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Why Measure Training Stress?

In your 20s, you’re made out of rubber. Overuse injuries happen, but mostly in pretty extreme cases. In your 30s, you still probably bend, rarely break, and generally heal quickly.

In your 40s, the body starts to change, and those changes become more dramatic and pronounced in your late 40s. That’s when the proverbial shit hit the fan for me: massive distress in my right hip that I never saw coming; a stress fracture to my third metatarsal in my right foot, a 60% tear in my right achilles tendon that required surgery, and recently a stress reaction/fracture in my left femur.

Why? Why then? Why didn’t I see it coming? Why did I still think I could train like a much younger elite athlete?

And a much better question for the long term: How will I prevent this from happening in the future?

I finally figured this out the answer to that last question while I was nursing this latest injury: I needed a system that would enable me to measure stress in a meaningful way, within each sport and across sports, to do two really important things:

Optimize my training program to achieve my goals, and

Avoid overtraining by proactively planning both stress and recovery.

I haven’t found a system that does both, and I think I would have found one by now among what I’ve read about endurance sports training if anyone had ever thought to invent one.

The concept is really simple: Find a metric – some measurement – that can be used to measure the amount of stress that the body is subjected to over a specific standard distance, within a particular sport, that can also be used to measure and compare stress in each of the other two sports in triathlon.

And one key twist: this metric doesn’t have to be purely objective (like HR, or power output, or speed), but rather something that can be customized to a specific athlete that is based on both subjective and objective variables.

I’ve been using and refining my system for the past several weeks, and I’ve learned a lot about how to balance my training, make adjustments over time, and understand when, why, and more importantly how, to optimize my program. With my most recent running injury almost entirely behind me (give it a couple more weeks), I’ll be refining this system to include all three sports, and use that to figure out the best way forward.

Stay tuned…

Using Distance vs. Time to Measure Training Stress

When measuring training stress, it is better to use distance to determine durations rather than time.

Quick question -- Which is more stressful: Going hard for a timed 400m on the track, 100m in the pool, or a mile on your bike?

Now do that hard effort 10-12 times, and think about measuring that stress: Do you measure it in terms of total time for all the repeats added up? How do you enter the set in your log book -- do you write down the distance or the time? And more importantly, how do you record the overall stress that your body was subjected to, so that you can optimize your training across three different sports, while avoiding overtraining?

The answer to the last question is that you probably don’t, but you definitely should.

What about time? Time is ok to use for measuring overall training volume, but measuring training volume can be very misleading, and is likely the most inaccurate metric that most endurance athletes use to measure overall training stress.

Why? Well, think about it: what do you use to measure your swim sets? How do you measure your higher intensity track workouts? And -- here’s an easy one -- what do races use to measure how much you’ll swim, bike, and run?

Conventional wisdom for coaching endurance athletes says that the only thing the body really understands is how long -- in terms of time -- the body spends exercising at a particular intensity level. While that’s technically true, that metric is very difficult to measure, track, and control.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you do 12 x 100m in the pool, alternating 2 repeats at Threshold and 1 repeat at sub-threshold (about 3sec/100m slower).

How would you record that set?

Is it just another 1200m in the pool? That makes no sense, since that would look the same in your logbook as a 1200m warm up or a relatively easy 1200m aerobic swim.

Is it 10:40 spent at Threshold, and 5:45 at sub-threshold? Technically speaking, maybe it is -- but how useful is that to measure and keep track of over weeks and months? Who has the time to manage that level of detail across three sports over the course of an entire season?

My suggestion is that you use distance, not time, to measure this as 800m at Threshold and 400m at sub-threshold, and categorize the rest of the workout in terms of the distances that were spent at other intensity levels (such as VO2, Aerobic, Recovery, etc.).

I’ll explain in a later post how to take this one step further and quantify the overall intensity of the workout with a stress index, which will make it incredibly easy to measure, track, and -- most importantly -- proactively control the stress of your training within a sport, and across all three sports, over any time period.

“Guided Stress” Cycling Workouts - I don’t get it

I’ve had more and more athletes ask me for workouts that could be uploaded into a system to control resistance on an electronic trainer. One example of this (just for reference, not speaking from personal experience) is TrainerRoad’s PowerMatch feature.

My biggest issue with these “guided stress” systems is that they don’t teach the athlete how to pace themselves through the session, or what adjustments need to be made to hold resistance at or near a target power level. In fact, it looks to me like the entire premise of these systems is that you do not and cannot possibly understand how to control your effort on the bike. How could that be helpful?

