A-B-Cs of Training, Part III

Let's take a look at my current phase of training. It's 5-week block, will be followed by a transitional week, and then another 4-5 week block. Each block of training is subject to change based on the how the previous one went. In fact, each day's workout may change based on how I feel. It's important to keep this in perspective. Sticking to a conceptual plan when your body isn't responding is counterproductive. Of course, you must have the ability to know when your body is not responding and when you just feel lazy, and this takes some experience. But, basically, when something feels wrong it probably is. You need to train hard but, at this level, most of us are more in danger of over-training than under-training. Therefore, my motto is that if I don't feel like training then I don't.

Here are my weekly workout goals. It's going to look like a lot of time but I'll show you how I combine things so that it's not.

Legs - A, B
Shoulders - C
Core - A, B, C
Upper body synergistic B
Climbing - A, B
Forearms - B, C
Run - B, C
Bike - C
Yoga - A, C, C

This doesn't represent all of my exercise. Each day I do some aerobic hiking with the dogs. Weekends are, essentially, off for me to do whatever. This time of year it should be skiing, but last weekend it was warm so I went climbing (was probably my last opportunity for a while). For this phase the only thing that will change is that my running and biking will change over time. Biking form has more base and will trail behind running over the next two phases. More on this later but, for now, the point is merely to show how to combine A, B, C workouts for efficiency. All of this work will be accomplished in around an hour per day, on average, not counting the dog stuff and how I play on the weekends.

T - Leg A, w/forearm, shoulder, yoga, core, and run C - given the long rest needed between heavy sets, the down time is done doing easy movements and stretching. Easy run followed.

W - Climb A, Yoga C - stretching in between campus moves. This workout was short because it was my first campus session in a few years. Length will increase but being careful is paramount. Because it was short I followed it with a hard crossfit workout of 500 reps, so:
Core A, Legs B, upper body syn, B

T - Climb B, forearm B, Core B - Systems wall workout, w/ core, forearm, and stretching in the down time.

F - Yoga A

S - Run B, then went climbing for fun.

S - Long dog hike, easy bike trainer session (end of two weeks off of the bike)

This week looks pretty much the same, though any running distance may be replaced by skate skiing.

Of note, these two cycles will be my only time during the year where my gym work will be the brunt of my focus. Once I'm fully into outside mode, gym work becomes maintenance only.

I'll blog further on my individual workouts. These are just my workouts targeted towards my objectives. Yours should vary, but this should help you construct them.

Part II of this article

Part I

A-B-Cs of Training, Part II

For part II we’ll take a look at how to construct a training cycle.

When designing a training cycle you consider three main factors: your goals, your limitations (injuries mainly), and your base fitness. In my case, my goals are varied. I want to do some bike racing, do some multisports, and climb. Within these disciplines it get more convoluted in that I have some power-based goals (short gymnastic rock climbs) and crits), some mid-range goals (hard multi-pitch climbs, Olympic distance multis), and some purely aerobic challenges (adventures taking an entire day or more). I have two injuries to contend with: knee and shoulder. Both are doing okay but under strict surveillance and will require rehab-like attention. Finally, my base is sound. I’ve essentially had nearly a year of good base training. It began with a round of P90x and ended with a birthday challenge that didn’t do much to break me down.

The next step is to evaluate what you feel you need to work on. This is the big question when we’re talking about which energy systems you want to address. Here are three examples of three bike racers deciding what area needs work and how to best dedicate their training time.

Example 1 – a cyclist who never gets dropped from a group ride, can spend ample time taking pulls or trying breakaways, but can’t hold on in a sprint.

Example 2 – a rider who’s great on short rides, kills it whenever the group sprints for a target, but gets dropped when the pace increases in the latter part of races.

Example 3 – a rider who can both ride tempo all day and sprint but can’t drive a breakaway or time trial well.

Each of these riders has natural strengths that determine their weaknesses. Rider 1 will never be a sprinter. However, that rider can improve their sprint and use their endurance abilities to whittle sprinters out of the field. Power work can enable this person to win races from a select field and they should do well in stage races. Rider two will never be a stage racer but can develop their weaknesses enough to hang on and then use their natural power to win races. Since most races come down to a sprint, this rider has the potential to win more than anyone else. Rider three is the most versatile talent but has not trained properly. By increasing their ability to rider at threshold, they can become a danger to win any bike race on a given day.

