Trap 8: Terrible Toos - Recovery

To get better you need to train. Fundamentally you need to train regularly and consistently. 

Your ‘Smart Training’ (see Trap 2) plan will you have training hard and performing hard training sessions. To take advantage of your hard training, you need be able to recover, and allow your body to adapt - make more-or-less permanent changes in structure or function – to perform best when you ask it to. Poor performance, performance plateaus, loss of motivation, ill-health and injury result when this balance is askew for too long. Recovery – whether passive, active, or involving your easier sessions is vital.

·      Too little taper before key races, and long races.

Get out: rest up. All your hard work should be done before the last 1-3 weeks of your race. Take confidence in this.

Prevention: tapers come in different shapes and sizes. Try different ones, yet keep the taper basics: Progressively reduce your volume; keep some (race-pace) intensity; emphasise ‘easy’; keep your training frequency until the last few days; sleep, eat and drink well; try nothing new; use methods to promote recovery

·      Too little physical and mental recovery after key races or the race-season

Get out: take a well earned physical, mental and emotional break, particularly after key/priority and long (15km/10mile and beyond) races. Revisit family and friends

Prevention: schedule post-race down-times in your plan. Do not rush back into formal nor structured training, particularly after a bad or break-out race.

·      Too much recovery after key races or the race-season: On the other hand too much time off can make it a long tough journey back, especially through Winter.  Don’t let tendons, base-fitness and weight or body-fat ‘deteriorate’ too much while recovering.

Get out: have a scheduled date and activity to start being active again. Find a partner or friend to help. A walk or casual basketball, squash, gym or mountain bike session will help fill the hollowness and tip the inertia in your favour

Prevention: learn from your past, and from others. Formal or hard training doesn’t need to be your entry back, so plan for this. Listen to your body and mind, and progressively build your way back.

Is too much or too little recovery a trap for you?

Running Trap 6: Is More Better?

Through 2010-14 I have held discussions, meetings, race and program reviews, and constructed strategic performance plans with over 700 runners and coaches (and 350+ triathletes). Here are the Top Ten Run-training Traps as a summary. There’s also a cure or ‘get-out’, and a long-term prevention strategy for each.

Remember, what works for the pros and what are promoted as “the best”, “the most effective”, “the ideal”, “the latest” or “short-cuts ” are rarely what they are made out to be. They simply don’t work for most. Perhaps these are your traps?

Trap 6: ‘If some is good, more is better’:

With the accumulation of experience and training volume (and appropriate footwear), without an endurance background, you’ll improve for your first 2-3 years regardless of what you do. Unfortunately, there is no universal truth to ‘if some is good, more is better’. Most runners learn this the hard way, yet experience is often a great teacher. Just ask 2012 Hawaii Ironman World Champion Pete Jacobs, too. It took him a few years to figure out “for me, it’s best to train less than everyone else”.

Doing more – there is a time and place, and it changes. Sometimes, little and less is more.

Get out: Avoid aiming to simply do more each week or session. Indulge true hard training occasionally, and easy training more often. Respect all your commitments: time, energy and emotion, and balance ambition with (current) ability

Prevention: aim to find your individual “sweet-spot”. Not all training plans and programs, volumes, intensities and sessions work the same way for all people. They don’t even work the same way for you the next and the next and the next time around. Strategic and systematic variation and progression over time will allow you to find your own “sweet-spot”

Too much of the same type of running (or structured routine) too early. Running is an economical, efficient and effective way of getting fit. Running for health and fitness, is necessarily different to run-training for performance – although ‘good’ programs for each are based upon the same principles. The same type of running, on the same terrain (flat), on the same surface/s (even, hard), at the same speed/s, in the same patterns teach and train us to get better at that. Running hill repeats makes you better at that hill, not necessarily a better hill runner. Your body adapts to routine and habits (and your mind to myths, fallacies and beliefs) too, not just training

Get out: Learn and use other speeds, surfaces, terrains, hills, structures and even time of day., even if initially as warm-up and warm-down. They’ll add spice, variety and options to training. Think about some non weight-bearing (pool, bike, elliptical), and targeted or functional strength training too.

Prevention: See a run coach. Record your running. Ask & find out the differences between run mechanics, technique and form. They’re not the same things, and too many people and lay magazines and books use the terms interchangeably. Review, analyse and train to improve them. They’ll improve your “feel”: feel more comfortable running; feel of running; and feel how changes in your posture, stride, head position, arm-action, pace, and breathing can and need to be catered for in different run-situations. Use ‘Other Run’, ‘Medley’ and ‘Strength’ blocks or cycles in relevant phases of your multi-year and year plan(s) to guide your program and sessions.

