your sig line… how good is that stuff?
Whether or not fat burning is an issue w.r.t. iron distance racing, is a bit of a different question.
Simple… eat more of it… burn more of it. 
Moving from the general to the specific. That’s what I subscribe to.
I’ve seen this phrase a lot lately, mostly from the “new-school” training crowd, and it confuses me.
The principle of specificity with relation to training originally referred to specific movements. Meaning that early in a training cycle you could train for “general fitness”, but later you should progress to the movements and speeds specific to your sport. The application of this principle to triathlon seems to apply to a training plan in the sense that early on you can, for example, spend 50% of your time doing stuff like X-C skiiing, weights, tantric sex, etc, but then as you approach your “A” race that percentage approaches 0. And the extra time is spent doing more swimming, biking, and running. And as you get closer to the “A” race you spend more time at race speed. (the old-school definition talked about speed, but not much about distance/time - maybe because endurance sports weren’t really the focus of the original inventors of periodization training).
Now, to me, that sounds more like Slowman than you.
Your methodology seems to be “specificity all the time, and the fitter you get, the more it you can handle.” Building to the volume you need on race day. There is no “general” You’re always doing race movements at race intensity. (always meaning incorporating it year-round, not literally all the time).
I’m not criticizing. That actually seems like a reasonable approach to training, particularly in triathlon where there are so many different things we have to train that there’s little time for “general.”
Or did I get it completely wrong?
Or did I get it completely wrong?
Yes, pretty much everything. But I wouldn’t worry, this is the right thread to post that kind of clueless drivel.
As you were…
“if you can do high-speed, high quality work, and you can do it with good technique, hard, without injury, then you’re ready to go. but for most of us mortals, that requires some preparation in the form of low quality work. and i don’t think 4yr of base is very much. by the time i had that sort of base i was 17 years old, and i wasn’t even close to having the base necessary to do anything big time.”
Again, it think it just depends on the individual. If you spend ~4 yrs doing consistent, yet slightly conservative, year-round training then that will build a solid base. But it’s all relative, right? So much depends on how consistent your are. Let me give you a sense of my definition of consistency: When you can count the number of consecutive days not training on one hand.
“i hope i don’t give you the impression that i think quality means a lot of quality. one of the pitfalls i think bedevils triathletes is an abundance of quality workouts. even if you’re doing 12hr a week, there’s a lot of opportunities to put yourself over the edge with high HR workouts. heck, if you swim masters 4 x wk, and get sucked in, those are your highest HR workouts you’ll do right there. i wouldn’t do more than 2 high HR workouts total during the week, ride and run combined, even during a period of near-peak fitness, if you’re going to be that hard at it in the pool.”
Likewise, all I’m talking about is one 2 x 20 FT interval and a tempo run per week during race prep. Like I said, I couldn’t do it and maintain my L2/L3 volume (which would break down as L2/L3 volume on the bike and just L2 volume on the run). It would just put me over the edge. And a track workout would be out of the question.
I think we have to be very specific when we talk about these issues. People get this idea that it’s one extreme or another. Only when my volume is at ~7hrs/week can I insert a 20min L4 interval on the bike or a 20’ M-pace or possibly T-pace (more like 2 x 7’) on the run every workout. Everything else is L2 with the obvious warmup around L1. Once that volume builds beyond 10hrs/week then it moves to something like 2 x (2 x 20 FT intervals)/week and maybe a couple of tempo runs or one tempo run and a track workout (eg 6 x 3’ at I-pace). This is as crazy as it gets for me.
“what’s the problem with spending your early season gaining a good running base?”
In general? Nothing at all. In my case, I just find that I have a reasonably solid running base already and I much prefer the time efficiency of going shorter & faster. Keep in mind that I don’t have a lot of experience running short & fast in the off-season/general prep. This is something I started doing last year with great success until life intervened and forced a break in my training. Biking’s a different story though. I can definitely say that I’ve had great success with starting short & fast and moving to long & slow.
Like I said though, I don’t know how people can do the long stuff through the winter and hold the volume through race prep. Admittedly, I did that for almost 3 years ('03 through '05) and almost ended up divorced (slight exaggeration), not to mention, mentally drained (no exaggeration).
Most everything works as long as your consistent and good at implementing progressive overload. Hell, I even think you can simplify the specificity down to spending as much time in the aerobars as possible if you want.
