Here is an interesting article from the founder of gymjones.com. A lot of you probably know him, he started out as a Crossfit affiliate, but branched off to do his own thing. He was a proponent of short duration/high intensity workouts until after his first season a few years ago of road racing. After that season it finally clicked for him that the pro’s are probably on to something. There’s a calender on the site that shows what every one does each day in the gym. I’ve been following the site for a while and it was interesting to see his name drop off the list when it came to weight training because he was out riding his bike.
This article is his own “revelation” to the philosophy his gym preached. Here’s an excerpt:
"My love affair with short duration, high intensity “cross-training” efforts to the exclusion of other forms of training ended with counseling and efforts to overhaul the method itself. Finally, when that failed, I had to rehabilitate my own fitness. I did it by building a solid foundation on low-intensity, long-duration efforts, and tempered the base with a variety of high intensity work to improve particular characteristics: specific strength, MVO2, LT, movement economy, etc. There is an order to follow (Matveyev, Bompa, Lydiard, Daniels, Kraemer, Fleck, Friel, Ferrari, among others - take your pick) and methods of building small peaks along the way toward a season-ending monster peak. It’s not random. It’s not whatever-the-f*ck. It’s planned and executed and tested and modified along the way because there is no such thing as a shortcut or a free lunch, and no way to evade hard, intelligent work. "