High Intensity Training (Page 2)

True, lots of ways to skin the cat.

However, in my experience there is a limited amount of lessons that an age grouper living and working in the real world with real world responsibilities can learn from a pro triathlete who's:

• Something of a genetic freak after having survived the selection process that is rising through the pro ranks.
• Job is to train and recover from that training...that's it. The family nut is dependent on the train/recover cycle and therefore the athlete's priorities are significantly different from that of an age-grouper: I need to home by 10a on Saturday, wife/husband hat by 11a, not sleeping 2hrs after my ride because its my job to recover. 

That said, I don't know your situation, your resources, background, etc. However, I've applied this separation across many, many flavors of athletes across the last five years and the feedback and results have been nearly unanimously positive.

To be clear, I'm talking about:

• Thurs: regular long run of 1.5hrs, building to 2hrs. Maybe a total of 2 x 2:15 runs in the last 6-8wks before the race.
• Saturday long ride: in General Prep (Weeks 1-8 of 20), 2.5-3hrs. In Race Prep (Weeks 9-17 of 20), 3.5-4.5hrs.
• Sunday long ride: 2hrs in GenPrep, 3hrs in RacePrep

No rides longer than 4.5hrs, with the exception of 2 x Race Rehearsal sessions. This is a 100-112 mile bike followed by a 45' run. I should add there is a Wed interval bike but the volume of that session is completely up to you. All we care about is the Main Set.

Absolutely no runs longer than 2.5hrs. Period. Standing orders that I'll punch you in the nose if I find out you run longer 2.5hrs.

You can see above, the our Sunday investment is very close to the typical long-run-on-Sunday investment. However, my strong recommendation to swap the run for a bike instead.

Similarly, your typical Thurs AM investment might be 1.5hrs or so, which is identical to what we have our people doing most of the time. We just tell them "this is why we want you to do this Sun/Thurs thing. In our experience, it works, it's a better option. You can see from the schedule that I'm asking to run longer than 1:45 on Thurs AM for this handful of workouts. In our experience, it's better to get out of bed early, perhaps juggle some fatigue balls at work for the day, for the significant payoff of separating your long bike and long run." 

Again, in my experience, that schedule above works for 95% of age groupers 95% of the time. We then focus on helping people manage the margins themselves.

While in general I agree with your approach I also think you can't just follow a "one size fits all" model. Every athlete has different needs and each person should be trained based on that. If I have an athlete with time constraints I certainly adjust the total load to have him/her get the most ROI for the time invested via more intensity. OTOH if an athlete has 20 hrs x week available to training I will have him/her achieve a greater load via volume rather intensity. Also as you know you have to take into consideration the goals of the athlete.

In your example above it seems to me you focus only on long distance athletes and in that case yes the specific training will become long steady efforts, however if an athlete is focused on Olympic distance then focusing on more steady state training during the general phase might be a better way to prepare him/her. In addition some athletes have spend many years doing most of their load through higher intensity training (tempo, threshold, and VO2 max) and even if you increase the load via intensity to strive for bigger gains it will get to a point with diminishing returns because the athlete simple won't be able to recover on time, or might experience some overuse injury. In those situations you have to look at what the athlete needs and in those cases it might very well requires a lesser focus on intensity and more on increasing the load through volume.

Also I disagree with the fact that you separate intensity/volume depending on the phase whether general or specific. I think any plan will have a distribution of load (volume + intensity) and how much of it will just vary depending on athlete’s needs and goals. Yes if you are doing an IM the during the general phase the athlet could get most of his/her load via intensity and during the specific phase will get most of the load via volume by doing long steady state rides/runs/swims however that doesn’t mean you should limit or avoid doing any intensity at all. In fact you can add some tempo, threshold or VO2 max effort during long rides/runs/swim or do just shorter tempo/thresold/VO2 max sessions to complement your long steady state sessions and if you manage yuor load properly you shouldn't be sleeping under your desk.

On another note - I am surprised you never seen an athlete get injured by increasing training load via intensity in cycling. I know at least two athletes who have been battling knee issues even though they have been doing limited running and biking no more than 5-6 hrs per week on the computrainer. Their knee issues appear to be related to an increase in fitness (higher 60CP) though the knees are not catching up as fast with the new fitness.

PS. I am glad you guys finally moved away from using the term “reverse” periodization...

Jorge,

Thanks for the dialogue. I think you've misunderstood me and that we actually agree on several points. Also, I am 100% a long course (HIM and full IM) coach. Endurance Nation is a long course tri team.  While our athletes do race, and do very well, at sprint and Oly races, they do them in route to A races at the HIM and IM distance. So, yes, long course triathlon is the perspective from which I approach all training cuz that's my gig and the gig of my team

Just a quick pass at this:

I never said we switch from high intensity to steady state at the transition from General to Race Prep. In fact, interval training, on both the bike and run, is a staple of our training weeks the entire season. For example, our longest regular, non-race rehearsal ride of 4.5hrs is probably the hardest 4.5hr ride these folks will every do. Contains a good bit of FTP/z4 work, as well as Z3 and Z2 work. For our athletes, their race rehearsals and race day 112 are by far the easiest rides they'll see with us. Long runs are similar but the intensity is dialed down due to risk of injury and overtraining.

Nope, never seen an athlete be injured (legit injured, not talking over-reaching, etc) on the bike due to intensity. At least not that I can recall. In my experience, poor bike fits, poor biomechanics on the bike, stoopid gearing choices on crazy hill rides, or crashing into stuff are the causes of cycling injuries.

As you know, the go-to source for Ironman athletes is probably the TTB, with it's Base 1, 2, 3, Build 1, 3 periodization schedule. An entire host of definitions and perspectives are products of this tool: base building, aerobic vs anaerobic fitness, the idea of fitness components like Speed, Force, ME, Endurance, Power, etc. Athletes using the TTB to guide their training do lots of volume in the base periods to earn the right to make themselves faster in Build...but for IM athletes this is exactly the time when volumes needs to increase to meet the demands of the race. So, in my experience, volume-cuz-I'm-racing-IM + speed-cuz-this-book-sez-that's-what-Build-is = implosion. It's this athlete that I was using as an example. Sounds like you've learned differently as have I. The product of my learning process is this General ---> Race Prep progression. BTW, I haven't heard, written, or spoken Reverse Periodization in about 3-4 years but thanks for the compliment :-)

One size fits all, 20hrs, individual goals
While I suspect our coaching methods are quite similar, our coaching-delivery-model, and price points, are quite different. I occupy a different price point and no longer coach athletes 1:1. I coach a team and that requires different tools and different methods of delivering service. I've found the move from 1:1 to Team to be very fulfilling, both personally and professionally. Just fits me better.