Thanks, Chris
Uh… yea… completely wrong on lots of accounts.
it would seem that the word “tradition” (and in this case your use of the word culture) clouds the minds of men not allowing them to think beyond the boundaries of what has been done. my approach… blend what we know has been shown to improve human kinetics in a lab with what we know makes people fast in the field. put that together and you get a winning combo. Sit on your haunches and do what culture or tradition tells you to do and you wont get anywhere. Innovate or vegitate. Your choice.
ah, the sweet hubris of youth. so, you innovate rather than vegitate. you do it for 5, 10, 20 years, perhaps. you learn a lot. you even bother to write it down. the next generation, someone does the same thing. and in the next. and the next. and then finally along comes another generation and for some reason, someone feels able to say if you “sit on your haunches and do what culture and tradition tells you to do you won’t get anywhere”. your “innovation” is now a dead weight that “clouds the minds of men”.
yes, new scientific studies cast new light on our understanding of physiology which in turn can impact training regimes. and even without new discoveries, just the ability to collect so much data on an athlete has a certain kind of impact on how to train. but fundamentally what cannot be written down by any coach whether they were living in ancient greece or just yesterday is how a specific athlete should train for a specific race (and if they are podium-quality, a race involving other specific athletes). as a coach you have two areas of “wiggle room”. you can break with tradition because of the specific athlete(s) you work with, or you can simply declare some part of tradition to be wrong. and no doubt, from time to time, it is. nevertheless, a lot of the “innovation” you’re striving for is really just stuff to make a newer generation feel that there is still something to discover. the biggest contribution a coach can make to their athletes? the combined history of many other athletes, carefully tailored to that athlete. some would call that tradition.
“tradition is a static defense against a chaotic community, and what would we save by destroying it?” - Anne Peacock
Whether or not fat burning is an issue w.r.t. iron distance racing, is a bit of a different question.
Simple… eat more of it… burn more of it.
I’m a fat burning machine!!!
i take it you just got back from the “all you can eat almond butter buffet” at safeway, right?
that was a lot of words to not really say anything.
we’ve got two gens now in tri… the “then gen” who applied the throw eggs at a wall approach… and the “now gen” who, with the help of ex phys, has a better idea about how to fine tune the system
first of all, triathlon training is not so novel that it can be considered some entirely different discipline, even if does require some changes from single sport training. so i’m not really interested in what a “then gen” did if all you’re really saying is that they ignored existing “traditional” knowledge about training for swimming, biking and running. that would just make them stupid, or machochistic, or both. but … i don’t think they did, and in addition, when modern triathlon started, there was plenty of exercise physiology information available for the 3 disciplines. hell, long before it started, actually. that fact that we have more information now doesn’t help a lot (c.f. “half of what we’ve taught you is wrong, but we don’t know which half”). your claim seems to be “yeah, we’re not much faster at the top end, but the athletes are cleaner and more people can get close to those times”. i have no opinion on the “cleaner” part, but the more people part seems predicted by simple participation increases. so bluntly, i don’t think you have any evidence whatsoever that exercise physiology is helping people train better, and certainly not at the podium-targetting end of the sport.
my “lot of words” could be summarized quickly as “your innovation is going to be someone else’s dead weight of tradition, so how about a little more respect for the equally innovation-inspired people that came before you?”
the innovate vs. vegitate phrase is targeted at those who, upon reaching some level of experience, refuse to further participate in the learning process or fail to acknowledge or utilize the new advances being made.
Eternal education is a good thing.
i respect those that come before me… up until the point that they refuse to acknowledge the new evidence that comes forth. If the proof is there… do not deny it.
I wish I could recall the article, but if someone has a link, that’d be super. It talks about Kenyan marathoners, and the reorganization of the classical “pyramid” periodization plan with the “strength” phase coming earlier in the year.
Time To Rethink Your Marathon Training Program?
To some extent I think you and slowman are in agreement on the running front.
I really think you need, in this case to defer to the other generation and the one before and before and before. He all pretty well know what too much high intensity running cumulatively does to the athlete over time. Slowman is not going to be able to walk out the door and do the 10x400 at 62 seconds today, and i doubt that Simon Lessing can go out and do it today in 68 second (you can go ask him down the street), although he could in the past.
Slowman is trying to protect us from our own stupidity of youth so that when we hit 50+, we can still run and hopefully run fast.
