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Get More Sweet Spot Training

Sweet spot training is one of the biggest “bang for your buck” workouts available to an athlete, especially early in the season.  WEven when you're late into a season, sweet spot training can give your regular interval work a significant boost.  Even once your season has been shut down and you're cruising through the off-season, some weekly sweet spot training can help to keep your fitness from degrading too much as you wind down and rest.

Unlike high-intensity interval work, sweet spot training takes longer and leads to slightly different adaptations.  It takes up a little more time than typical high-intensity interval training, but it is easy to recover from and the value per minute of training is huge.

In this podcast, I'll go through the definition of sweet spot training, some of the benefits and some ways to get more sweet spot training into your workouts.  As a bonus, you can pick up a free copy of my power testing and fatigue resistance tool (which I'll explain how to use during the podcast) at the end of the show notes!

Don't forget to share with your friends and click through for the show notes:

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Am I Overtraining? How Can I Prevent It? (Podcast #62)

Athletes are a notoriously hard working bunch, carving out a dozen or more hours each week to train for their chosen sport.  Especially with cycling, there is a misconception that “more is better” and it often leads to overextending yourself.  Remember that training stress stacks up on every other stress in your life: family, work, kids, paying bills, doing tasks around the house, etc.  It's easy to turn a blind eye to the stress you deal with every day and focus solely on your training stress, but in reality, you're doing yourself a disservice.

This is generally the reason the busiest athletes find themselves stuck in an every declining spiral of training, declining performance and training harder, hoping to reverse the trend.  Overtraining is a condition where the body is taxed beyond it's ability to recover, and is a very real condition that I see in a certain percentage of athletes.  And yes, it's mostly the guys who get up at 4AM to train for 2 hours, get to work by 7AM, work hard all day, get home by 6PM only to eat, walk the dog, spend time with kids and go to bed late.

Then they repeat it the next day.

And the next day, and the next, over and over.

When performance starts declining, typically they add more training, maybe an after-work session or a longer morning session, hoping to see the trends reverse and performance to climb again.  Usually, it doesn't work, overtraining sets in and suddenly, they've dug a deep hole they're stuck in.

In today's podcast I'll discuss the signs and symptoms of overtraining as well as some of the ways to dig yourself out of the overtraining hole if you find yourself there.  Don't forget to leave comments below or on the Tailwind Coaching Facebook page, don't forget the coupon code at the end of the show notes and don't forget to share with your friends by clicking the bubbles on the left of the page!

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VO2 Max Training in 30 Seconds

VO2 max training is one of my secret keys to building strong cyclists, and it's the key to unlocking bigger functional threshold power (FTP) gains later in your training.  Physiologically, VO2 max is the maximal amount of oxygen your body can use during high-intensity exercise.  FTP is simply a fraction of that maximal amount under which your body is primarily producing energy through aerobic means. Basically, think of VO2 max as your fitness “ceiling”.  You can only increase your FTP so far before you start running into that ceiling, so you have to “raise the roof” on your fitness if you want to bump your FTP up further.

Here's the part most people don't realize: you don't need to backload your program with a ton of 5 to 8-minute intervals in order to accomplish the goal of VO2 max training.

VO2 Max Training In 30 Seconds?

Microburst training is one of the many tools I use to build fitness in the athletes I coach.  Surprisingly, microburst training (which is a fancy way of saying really short, really hard repetitive interval training) is a quick way to boost your cycling fitness and make you stronger and faster. It's been tested time and time again, and while it's TRUE that you can build big fitness in 30 second blocks, you have to be prepared to bury yourself in the pain cave for a while.  If you're able to handle the intensity, you'll end up realizing fitness gains you never believed you'd find in such a short time.

But how can blocks of 30 to 50 seconds build fitness that will allow you to crush those 4, 5 and 6 minute efforts in races and fondos?  After the jump, I'll explain why it works, cover the physiology of it and give you a few workouts that you can integrate into your weekly training.

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The Cycling Performance Management Chart (Podcast #59)

What is a cycling performance management chart and what can it do for you?  Is it just a way to graph your fitness?  Does it tell you if you're ready to race?  Will it keep you from overtraining?

The performance management chart (PMC) is one of the lifelines between an athlete and their structured training work load.  Many of my listeners, customers and athletes have asked me what all those squiggly little lines and numbers mean?  Sure, there's a basic concept of “keep on climbing” the fitness mountain, but it's a far more nuanced tool than just that, revealing information about your fitness, form and where you may potentially be overdoing it.

After the jump we'll discuss the basics of the PMC, how you manage your training and your fitness using a PMC, how to read all those little lines and how you can use the PMC as a tool to maximize your performance.  I'll also talk about what the PMC CAN'T do, which is perhaps the most important thing to know.

Check the show notes after the jump for more:

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Coaching Q&A – Ways to Boost Your Training Outcomes (Podcast #58)

This time of year, the focus of your questions has turned from how to get strong and fit for upcoming events to wringing the most out of your training time.  If you are anything like the 99% of cyclists for whom riding a bike isn't a job, you have limited time to train and need to get the most out of each hour. I'll wager that these questions that I'm getting will apply to many of you out there.  It's true that no question is a stupid one, and since there's a lot of valuable information in each of the topics I'll talk about, I've put them together into a podcast intended to help you boost your training outcomes.

In this episode of the Tailwind Coaching Podcast, I'll explain how you can boost your fitness and increase your training outcomes with some simple techniques.  After the jump, you'll be able to peruse the show notes and read a synopsis of what's talked about in this episode.

Don't forget to hit the like and share buttons on the left to share this information with your friend, group ride buddies and teammates!

Now, learn how to boost your training outcomes with these simple tips:

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