My suggestion as an alternative to this paint-by-numbers approach would be to become more aware of your body during training, synchronize your breath rate with your heart rate, understand and calibrate your perceived effort at the beginning, middle, and end of a hard effort, and in the process improve your chances of success during a race.

Thinking that “guided stress” training will help you learn how to race is a lot like thinking that practicing karaoke will help you learn how to write better songs.

Accurately Measuring Training Stress

The central goal of a training program is essentially “to guide the athlete to do the right amount of the right kind of work, with the right amount of recovery, nourishing, and consistency to achieve their goals” -- fairly simple, but way easier said than done.

There have been advances in training methods over the years to help guide this process, along with more precise ways to measure certain training variables with precision: Time, Distance, Speed, HR, Wattage/Power, etc. But this precision is often confused with accuracy. For example, by knowing the precise speed, duration, distance, and power output throughout a ride, there’s a common misconception that I can look back at that data and determine the overall “stress” that it inflicted on my body. Even if that were the case, however, how would I use those same variables to plan my rides for the coming week, or for my current training cycle? How would that fit into my racing season, or my season plan?

The fact is that most of us have absolutely no idea how to predict, measure, or compare the relative stress that we experience within our workouts, let alone across multiple workouts spanning days, weeks, or months.

So, the question is, without a way to accurately measure stress, how do we avoid bad things like overtraining, and how do we maximize good things like conditioning our bodies to take us across longer distances at a faster speed?

A few weeks ago I started developing a Training Stress Management system that will make it easy for athletes at any level to do just that in a straightforward, simple, easy-to-use fashion. I’ll be organizing my thoughts here on the subject as I progress, with the goal of having something to publish and share in about six months. Stay tuned, and feel free to forward any questions along the way to me at info<at>opentri<dot>com.

Making a Living as a Pro Triathlete

Brett Sutton decides to quit Team TBB so that he can bang on WTC to offer more prize money to the top pros, without risking the livelihood of his pros and related sponsors. And he’s going to look into launching a brand new triathlon series to help accomplish the goal of having the lifestyle of a professional triathlete be more financially viable to more pros around the world.

That approach has never worked, and it never will.

Instead, the challenge the professional triathletes face needs to be viewed as this: How do I connect with more athletes in more meaningful ways, and how do I monetize that?

If you’re going to make a living as a professional triathlete, you have to realize a simple fact: You’re a “marketing vehicle” first and foremost.

Write. Blog. Tweet. Connect with your local teams and their coaches. Help your sponsors invent new products for your market. Work with local retailers to drive more business their way.

If you’re earning more than 10-15% of your total income from prize money – hard dollar checks cut by race directors for placing in-the-money at their races – you’re livelihood is at risk, whether you realize it or not.

If multi-sport is your passion and you want to build your life around it, then you need to figure out how to connect with more athletes in more ways, and find ways to monetize this down the “long tail” of our sport.

How many race directors are you friendly with? How many of the 3,000+ USAT-sanctioned races in the U.S. have you adopted? Which have you helped to drive more registration and sponsorship dollars into their events?

How many of the nearly 1,000 triathlon teams in the U.S. are within a 50-mile radius of where you live? How many of their meetings have you spoken at? How many times? How many clinics have you run for 3-4 hours on a weekend? How many times have you done that this season?

There were over 550,000 USAT-licensed triathletes in 2012, with about 175,000 of those being dedicated, full-year members. A conservative estimate of $1-2,000 average annual spend per athlete would put the total spend in the $500M-$1B/year range.

Isn’t 1-2% of that enough to help support a couple hundred pros across the U.S.?

This approach may sound overly-simplistic, but it's not easy and requires non-stop focus and passion. But keep this in mind: this is the path you've chosen, and no one owes you a living -- through prize money or appearance fees -- no matter how fast you are.

Get out there and connect. You may find the path to that living is closer than you think.

Incorporating Recovery

Excellent question posted to me on Twitter recently: "...can't help notice no recovery weeks in 1/2IM plan. Suggestions?"

One of the biggest challenges in offering generic training plans is that it's impossible to customize them to every athlete's particular situation. There are general guidelines that make sense and then there are some suggestions that I can make to help you determine how to make the overall plan work for you. One key area that requires some tweaking is incorporating enough recovery.

Recovery is a critical component of any sustained training plan, and it only gets more important as we get older. There are a few options for integrating recovery periods:

Designate one day per week as your recovery day. You'll notice in the plans that Monday often serves as that day -- it becomes that one day that gives you a chance to regroup, to heal a bit, and to gather your focus for another week ahead.