And yes, we do need base work in cycling too…the question is how much and in what doses. Not that hard to get patellar tendonitis with too much too fast too soon. This is why I no longer ever cold cold turnkey on the bike as I did in my youth (just ran and XC skied all winter). Now I bike and swim at least once a week so I can get back into my other tri sports much more quickly without blowing body parts (and that usually happens when your aerobic engine exceeds the structural integrity of your chassis…which you likely already know about on the run front)
Dev
…how about making it really simple for real world age groupers…when you have limited time you go hard, when you have more time you go long…if tired, go easy and short…the above applies for swim and bike…for runnning, go at maximum aerobic speed for months on end and then before you A race for a few weeks ramp up the intensity to race speed in small bursts (but not race duration)…anything else we need to know?
This one I can understand.
I think people are being too one sided here. Either long and slow or short and fast. I don’t see those as mutually exclusive. When training, any type of training, but especially endurance training we need to think about two things. (well many more but 2 very important things in regards to this thread). 1. Specificity 2. recovery
Now, I do agree that a more trained athlete after years and years of training needs to focus less on basework in the traditional sense. why, because as they hopefully get faster that so called “traditional basework” is less and less specific to their actual races. they also have the added benefit of year and years of basework under them. what’s the real goal of basework anyway. to get you to a certain fitness level where you no longer are overreaching to train harder. and to allow you to recover faster and more completely from those harder efforts. so, generally, someone who has a larger “base” will recover faster than someone who doesn’t. the simple fact of the matter is that in order to race fast you have to train fast. not all out, not zone 4,5 101 or whatever lable you place on it, but harder than just getting out the door for some really long easy workouts. however, the sport of triathlon is unique in that it is made up of 3 different sports which allow us to manipulate exactly where those harder efforts come and where those longer easier efforts come. both are crucial to success but sole focus on one while leaving the other out is, in my opinion and i may be completely wrong, going to leave something VERY important out of your training hand subsequent racing
Uh… yea… completely wrong on lots of accounts.
Then, enlighten, just a little bit? Seriously, the classic “principle of specificity” says little more than you have to run to get better at running. The only progression I see in what you’ve written is training the the “long” to “race specific” distances later in the season. But that’s an entirely different meaning. And progression of distance from short to long isn’t training from “general” to “specific.” It’s…short to long.
Yes, pretty much everything. But I wouldn’t worry, this is the right thread to post that kind of clueless drivel.
As you were…
OK, you’re good at one-liners. Can you tell me in one sentence what goes from general to specific in MarkyV’s training methodology?
we’ve got two gens now in tri… the “then gen” who applied the throw eggs at a wall approach… and the “now gen” who, with the help of ex phys, has a better idea about how to fine tune the system
Mark,
This is a valid comment and since I am from that “Then Gen”, while no where near the level of the greats mentioned in this thread, I can honestly say that we really had no idea of what we were doing back then. We bolted it together in a hodge-podge way and what is strange and remarkable is that the results of the top people, where not far off, or better in some instances, than what’s being done today. We swam with swimmers. We cycled with serious cyclists and we ran with real runners. We kinda made it up as we went along with a bit of a eye on a few races at the end of the summer.
Was it the right way? I am not really sure. My sense, with a lot more perspective and experience now, is that their is no one right way. Their is going to be some variability from athlete to athlete and also variation within an athletes career and what their back-ground is.
Anecdotally, I found that as I got older going from my 20’s to my 30’s and now well into my 40’s, I could train less and still get the same results - in all three sports. I attributed this to the huge base of aerobic training that I had built up over 10, 15 and 20+ years of training at a modestly high level. Quite frankly, I think that I can still make withdrawls from that aerobic bank account when I need to - and now it’s laughable the “training” that I do.
A common mistake is putting each year of training into a silo, and not realizing that one years training can affect the next years and even the year after that - assuming minimal time off and down-time.
My one comment about the current generation of IM athletes, and I may have no idea of what I am talking about, but I will say it any way, is that they race at the IM distance too much. I know that the race schedule and the money structure almost forces them to do this. And I know that their will be people who will say, “well look at Hillary Biscay, or Joe Bonness or Bella Comerford”. They are exceptions cause I think they are recovery freaks! I figure, an athlete has one and maye two, at the absolute most, really good IM races in them per year. The better part of the year should be spent racing shorter distances - Olympic and HalfIM’s. Look at world class marathon runners - they rarely run more than two marathons/year. Typically it’s one in the spring and one in the fall. The rest of the year they race 5K up to 1/2 Marathon.
Interesting discussion that I am sure will go on and on and on and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sort of like an IM race does!
your sig line… how good is that stuff?
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