training, consistently training at an easy effort and relatively high volume. As explained, this can lead to a flatness in which you never fully recruit your muscles and you end up losing motor skills, strength and aerobic fitness simply because you are never working hard enough to push your body to new levels of performance. As a result, motor patterns become "lazy" and the effort required to regain or improve your performance level becomes even greater as you struggle to overcome the ineffective, inefficient movements you have trained into yourself over time.
This installment we look into the tendency of today's triathlete to take on board more and more data, while overlooking basic common sense and missing the forest for all the trees. By taking an approach that gets too granular, that focuses too much on data acquisition and getting every detail exactly right, many athletes compromise recovery time and space away from the sport.
• Too much noise means you risk "never coming down" from your training. The obsessive pursuit of anything can lead to burnout -- let alone a sport as physically demanding as triathlon. When you spend more time analyzing training data than training, you are missing the point!
• Heart rate data can be useful to back up your impressions of training and to provide more comprehensive feedback to a coach. However, you should not be spending your time trying to decipher your HR data as if it is some sort of Rosetta Stone to triathlon success.
• Power data can be very useful in providing you with more feedback on the effectiveness of your training. But again - spend your time training to a well structured plan and you will notice your improvement in each week's splits. This is precisely how the professionals at teamTBB train. Power is never referenced in any training session, but athletes such as teamTBB's Steve Larsen use it in their training to monitor improvement.
GOING MOLECULAR
As with anything, if you want to improve as a triathlete you have to pay attention to the details. You need to ensure yourself a sound training program, decent nutrition, a bit of a routine, a familiar and conducive training environment and facilities, well-maintained equipment and the opportunity to relax and recover from your training and racing.
Unfortunately in this day and age of information overload, the words "attention to detail" have morphed into a monster of obsessive focus for many athletes. With the growth of the Internet has come access to more and more information, much of it completely irrelevant to the requirements of basic training. Athletes agonize over heart rate and wattage data, supplement details, course profiles, race altitudes and a plethora of largely immaterial information. Instead of providing a road map to simplicity, this sea of noise has created a false sense of urgent necessity among many, compromising emotional and mental flexibility and leading to a kind of paralysis by analysis.
If there is one thing you need to sustain top performances year after year as an endurance athlete, it's a certain lightness of being. Without fail, all the athletes at teamTBB I met, spoke with and observed who use The Method share this same fundamental trait: Training is training, racing is racing, and in between there is little talk or attention paid to anything to do with triathlon.
Time away from the sport gives them opportunity to relax, to recharge and to recover for the next training session or race. Likewise, as a coach one knows that those who improve the most are the ones who are best able to focus completely on training while they are training, and at the same time most able to leave it behind when done training.
I use the term going molecular to describe the tendency of athletes to go beyond the level of detail required for them to achieve the best returns on their training efforts. For example, one client found that he immediately freed three hours of his time each week when he no longer needed to analyze each session's training data. Rather, a well-structured training plan with sessions tailored not to his goal races but to his current abilities meant he rapidly saw improvement in his splits in all three sports. Within six weeks came a personal best and continued improvements in all three sports.
Another client sent a long list of training gadgets she had purchased but which were suffocating her enjoyment of the sport. The Garmin, the power meter, the heart rate monitor, the computrainer, the oxygen tent -- it was all there, and every time she headed out the door for some training, her first response was "Ooofff. This is just too overwhelming right now." Solution? We turned it all off and had a garage sale. In her case, this freed her mind to drift and relax a bit during training. In short order new personal bests followed as she returned to a fresher, lighter and more engaged approach to training.
When we submit ourselves to the flow of "just doing", we relieve ourselves of an immense overhead of mental noise and distraction. One way of understanding how to align the priorities in your training is to simply take a look at the amount of time you are spending each week obsessing over details. How long do you spend analyzing heart rate data? Power data? Vitamin labels?
How much time is this taking from your relationship? Your kids?
Unfortunately, burnout is endemic to our culture, whether in work or in sport. Nobel prize-winner Gerald Edelman did a lot of research that touched upon the reasons for this. Without going into detail, the basic precept behind "neural Darwinism" is that our responses become etiolated, atrophied, plain frazzled by too much of a good thing. When we spend too much time doing and then thinking about the same thing over and over, we kill off the goose that laid the golden egg. In short, if you are training hard and then spending a good proportion of your non-training time going over triathlon data, you risk burning out or going flat in training.
Enthusiasms that become obsessions burn out rather easily. Think back on some of the adolescent tennis players who when pushed too hard by neurotic parents ended up withdrawing from the sport. When a hyper-enthusiastic athlete turns to obsessive-compulsive behavior, they begin indulging their "triathlon brain circuitry" 24/7. What appears at first like total commitment and dedication can create masterful results in the short-term, but in the longterm can lead to plateaus and burnout. You need to stay fresh.
One key underlying trait of most top performers like the athletes at teamTBB is that they remove themselves wholly from their pursuit from time to time on a daily or longer basis. In the summer months, teamTBB trains out of an idyllic Swiss mountain village where there is little exposure to the triathlon world. In the winter months the team shifts to the Philippines, where they focus on training while training -- and relaxing when not training!
Athletes who engage themselves in their sport night and day are simply overloading their circuitry. They are not giving themselves the opportunity to relax and recover when they most need it. Their intellectual circuitry is stimulated 24/7 by triathlon thinking, anticipation, remembering, etc. etc. For certain types, this obsessive compulsive stance means they don't give themselves anywhere near enough relaxation from the sport to compensate for the nonstop physical, mental and emotional exposure to triathlon to which they subject themselves. If this sounds like you, try avoiding the forums, websites, magazines, race expos and so on for awhile.
One of the most powerful aspects of teamTBB's training approch The Method is the program's ability to help athletes better apply their focus. Instead of daily obsession with heart rates or power outputs, The Method encourages athletes to tune into their body at the start of training, see what it has to give on that day, and then adjust accordingly. A few simple practices and common sense are used to plan recovery, training and race nutrition. And an emphasis on training consistency replaces the temptation to cut corners on fitness and seek non-existent shortcuts elsewhere.
For example, rather than taking a day off completely, athletes are encouraged to "test drive" the body each day. Head out and train for twenty minutes very easy on days you are feeling tired. Then see how you respond -- often it might be just the accumulation of lactic acid from previous sessions that is making you feel tired. A few minutes of gently flushing the body and you are ready to go!
Unfortunately no power meter or heart rate monitor can tell you these things. However, they can corroborate what you learn to key into, if you take the time and make the effort to focus on the big picture. Keeping things simple is the key to understanding The Method. Rather than letting the details govern your pursuit of your past-time, let the Big Picture determine how you want to spend your time. Keep it simple, stay loose and keep yourself recharged so that you can better enjoy your sport.
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Marc Becker is Head Coach at ironguides.net, the Official Age Group Coaching Provider for teamTBB and the premium online source for multisport coaching and training.
ironguides provides a variety of services and products all based on The Method, the simple, effective, common sense training approach used by us and teamTBB to help Age Groupers and elites achieve triathlon excellence. We provide:
• Ongoing online coaching
• Accelerated Training programs
• Triathlon Training Plans from 8 weeks to 20 weeks, for beginners and intermediates at all distances from Sprint to Ironman
http://www.ironguides.net :: Your best is our business.™
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