When you need additional rest, the next step would be to have 2-3 days in a row, usually every two weeks, to provide some additional opportunity to recover and benefit from your prior training. These rest periods include "active recovery" sessions where you do short amounts of very easy activity, nothing taxing whatsoever.

Another approach is more dramatic, where you limit your rest for 3-4 weeks, and then include an entire week of recovery. This week off can be helpful to set you up for an early season race, or to help you prepare for some benchmark testing that you might want to do in the early and mid-seasons.

Recovery periods are critical to your overall success -- take the time to plan for them, and feel free to experiment with each of these options to determine which one fits best into your lifestyle.

#Recovery

FAQ About Intensity %'s

I received this question recently, wanted to share the answer here:

"I just wanted clarification on whether the %'s quoted in the plans are based on MHR vs LT?"

When the plans specify an intensity percentage, the way to calculate the target heart rate looks like this:

Target HR = [(Max HR - Resting HR) x Intensity %] + Resting HR

As an example, someone with a Max HR of 180, Resting HR of 60, and target intensity % of 75% would have a Target HR of:

[(180 - 60) x 0.75] + 60 = 150bpm

Hope that helps!

Interesting read from a non-sports perspective -- the last line is the punchline: "a healthy mind for a healthy body."

Most of us know this intuitively, but when you become more aware of the link between positive emotions, positive energy, and performance, the opportunity to leverage this for better results throughout your life is amazing...stay tuned.

#EmotionPerformanceLink

Is the Volume for the Ultra Plan Enough?

I received the following letter recently, and wanted to respond publicly in case other people following the OpenTri plans have a similar question -- here's the question, followed by my response:

Dear Supercoach,

I am competing in my first Iroman this May and I am using your plan. I really liked the layout and I really apprecicate the cost. I am starting on week 13 as I feel my fitness is decent. I have studied the plan and my open concern is the running volume. The longest run is only 2 hours. Is this adequate? Running is not my strong point and I havent logged a lot of miles on long runs. My longest run ever is 14 miles. Should I increase the running volume on long runs or leave as is?

I really appreciate the help.

Your ability to run a marathon at the end of an Ironman will not be determined by the duration of your longest run, or your long runs for that matter. Your sport-specific strength and capacity to handle a load for a 10+ hour race will be determined primarily by three things:

How consistent you have been in your training over a 6-9 month period;

How well you're able to recover when necessary over an entire season; and

How frequently you're able to perform good quality training in between those recovery periods.

Bottom line: Thousands of athletes across various ability levels from all over the world have used these plans to successfully achieve their goals at their key races, primarily at the Ironman distance.

My thought behind offering the plans for free is that paying a multi-sport coach should involve getting more out of the service than "tell me what to do and I'll do it." But if that's all you want, and you don't have the budget or inclination to get more help, then I'm confident that you've come to the right place.

Enjoy! -Mike

FAQ: Swim Intensities, Alternate Run Program, Bike Trainer

I often get asked questions regarding the free OpenTri training programs -- I'll periodically post these here, along with my responses, starting the post with "FAQ" and some idea of what is covered...here goes:

"in the swim the intensities given are based on HR but i dont wear a HR monitor so i am just going by the breathing ... is this correct?"

The two most important intensities in your swimming can be simply "hard" and "tempo" (in addition to "easy" for warming up, cool downs, etc.). As for your actual HR during those periods, you can periodically check your HR at the end of the pool by counting heart beats & then using that to guide you accordingly. There will be times when you'll know that you're supposed to go hard, and other times when the main set will guide you to maintain a tempo over a longer period...it's really not more complicated than that.

"i am not following the running programme as i have another programme which should lead me to do a full marathon end of february and than keep building up to end of June which is Race day. Will this be correct?"

I would make sure to compare the basic structure and buildup of the run plan that you're following, and make sure that it doesn't differ too much from the basic structure of the overall program. You may also want to "blend" the two to add some focus where you might have a weakness (speed, tempo, or long runs). As for running a full marathon in Feb before a June IM, that's enough time to recover but I would caution you that a marathon race takes way more out of you physically than an IM, as you're starting out fresh and can therefore pound your body much more completely than after a 2.4m swim & 112m bike.

"in the bike... i am doing the sessions on the roller ... is this enough as other ppl go out and do over 3 hrs bike session on the road... ?"