The training timeline must be considered. Major changes can only be addressed during the off-season. If you focus on one energy system only, your performance in the others will drop. This compromise is often necessary. Changes in the phosphagen pathway are slower to obtain, so someone severely lacking may decide it’s worthwhile to only train this system and then make up their losses later, as it’s far easier to regain fitness than to alter your boundaries.

A timeline should then be created. The longer the timeline the greater potential for major energy system improvement. The shorter the cycle the more the need to overlap energy system training so you don’t lose fitness in one area. Again, it’s important to have a basic understanding of periodizational training and how timelines can be constructed.

Next time, I’ll address what I’m doing which should help you create your own program.

Here you’ll find my initial thoughts on this program, an explanation of its periodizational aspects, my goals, and my calendar with targeted peaks and objectives.

Here is part I of this article.

A-B-Cs of Training, Part I

In order to train concurrently for non-similar sports I need to be very efficient. Oddly enough, I got a post about this just today on the Beachbody Message Boards, which basically asks if you can training different energy systems at the same time. The answer is yes, and here's how it works.

From the post I received:

There are three Primary Energy Systems.

**Phosphagen
**Glycolytic
**Oxidative

The Phosphagen pathway would be used in a sprint (10-30 seconds)
Glycolytic would be used in a mid-distance run (30-120 seconds)
and the Oxidative in a distance run (120-300 seconds or more)

My question is, can you switch from one pathway to another without recovery downtime?

The running analogy would be the same for any given activity but seems easier to understand because, obviously, you wouldn't train the same way for a 100 meter dash and you would for a marathon, or even a long sprint, like a 400 meters. Those three distances perfectly exemplify events that target a specific energy system. But in order to excel at each, you need some proficiency at the others. The tricky part is that training one pathway interferes with the ability to train another. Therefore, a calculated compromise needs to be established as a training baseline.

Because there are all sorts of sports and, hence, all sorts of compromising situations, I won't go in depth here. Let's just look at the basics. Then maybe you can take a stab at how to make your own schedule.

It's important to note that at the extremes edges of these systems, an athlete may want to minimize their training in the other extreme. Powerlifters and sprinters generally hate endurance work. And this isn't because they aren't good at it but because it diminishes their speed. And life in the Phosphagen energy system is all about speed. Conversely, an ultra marathoner has very little need to ever run an all out 100 meter sprint. Explosive speed might help his or her event but this type of effort takes so long to recover from (the breakdown of fast twitch muscle fiber) that it lessens their ability to training efficiently.

Mountain climbing and bike racing are two of the most interesting sports to train across pathways for because, in both, the need for an efficient aerobic system (oxidative pathway) is essential but the ability to recruit high threshold muscle cell motor units (phosphagen pathway) is paramount for success at a high level. And the in-between arena, the ability to stave off lactic acid build-up at high outputs (glycolytic pathway) is what puts you in position for an attempt at victory in a race or to make the crux move on a long climb. What this means is that all energy systems require some attention.

In the big picture, you should train periodizationally throughout the year. The macrocycles that you would lay out would target individual energy systems. A common way to structure this is to first work on an aerobic foundation (oxidative), then work on absolute power (phosphagen), and then target what's called power-endurance (glycolytic). This may vary depending upon the sport. I've discussed this a lot in articles and on this blog so I won't go into it here.

The question I got was more about how to do this during one cycle. Again, some crossover should be addressed no matter what to target of the particular cycle is--if for no other reason than not to lose fitness in that area. An easy way to do this is to construct your workouts as A, B, or C workouts where each letter represents an energy sytem. Mine look like this:

A workout - Phosphagen. This are highly intense workouts. Recovery generally takes longer than 72 hours.

B workout - Glycolytic. Recovery in 24 - 72 hours.

C workout - Oxidative. Recovery within 24 hours.

A workouts generally consist of short bursts of energy and long rests. For this reason, it's easy to combine a C workout with an A workout. This is especially true if you are working on different body parts. An A leg workout can be done with a C shoulder workout, where the latter is done during the rest period between hard A movements.

This is the basis. I'll go into it in more detail, including how I'm structuring my current plan, next time.