Athletes miss training sometimes. They get sick, something comes up at work, there’s a family emergency, or any of life’s innumerable curveball. Reducing the number of training session you miss goes a long way toward reaching new heights in fitness and performance. This type of consistency has been key to safely increasing training workload …
There is an entire generation of cyclists that views VO2 max as a genetically pre-determined performance ceiling. A more modern and nuanced take shows it to be quite responsive to training. With different types of workouts we can increase VO2 max itself, as well as peak power, fractional utilization, and power duration at VO2 max. That’s …
When I turned 50 I felt like an old man, just like that. While I know “age is just a number” there was something about the Big 5-0 that felt a bit different. Put bluntly, it felt to me that after 50 I was on the downhill side of life. So, after being depressed about …
Cyclists and runners and just about everyone else likes to put their feet up after a workout or a hard day at work. A common belief is that elevating your feet above the level of your heart for anywhere from several minutes to an hour or more will “drain lactic acid” from your legs, improve …
There are numerous methods for field testing, involving efforts of varying durations. I developed The CTS Field Test, which consists of two 8-minute, all-out time trials separated by 10 minutes of easy spinning recovery, in 1994 with physiologist Dr. Edmund Burke. At the time we used heart rate, time, and distance (3 miles). Watts were …
Despite the current frenzy around Zone 2 training, coaches and athletes have long known they need to train the full range of intensities to improve performance. Even proponents of large volumes of easy aerobic training incorporate high intensity intervals into their training programs when it’s time for athletes to get ready for racing. We’ve been …
“How do I become a better runner?” In the days of the internet and social media influencers, that question has a million answers, many of which contradict each other. Filtering information down to what’s supported by science and experience is one of the leading reasons athletes cite for hiring a coach. They want to know …
As a female athlete in my 60s who mostly coaches endurance athletes between 50 and 80 years old (with a few above 90!), I am sensitive to the risks and advantages cold weather training poses for athletes my age and older. My goals are always to reduce barriers to exercise, keep athletes safe, and contribute …
When I give training talks, I can inevitably count on being asked, “How long should my longest run be?” When I get this question, I usually retort with, “Why do you need a long run?” Silence ensues. The silence stems from the fact runners rarely think about why they need a long run. And even more specifically, …
Part 4 of Leveraging Blood Lactate Response in Training: Using Blood Lactate Response to Guide Training Progression There are many ways to structure training throughout a season to achieve similar outcomes in terms of fitness and performance. The brilliance of human physiology is that applying stress to any point along the spectrum from easy …