When training, keep in mind the 6 Pillars of Endurance Success.
What are the 6 Pillars?
- Mindset
- Lifestyle
- Daily Nutrition
- Race Nutrition
- Strength and Injury Prevention
- Endurance Training
Why are they important?
When it comes to “smarter, not harder” the 6 pillars are a guide to ensuring you’re training efficiently and reducing risk of overtraining/injury.
We understand that you’re not a pro-triathlete/runner you have a life.
Let’s walk through each pillar
Mindset
Because you’re not a professional athlete, we have to understand that:
- We can’t compare to others
- More is not always better
- Too hard too often is not the key to getting faster
Changing this mindset is hard, but if you understand why you’re training a certain way, it’s easier to change.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle = Family, Stress, Sleep, Etc. These play a huge impact on your overall training quantity, quality, etc.
Keys:
- Have your family on board with your trainingcommunicate often
- Stress-sometimes it’s better to say “I need to miss this workout due to stress than push through.”
- Sleep-the foundation for every great training program. 7-9 hours of sleep are a must. In order for optimum training, you must have a good sleep foundation.
Daily Nutrition and Race Nutrition
Why does it matter? Mainly recover to:
- Replenish muscle glycogen
- Soft tissue repair
- Energy restoration
- Rehydration
- Inflammation reduction
If you’re not replenishing your nutrition after training, your body will be in a depleted state and after time, will cause over training (even though it’s not “training).
How do we replace?
Replace what you burned, rebuild muscle, and recover.
- Use our race fueling calculator in our sports nutrition pillar to determine needs
- 2 Hour Window of Opportunity- Is this a real thing?
- Eat as soon as you can post workout-Liquid nutrition for sensitive stomachs
- A meal (breakfast, dinner)
Need to have a planned post workout meal if you’re not eating a meal right after and if it’s a high.
Nutrition Specifics for Recovery:
- Carbohydrates and Protein- 1st and foremost, replace what was used during exercise
- Post high quality workout and race
- Carbs: 1g per kg/body weight- 150Ibs= 68kg=68g carbs
- Protein: 20-25g minimum, up to 40g protein (menopause)
- 4:1 Ratio carbohydrates to protein- 40g carbs, 10g protein
- Don’t forget about hydration & electrolytes
Supplements and Boosters
- Tart cherries (juice or concentrate)
- Turmeric (plus black pepper and fat)-curcum1n
- Ginger
- Omega 3 fatty acids
- Athletic greens or similar (for smoothies)
- Bromelein- pineapple
- L-Glutamine-3g/3000mg
- KSM-66® Ashwagandha-300mg
- Quercetin
Strength and Injury Prevention
If you’re injured, you can’t train or race:
- Make sure you’re implementing an injury prevention strength program-don’t skip it
- See a physical therapist if needed
- Perform a bike fit/run gait analysis
- Do daily mobility, even if it’s not on your program (foam rolling, lacrosse ball, recovery boots/massage gun)
- Get monthly massages if possible with your budget
- Stop training and tell us if you’re experiencing niggles or pain-it’s best to get things checked out
Endurance Training
Think big picture-plan your season-ATP (annual training plan)
Do baseline testing to determine your power /HR zones, so you know you’re not over training.
Your plans will already include build and recovery weeks, though it should be 2 up 1 down, or 3 up 1 down
Longer distance athletes- generally more focus on endurance efforts, with some speed built in.
Shorter distance athletes-generally can have more speed built in, after a good base is established
How do you know you’re training at the appropriate level? What can you use to help you? Things to ask yourself:
- How do you feel in the morning? Ready to go, fatigued, but not too much, unable to get out of bed -do not be afraid of recovery. You won’t detrain or lose fitness. When in doubt, rest.
- What does your resting HR/HRV say?
- What are your Training Peaks metrics saying?
HRV-Heart Rate Variability
What is it?:
- Heart rate variability measures how variable your heart beat/rhythm is
- We want a variable heart rate. The more even your heart rate, the more over trained/higher risk of death
How is it different to heart rate?
Heart rate can detect overtraining by 1. not being able to bring it up, and reverse-by staying elevated during easy training.
How do you measure?
- HRV for Athletes
- Whoop
- Oura ring
It will take several weeks to get a precise reading.
Training Peaks Metrics
Performance Manager Chart: combines frequency, intensity and duration, fitness, fatigue and form.
Metrics:
TSS-training stress score:
This tells you how hard it is-intensity and duration
Below are some general ranges for the TSS an athlete may need to generate for each race distance, from sprint to IRON MAN. As with CTL, these are broad ranges, so adapt to your experience and goals.
- Sprint: 75-120 TSS
- Olympic: 170-220 TSS
- Half IRONMAN (70.3): 300-400 TSS
- IRONMAN (140.6): 590-750 TSS
TSB-Training stress balance (form). Form (TSB) = Yesterday’s Fitness (CTL) – Yesterday’s Fatigue (ATL)
CTL-Chronic training load:
TrainingPeaks calculates CTL, by default, as the exponentially weighted average of daily TSS for the past 42 days (7 weeks).
Note that, in effect, CTL represents the training an athlete has done in the past 3 months given the nature of exponentially weighted averages.
FTP – Functional threshold power:
This is how hard you can ride (run) for 1 hour-Dr. Andy Coggan
NP-Normalized power:
NP is a power averaging method used to compensate for changes in ride conditions (hills/wind) for a more accurate depiction of power expenditure.
IF-Intensity Factor:
How intense a workout is relative to your threshold
IF’s of races:
- lronman age group athletes: .6-.7
- Elite IM athletes & Half lronman age groupers: .7-.79
- Elite HIM athletes: .8-.89
- Olympic & sprint: .9-1.04
VI-Variability Index:
This is a metric that shows you how steadily paced (or variable) a workout was ridden. This is calculated by dividing your Normalized Power (or the estimate of the metabolic cost of the ride) with your average power. For a steady tri bike, VI of 1.05 or less
EF- Efficiency Factor:
Schedule a steadily paced aerobic benchmark run or ride every one-to-two weeks and track the efficiency factor over time. Once your EF plateaus, it may be time to move on to the next phase of your training, or mix it up with some new workouts!
Decoupling (Pw: hr /Pa:hr):
Power to heart rate and pace to heart rate
Take a look at your steadily paced, low VI, aerobic long runs or rides, if the decoupling is greater than 5 percent, then look at the environmental factors such as the temperature that day or your hydration status. If those things seem normal, then you may need some additional aerobic conditioning (HRZ-2 aerobic work).
