Progressive, Gradual, and Quantifiable - The Training Process

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By incorporating progressive, gradual, and quantifiable training, you will not only get faster, you will reduce your risk of injury.

Random training produces random results. You may get faster, you may get slower, or you may make no progress at all. In order to increase your fitness level a few basic and key elements need to be in place. These elements are crucial to your athletic success and should be considered in designing your plan.

The first element is progression. Your body reacts to a stressor (work out), recovers and adapts to that stressor in the form of increased strength, speed, endurance, or power. If you apply the same stress load week after week you will not progress. This is intuitive in regards to endurance; you have to increase mileage or duration each week in order to get to your race goal. Strength, power, and speed work require a similar progression. You must add greater stress loads each week, and recover, in order to move forward.

If you add too much stress too quickly, or with inadequate recovery, you will overload your system and degrade your performance rather than increase it. A gradual progression in stress load is the next key element. In considering weekly increase of total stress load or volume, try not to increase more than 10% with a goal of roughly 6-8%. Weekly volume includes intensity and duration. It is also important to note that an increase in intensity will require greater recovery time even if duration stays the same. As intensity comes up, volume should come down. This progression may seem slow, but even a 1% increase in fitness per week is enormous progress through a season.

Lastly, quantify your training and progress. If your goal is simply to complete a race you need only to be concerned with endurance. A steady increase in duration or mileage will get you to your goal. Strength, speed, or power intervals should be similarly quantified. Each week gradually increase the number, duration, or intensity of your intervals. A coach can help you determine what workouts are best performed at what point in your season. Quantifiable results will motivate. Often athletes are unaware if they are making any progress at all. Make sure you write your plan down so you can see your progression. Monthly field tests are another way to quantify progress. After a rest day record your average heart rate, speed, and distance over a 30 minute time trial. Try to keep the test conditions consistent as much as possible.

Rest and recovery should be quantified as well. Make sure you reduce your volume every 4rth week to ensure complete recovery both physically and mentally. Generally I do not train my athletes hard for more than 3 days in a row without a rest or recovery day. With multi-sport athletes the various demands of each sport can be used to balance your plan. An example would be swimming the day after a hard run to give your body a rest from impact. It is important to note that your body is weaker after a workout and only gets stronger if it recovers properly.

Keep a training log of your sleep, resting heart rate, and stress levels to indicate signs of overreaching or overtraining. Overloading is the normal training process. It simply means increasing the stress on your body to cause adaptation to the stress. It is typical to feel short term fatigue with overload. Overreaching occurs when you continue to train at abnormally high loads, or increase them for about 2 weeks. Performance now noticeably decreases and fatigue becomes longer lasting, but with a few days rest it is quickly reversible. If you ignore overreaching, you enter the third stage; overtraining which can take months to recover from.

By incorporating these elements into your training plan you will not only get faster, you will reduce your risk of injury. I am often able to decrease athletes overall volume and produce greater results through more focused training and increased recovery. Remember to place a greater emphasis on quality of training versus quantity.

Matt Russ has coached and trained elite athletes from around the country and internationally for over ten years. He currently holds an expert license from USA Triathlon, an Elite USA Cycling, and is a licensed USA Track and Field Coach. Matt is head coach and owner of The Sport Factory, and works with athletes of all levels full time. He is a free lance author and his articles are regularly featured in a variety of magazines and websites. Visit www.thesportfactory.com for more information or email him at [email protected]

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date: April 9, 2007