BASICS OF MODERN TRAINING

The main problem with most people and training for endurance sports is a lack of specifity. Each purpose has a lack of purpose. For the main part, most self coached endurance athletes will do a swim, bike or a run at the same intensity, same speed and more often than not the same course; week in week out. Whilst starting out this is fine, but the body has a great ability to adapt to stress or training load that is place upon it.

These types of sessions are mentally easy to achieve so you can switch off and do the session with the minimum of concentration. Howerver, the problem with this approach is that as you look to improve your performance you, end up hitting a plateau. You feel you are working hard but in reality you are just stressing the same energy system over and over.

To build endurance and improve performance there are 2 main methods:

The first is called the pareto principle or polarised training. The basics of this follow a 80:20 ratio, that is to say 80% of your training time is spent below lactate threshold or below zone 4, and 20% is spent above zone 4. This form the basis of most successful professional endurance athletes training programmes. It is actually quite hard to keep training in the low zones as it feels easy and comfortable and traditionally we are told that we need to break ourselves down to build ourselves back up. This is where the 20% high intensity is important as it is important to place stress on the body to make adaptations to the cells.

So why 20% and not 30 or 40 % I hear you ask. Without getting into too much of the science, when we train at a higher intensity, we create free radicals in the muscles that cause damage or oxidation to the body’s cells. To counteract this, over time, the body increases its number of natural antioxidants to control the free radicals. 20% allows us enough recovery time in between sessions to repair this cell oxidation and recover from the stresses placed upon it. When you increase this number to 30% and plus it has been found that hormone levels are depleted as is the body’s feretine levels, leading to feeling run down and potential over training.

The main drawback with this approach is it takes a lot of time and commitment to put in the hours required to improve endurance. This however remains the most popular way of building endurance to train for an endurance event, so if you have 10 hours plus per week, this is the approach I would recommend.

If however time is difficult to come by (and for the majority this is true) there is a second option to successfully build endurance that has received a lot more press in the past 2-3 years. It has come with the rise in popularity of cross fit and les mills style classes. This is the use of HIIT training. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training, which if used correctly (and with certain ‘biohacks’) can be used to successfully build endurance on as little as 4 hours per week.

The latest research has shown that HIIT can be used to increase Mitochondrial density (see ‘How to Improve Endurance’ handout), increase VO2 max and improve skeletal muscle function.

An example of a typical training week Using HIIT training would be a total of 4 hours training or 4 x 1 hour rides. These rides would be a mixture of 8-10 short hard hill climbs close to maximum effort, with a full recovery in between. Alternatively 15 x 2-4 min intervals with a similar length recovery in between.

This type of training is best used in conjunction with ‘biohacks’. These are techniques which you can implement into your daily routine to enable you to keep improving whilst working. An example of this is to stand more often and for prolonged periods. Never go more than 90 mins seated without getting up and doing a few air squats. Take stairs instead of escalators or lifts as these will contribute to building your endurance and performance.

A problem with HIIT training to note, is that it is uncomfortable and there is always the temptation to overdo it leading to the problems we discussed earlier, as well as a potential increase in injury risk and adrenal fatigue. However, if done correctly it can help you to breakthrough those plateaus and take your performance to the next level.