Cyclists, runners and triathletes are masters in training, training big volumes and sometimes training hard. Or training big volumes too hard? A lot can go wrong approaching your season. And after all, does it really is necesseary to go in ‘overuse’ all the time?
No, is the answer! Periodisation is the key to your season. I always refer to the ‘elastic-story’, which our athletes will know.
None of our athletes approaches his or her season without a ‘masterplan’, without this ‘masterplan’ no season or no long-term racing career will be good and no performance will be there. Putting together a macrocycle with my athletes is something I do from the very first day we started coaching athletes. The holistic approach towards a full year with Resting period, racing period,… is part of the key.
I sometimes hear that topperforming athletes, even amateur (AG) athletes are training 20-30h/week for example in Ironman. Well is that true? And is that an approach in which you can put in enough variation and specific racepreparing impulses.
If we look at the graph underneath you can see a 13h AVG training on annual base is fairly enough to get qualified to Kona (Ironman Hawaii), take AG podium and put down a sub9 Ironman.
If you approach training with a vision an AVG of 13h on annual basis is enough to race hard, also in Ironman racing!
Of course there’s no ‘general recipe’ for all athletes, every athlete has need to different impulses, volumes,…not everybody gets in full shap with 12h avg, some need more. The approach to your athlete/cyclist always is a personal approach with an eye for his history and future goals.
Variation, variation in volume, variation in impulses, variation in mentally loaded periods, variation in food,…variation that’s what you need to have during a whole year of training to peak at the right moments. Underneath you can see an annual graph of an amateur, full-time working triathlete who already qualified for Kona, won several du/triathlons and this year was 1st amateur on the duathlon world champs, 1st AG in Challenge Roth in 8h44 and won a Long distance duathlon in France. This athlete had an annual avg training volume of 15h, with no extreme peaks in volume. The athlete chooses not to go on training camp, but to spend vacation to racing and family.
These 3peaks are like hammers on the block in the end…
Periodisation: whether you are professional or amateur…all starts with a plan to be at your best at the right time!
The sauce on your spaghetti is not about the volume of the tomatoes, it’s about the spices…and some will get a very hot pepper from me!
Our athletes continue preparation towards 2018 and build smart…to perform better!
Tomorrow groupsession #2 is on, this will be a ‘reversathlon’ which we will enjoy till our first cramp of preparation!
Ciao
Jesse
High performance coaching & Sportsconsultancy Trainingsbegeleiding en coaching Triatlon, Duatlon, Running , Cycling, wielrennen 