There is a place for rollers, but I would caution that the intensity that you can achieve with rollers won't be as high as what you can do either on a more standard trainer or out on the road. For long rides there really is no substitute for getting out on the road, working with your bike and its specific setup, and testing out your fueling strategy over a multi-hour ride.

Thanks for the questions -- feel free to comment below and we'll start building a knowledge base that others can benefit from as well...have fun with it!

On Cheating in My Sport

Everyone breaks the rules at one point or another. And many people cheat. Three high profile examples in and around our sport in the past few weeks have included:

Lance Armstrong: This subject's been beaten to a pulp, but here's an excellent opinion piece on Slowtwitch by Dan Empfield that provides some unique perspective on the evolution of Lance's career, from his early days in triathlon to the present.

Kevin Moats: A 58 year-old age grouper, banned for one year for taking supplemental testosterone (another excellent report from Empfield, with more meat than any other piece I've read).

Lisa Hutthaler: A pro who has been penalized for PED use in the past, and who just last weekend was reported to have spent a good deal of the bike leg at Miami 70.3 "two-up" time trialing with her boyfriend, who was also racing (article by Herbert Krabel over at Slowtwitch). Nice.

The common thread among those three cases is that rules were broken, allegedly with intent to gain an advantage -- a textbook definition of cheating. The interesting contrast is the amount of money involved: a huge amount (Armstrong), a relatively modest amount (Hutthaler), and essentially none (Moats).

So, why do we cheat?

My sense is that we all have our different thresholds and perspectives, but in general there has to be a benefit that outweighs the cost, given the risks involved. PEDs cost money and risk the athlete's health, while drafting is free and only carries the potential cost of a short time penalty, or a DQ at worst. In terms of benefit, it makes sense to say that, the more money involved (prize money, endorsements, future appearance fees, etc.), the more likely it is for people to cheat.

So, why would an age grouper, with no monetary benefit to gain, choose to cheat?

I don't mean to single out Moats, or anyone else who has taken PEDs for that matter. Who would draft, or cut the course, or use illegal equipment, or whatever to knowingly gain an advantage? Is being the local hero really worth giving up your integrity as an athlete? Really?

And no, I'm not being naive -- as I said at the top, everyone breaks the rules at one point or another, to one degree or another. What I am saying is this: When you choose to cheat, you really are saying that your race results are worth more to you than process of preparing properly. Good to know. Now go find another sport (hint: Les McDonald is calling).

Seriously, when you find yourself in a situation where drafting looks like an option, where it would be easy to take a pull and then slip in to the drafting zone, just remember that you're somewhere on the continuum with the rest of the cheaters, from Lance on down. It's your choice.

But at that point, you're not competing with me anymore.

"The conventional 'long and slow' method of building endurance is compared and contrasted with a lesser well-known method called reverse periodisation and the potential advantages and disadvantages are described."

Trying this out with my cycling and running interval work, especially in November & December...

#CoreSport

Happy Birthday to Huub

It was a year ago this week that the team from Huub Design launched their new concept in wetsuits. Their "XO skeleton" design compresses the core and promotes proper rotation. Combined with varied neoprene densities, the result is incredible support for both good body position and excellent leverage throughout the arm stroke. Innovations are few and far between in the swim -- congrats to Team Huub for a first year filled with success!

Matt Dixon's Four Pillars of Performance

I read an interview with Matt Dixon on Slowtwitch a couple of years ago, and incorporated some of his philosophy into my training program last year.

This year I plan to put additional focus across all four of his "Pillars of Performance" which are:

Core Sport

Nutrition

Recovery

Functional Strength

I'll be blogging a bit about my experiences with all four areas, in particular how they become more relevant as athletes get older (I'll be turning 50 in 2013). While all four appear to be simple concepts, determining what to do, how to incorporate each pillar, and when to make adjustments is going to require some thought.

On Lance

A few personal thoughts on Lance Armstrong:

The 16 year-old kid I raced against in 1988 wasn't a doper, and he rode like a fiend.

The 21 year-old who won the 1993 UCI World Road Championship in Oslo didn't need to dope, either. He was built for the one-day races, and he was badass.

Being faced with cancer, surviving, and then thriving in ways that has helped millions of people wasn't made possible through any injections or transfusions.

I can't pretend to know the excruciating pain, never-ending monotony, and maniacal dedication that it takes to train for and race multi-stage events like the Tour de France. If there were a magic pill available that transformed that pain and suffering into an opportunity to turn thousands into millions, provide worldwide fame, and create a platform for hope around a dreaded disease that almost killed me...would I be able to justify taking it?

If racing bicycles were my life, maybe. But it's not.

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