Recovery period is one of the least understood and appreciated parts of the training tree, yet it is a critical part of your training phases or periods. (This recovery period is not to be confused with weekly recovery days where you may workout 5 days a week and recover for 2 days. It is also not…
Racing is a very tenacious branch. It’s as much psychological as it is physical. The demands are arduous because it requires constant testing, usually against other athletes as well as against your own goals and that great truth-teller – the clock. It requires constant recuperation and resting, too. I’ve been asked more times than I can…
This period of training is a favorite for many athletes. The peaking phase is the time when you put all of the other branches together into one: endurance, strength, and intervals. It is the variety branch. It is the time when you are incredibly fit and loving it. It’s the time when you get to…
If you want to race fast, train fast and train strong. This is the phase that builds upon the lower three branches by adding your first Red Line workouts with short or endurance intervals. It’s the branch where you start time trials at specific heart rate points to test improvement. It’s the period of seeing…
It’s time to add that all-important exercise stimulus: resistance training. Following many of the same principles that weight lifters use, athletes stimulate muscle power by applying appropriate resistance stimuli to the specific activity they are training for. That is, it is known that if you “overload” the specific muscle by repeatedly asking it to work…
This is the starting point of any training program. Base training is slow, easy, fun. It is the lower three zones; endurance training is the same as basic training. The purpose of spending time in the first branch is to develop your cardiovascular endurance to the point that you can easily sustain a workout without a…