The Holy Trinity of Training
The great exercise physiologist Stephen Seiler describes his trinity as: external power (watts), internal physiology (heart rate or lactate) and perception (RPE). He refers to frequency, duration and intensity as the the hierarchy of endurance training, but for the sake of this post, I’m going to call these three elements “The Holy Trinity.” Frequency, duration and intensity serve as the foundation for everything we do as coaches and endurance athletes, so let’s start there.
We want to train often enough, but not too often to impede recovery, we want to go long enough to develop endurance, but not too long to develop overuse injuries, and we want to find that right mixture of intensity that boost our stamina and fitness, without going over the edge, shutting us down, the wheels coming completely off. It’s precarious and it’s a slippery slope, and it’s made more slippery by things like ankylosing spondylitis, chronic migraine, and chronic tendinopathies.
As an athlete and coach, the puzzle is the same. Push hard enough that we’re gaining fitness, but not so much that we’re shut down. We’re aiming for consistency and building biological durability, more so than pulling off that one epic workout.
As an aging athlete training with some specific challenges, I’ve got to be extra in-tune with my body. And then I must add another layer of complexity to the picture, the knowledge that I’m the self-proclaimed guru of go and when I can’t go, I get low. Meaning, when I can’t train, I fight depression. This has been a three-decade long battle.
Training and Depression
My first counselor (when I was twenty-one-years old), following my ankylosing spondylitis diagnosis, said she believed I medicated myself with exercise. While I have a far more extensive toolkit to navigate periods of injury and illness today, I still have loud anxious parts about the thought of not being able to train. Training each day makes me feel good, it drives me, it inspires me and helps me be the best and strongest version of myself. So, I’m constantly checking in with myself, each day, each week, not afraid to get into adapt, adjust, reload mode, shuffling a workout here, or a hard block there, or even bumping up a recovery week (like last week). When it doubt, it behooves us to ease up (oftentimes slow is fast, less is more), knowing that we ultimately want to live to fight another day, we want to show up train again tomorrow.
As an endurance coach, when developing training plans or supporting athletes as their mindset/mental performance coach, I try to teach athletes the importance of learning how to listen to their body—learning the art of training intuitively. This means being flexible and creating (or choosing) training plans that are easy to amend and fit into our busy lives.
Coaching That Fits
I believe a good coach wants to see his or her athletes focus one or two big picture goals each week ( or block) and then be pliable enough to adapt, and to have the self-efficacy and autonomy to make the call that’s best for the athlete, best for their family, best for their schedule. This takes a lot of internal communication and trust and communication with your coach, conversations I’m constantly having with myself, as a self-coached athlete.
As I’m training for the longest, hardest, most intimidating race of my life this August—the Leadville 100 mountain bike race—I’m fortunate to have some really strong friends and mentors in my corner, who happen to be some of the finest endurance cycling coaches in the West (people like Rose Grant, Mike Durner, Josh Nelson), and I’m curiously and eagerly picking their brain as I work through my training blocks, ticking one week off at a time. I love learning from these experts, growing as an athlete and a coach from their unique experience and their willingness to share.
But ultimately, I know my body better than anyone else, and I’ve found it essential to listen to myself, to trust my instincts, to trust my gut when it’s telling me something is too much or perhaps simply not sustainable. There’s a lot of seemingly sexy training plans out there that might produce some big results, or marginal gains, but also might prove to be higher risk than many of us can sustain. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe we get through an intense block without developing an overuse injury or bending to overtraining, or maybe we end up sidelined by going too hard, too often, digging too deep and not fully recovering.
My advice is simple. When it doubt, ease up. When in doubt, choose the path that will increase your odds of training again tomorrow. The marginal gains that can accompany a big training block (whether it’s a micro block of a couple days, a week, or three weeks), oftentimes doesn’t carry the bang for the buck, meaning the cost can often outweigh the gains. If we can keep the pedals churning and the wheels spinning, day after day (with proper recovery built in), we give ourselves a far better shot at showing up and toeing the line for a big event, or bucket list race, or wilderness adventure, feeling fresh and firing, rather than feeling flat and fatigued.
Training Intuitively and Flexibly
Remind yourself when toying with the idea of taking on a big block of training, what’s the best-case scenario? Oftentimes it’s a bump in fitness. But the worst-case scenario is also something to consider. The worst-case scenario is that we push too hard, too often and don’t even have the opportunity to show up at the start line, or to lace up the kicks for that big wilderness adventure.
When choosing a coach, my advice is to check in and see how it feels upon that first connection. Are they rigid? Or are the flexible? Are they stringent? Or are they adaptable? Are they absolute? Or are they communicative and compassionate? I’d choose the latter, every time. And if you’re training yourself, check in early and often, and really learn to listen to the cues that your body is sharing and the messages your different parts of your mind are trying to relay.
Train smart, train strong, train steady.
WNbL, mwl