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Endurance sport coach & Cycling Tours organizer
www.envol.se
www.envol.se
Help & Ideas #1 by Nicolas REMIRES
Training
Success in your racing doesn’t happen by luck during race day. It is a
full process of making plans, building routines and training.
My first topic will be about training. This is one of the key of your
achievement. That’s the place where you will get the physical, mental and
tactical details that will help you to reach your goals.
Best trainings are the ones where your focus, efforts and intensity will
be at your highest level, and that will result on improvements.
First set your mind
Before to start training, you have to set your mind in order to reach
your goals. For that, you spend some time thinking and be ready to make a few
changes:
- Know what you have to change: Get a qualified friend or an experienced
coach telling you what toimprove (video, analysis, tests), giving you
feedbacks. Ask questions. Instead of spending money on new fancy gear, get the
important stuff done. At this time of the year, it is time build good bases.Get
a physiologist to fix your body and make it ready for training. Get the perfect
bike fit.
- Stop talking and train: in Sweden, with the darkness and the
bad weather, it is easy to spend time admiring others on social medias. Just
stop and do it. You have a plan, you have goals, you are motivated then kick in
the butt and do the training. You have to spend the time training if you want to
reach your goals. Only talking about it won’t make you improve.
- Quality should be on the top of the list: if you are not a
professional athlete, you have a job, a social life, a family. If you go
training without focusing on it or without thinking fully on the goal of your session,
it is better that you stay home with yours or do something else. If you want to
succeed you have to put as much as possible quality time in the pool, on the
track or on your saddle.
What is a good training?
- Goals and purpose of the session:
The goals are some aspects of your sport you want to improve. It could
be mental, physical,
technical, tactical. The purpose is specific to your goal. When your
goals are written down, the next step will be find the purpose of the training
periods and sessions. For example, if you are a poor swimmer and go for a long
triathlon or swimrun, you will have to improve your swim efficiency, and the
purpose will be to repeat 800mt of drills per sessions for a while. These
purposes have to be known from the start.
- Focus and intensity:
100% focus in training will lead to 100% focus in racing. If you never
focus or push yourself during the training sessions, you can’t expect to push
yourself on race day. It is not about going all out or at threshold at every
single training session, it is about focusing on the right intensity and on
your training session. If you have to do 800mt of drills divided on 8x100mt of
different drills, you have to realize that the 8 drills have a purpose and a
focus, and you have to be 100% thinking about it while you do it. I have been
myself in situations when swimming drills sets with faster swimmers, I was just
swimming hard staying in their feet, forgetting about doing the drills well.
What is the purpose of that !?
- Train for adversity and never give up:
You are doing your hills repetitions in running, 10x Hammarby Backen, it
is getting harder due to fatigue, it is dark, it is colder, it starts raining,
you stop after 8 repetitions. You do that once, then twice, then you always
stop when it comes harder. If you train yourself not giving up when you are out
of your comfort zone, you will do the same during race day. When you run your
10km road race and it starts to be painful after 4km, you are not giving up,
you try to go to the next level of pain. It is too easy to let it up when it is
tougher, when you see the others dropping you in the pool or on the bike, when
the headwind is blowing and you can’t keep your pace, DO NOT STOP, keep going.
This training, you are building yourself to be ready for race day.
- Get out of your comfort zone:
If you stay in the easy comfortable training all the time, you can’t
expect any improvement. You might keep your fitness level as it is, but you won’t
reach the next step of your development. After you define your weakness, train
on them, put yourself in danger, go in the unknown. More time you will spend
out of the comfort zone and more comfortable you will be. You won’t even feel
when you reach the next level, you will just feel too comfortable and remember
how you were a few weeks or days ago.
A few rules you should follow during your training
- Know what you are doing, know your gear, know your races: do
not wait that somebody do it for you. An example: you go cycling, you have your
repair flat kit in your pocket but you don’t know how to use it… How will you
do during the race ?
- Do the hours: that won’t happen if you don’t spend the time
training. And that can be boring
training. But this is the road to success. Find some motivation even
during the boring sets. You always learn something.
- Be smart: find the balance between training too much and not
enough. What is working for you is probably not working for your friend.
- Be consistent during the training: consistency during training
will lead to consistency during racing. Not only physical consistency. Focus,
diet, emotions, lifestyle are also part of your performance. Be consistent in
everything.
- Be patient: if you want quick results, do not start training
for endurance sport. Only frustration will result from impatience.
- Accept to fail: Are you really failing? Not being able to keep
a pace during a track session is not a fail. It is an information telling you
that you are doing something wrong or your expectations are too high at this
moment…
Finally think about recovering from training
Sleep, rest, recover is part of your training. A rest day is not a day
when you do some other fun physical activities. A rest day is a day when you
sleep more, when you put your legs up and recover.
Do not spend 3 hours climbing or 90 minutes power lifting on a rest day.
Recovery weeks or rest weeks are planned to let your body refuel and get
ready for the next training block. You won’t lose anything in one week or you
won’t get fat if that is your concern !.
Next topics:
- Setting goals
- Routines
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