For the record 'doing better is better', not necessarily 'doing more is better'.

Which are you better at? 

Athletic Intelligence - listening to your body (a)

You're a runner, triathlete, cyclist, swimmer, paddler, adventure racer...you live and breathe the endurance lifestyle for one or a variety of reasons: participation, performance, perfection or podium and, in some senses, simply progress and pride.

The basics: you still need to train: run, swim, cycle, paddle, and even climb safely, speedily and economically, and ‘transition’ swiftly in races. Strength and mobility work and smart recovery strategies help too.

Smart Training – the Intelligent Athlete:

Smart training is understanding and applying the differences between hard training and training hard.  Hard training is easy - go out and smash yourself. Swim, cycle and run longer and faster. Rack up the numbers. Anyone can do it. It’s not smart, nor necessary.

Training hard is different. And better. It is understanding what you are training for in a given period of time and training to meet the aim and objectives of that phase, block, cycle, week or session. It is training with identifiable purpose, and necessary flexibility.

Realising when training hard needs to outshine hard training, and vice-versa, all athletes need to be able to change, alter or adapt their actions, movement or skills to the context of training, and competition.  I call this ability to sense and mobilise change, athletic intelligence.

Athletic Intelligence involves listening to your body too: knowing what to listen for when, and what to do or change when you hear something.

What do you listen for, and when? And what do you do about it?

The Sports Gene and Gifts...

Kids inherit all sorts from us: genetic gear and gifts; values, attitudes and beliefs

Ensure that those genes aren’t spoilt by…

DNA ≠ DNA (Do Not Aspire, or Do No Activity)

DNA ≠ DNB (Do Not Battle)

DNA ≠ DNC (Do Not Create, or Do Nothing Challenging)

DNA ≠ DND (Do Not Dream)

DNA ≠ DNE (Did Noble Excuses, or Did Not Encourage)

DNA ≠ DNF (Did Not Finish, or Did Nothing Fun)

DNA ≠ DNG (Did No Gymnastics)

DNA ≠ DNH (Did Not Handshake)

DNA ≠ DNI (Do Nothing Interesting)

DNA ≠ DNJ (Did Nameless Junk)

DNA ≠ DNK (Do Not Know)

DNA ≠ DNL (Did Not Learn)

DNA ≠ DNM (Does Not Mess-up)

DNA ≠ DNN (Do Nothing New)

DNA ≠ DNO (Disown Noble Ownership)

DNA ≠ DNP (Did Not PLAY)

DNA ≠ DNQ (Do Nothing Quick, or Quirky)

DNA ≠ DNR (Did No Running)

DNA ≠ DNS (Do No Skill-training)

DNA ≠ DNT (Did No Team-things)

DNA ≠ DNU (Did Nothing Uncertain)

DNA ≠ DNV (Did Nothing Venturous, or Virtuous)

DNA ≠ DNW (Do Nothing Wholeheartedly)

DNA ≠ DNX (Do Nightly X-box)

DNA ≠ DNY (Do Not Yearn)

DNA ≠ DNZ (Did Nothing Zany)

Let's ensure they can play, experiment, battle, dream, aspire, try and fail, fall and recover, yearn and learn, and work and create. They're not little adult athletes, they are the future. So, as our gift...let’s guide them to it with confidence and competence to approach and shape it…

Sathletes...

The more we learn, the more we realise there is to learn.
The more we know, the more we realise we don't know.

The more we train, the more we think we'll gain. 

I read. A lot. Maybe too much at times. I like to read in areas well beyond my interests, passion and expertise. It's one simple way of keeping me rounded and grounded.

I read books, articles, blogs and links via social networking sites - including Facebook and Twitter.
I even read my emails. And instruction booklets.


A while back, athletic development whiz Vern Gambetta (www.gambetta.com/‎)   introduced me to the wit and wisdom of philosophy and marketing king, Seth Godin (www.sethgodin.com/‎).

Seth writes good stuff. (As does Vern.)
Much of it, especially the principle/s behind his message, is applicable to us in our roles as coaches, athletes and runners. Like good training sessions it takes a little creativity -  moulding and shaping.

Watch for Sathlete stuff...gear from Seth for athletes, and you.

Be wary though...the athlete that sat too much became grounded, and more rounded!