Hello and welcome to the Progress Theory where we discuss how to implement scientific principles to optimise human performance. I am Dr Phil Price and here is another episode of the performance review.
I wanted to go over a few more aspects of my training that I feel need to be discussed and which I feel has greatly helped me over the last 7 weeks. Just to re-cap, I will be attempting my first half iron triathlon at Hever castle at the festival of endurance hosted by Castle triathlon. That’s a 1.9km swim, 90km bike and a half marathon run. I am relatively new to the sport of Triathlon and don’t have a huge endurance background, but this is a great start into what will be learning the science behind being a hybrid athlete i.e developing strength and endurance simultaneously.
So for this performance review episode, I wanted to focus on a few programming decisions. This isn’t just the rationale behind why I have included something, but why I didn’t do a certain test but intend to in the future. Ultimately, this isn’t an 8-week training programme and then I’m finished. I want to continue to push and develop as a hybrid athlete for years to come so decisions I make here early on are really quite important.
The 3 topics I will cover in the performance review are:
The 3-minute all-out test and why I’m saving that for later
Programming volume and intensity for 8 weeks
And why performing is a skill and should be included in your programme.
Why I didn’t do the 3-minute all-out test
On one of our recent Progress Theory podcasts, we chatted with S&C coach Christian Vassallo and his work and research on the 3-minute all-out test and its use in programming. It’s an awesome episode and I’d recommend all of our listeners to check it out as the 3-minute all-out test is horrible to do, but it is easy to implement and gain information about your current physical capabilities. As a short overview, the 3-minute all-out test provides you with your critical speed (if running), or critical power if cycling or rowing etc. This is the speed or power you theoretically can maintain for a long duration based on your aerobic and anaerobic capacity. You can train above this speed, however, you have a limited resource to be able to maintain that speed. Think of it as the battery life on your phone. The higher you venture above this speed, the more limited your capacity is to maintain that speed. With this knowledge, you can programme training at different intensities because you know how much battery life you have at certain speeds and power outputs. You can also use this information to predict race performance.
So if this test provides you with so much valuable information, why haven’t I done it for my training leading up to the half iron. Put simply, I'm working my way up to it. The 3-minute all-out test is still a maximal intensity effort, and due to entering a new sport, I felt I was not ready and in the right physical condition to do it. Firstly, this is from an injury perspective. After injuring my soleus during the marathon just before Christmas in 2020, the muscle tissue does have a tendency to restrain itself (the biggest predictor of injury being previous injury and all that). I still have work to do on this issue, and appropriately increasing the volume running along with an appropriate strength programme will help. However, doing a test where I have to maximally sprint when the muscle tissue isn’t ready to handle that load is not smart. Think about it this way - if someone was new in the weight room would you get them doing a 1RM squat? If you’re smart, you wouldn’t. If they’re new to training or are coming back from injury they’re likely going to improve in the squat if the programme is appropriate, regardless of what their 1RM squat is. This is the same situation with my running.
Now you could also argue why I didn't do the 3-minute all-out test for my cycling. That decision was based on knowing what the main focus of the training was - the efficiency of the skill. I am new to road bikes and I am still learning how to perform the skill, especially on the hills. It is so easy for me to revert back to just pushing on the pedal rather than producing force throughout the whole cycle. Therefore, if I had done a 3-minute all-out test at the beginning of the 8 weeks I would have done it with shoddy technique. How valuable do you think that data would be for me? If my skill improves a lot in 3 weeks, all of a sudden I'm programming training based on numbers achieved during a test when my technique was considerably worse.
These are all decisions a lot of coaches have to make when working with a new client or working with someone that is working with a new goal. Testing is great when applied appropriately, and this time for me I thought it was better to work with RPE’s (rating of perceived exertions), as I can subjectively judge intensity for sessions and give me time to perfect the skills I’m working on. It would be harder for me to eliminate junk miles if I’m so focused on hitting certain speeds and power outputs.
However, once I’m more proficient at the skill of cycling and running, which I am hoping is after this half iron man, then I will definitely be doing the 3-minute all-out test. With a more proficient skill base, I’ll be able to push myself to hit certain intensities based on my current physiological capabilities and hopefully use more precise training to improve physiologically.
Managing volume and intensity. 8 weeks vs longer
I wanted to discuss the how volume and intensity of training changes over the 8-week programme. 8 weeks is an interesting length of time because it is short enough to have it as 1 mesocycle if programmed slowly and appropriately. People often see a mesocycle as a block of training usually with the training load or intensity increasing, followed by a deload. The bog-standard approach to this when displayed in textbooks is 3 weeks of increasing intensity followed by 1 week of deload. This approach is fine if you have a good duration of time because you can structure many of these mesocycles one after the other, which is common in the off-season for rugby. However, mesocycles don’t have to be 4 weeks long, and 8 weeks is short enough to maintain an increase in volume or intensity over 5-7 weeks before tapering off. Any longer, like 12 weeks, you run the risk of injury because you’ve pushed for too long with deloading and allowing the body to recover.
This was shown quite well by the work of Professor Robert Hickson, whose seminal work on concurrent training showed both strength and endurance could be improved together. However, at the 7-week mark, participants reached a peak of performance and then started to decrease in subsequent weeks. This is clearly the time when you add in a deload week to aid recovery and avoid this dip in performance, or your start tapering off with the aim to peak at around 8 weeks. It is this strategy that I have taken with my programming for this half iron man. If I had longer, 12 weeks or 16 weeks, I would have definitely deloaded earlier.
To conclude this section on programming I just want to highlight the importance of knowing how long you’re programming for. You’ll be able to push and programme for certain adaptations differently depends on the length of the programme. An 8-week programme or a 12-week programme may have the same goal, but how you get there will be different, and a common error is pushing too much for too long. You can get away with it with an 8-week programme. A 12-week programme? Not so much.
So, with this in mind, volume and intensity are structured as follows. Let's start with volume. The volume of training increased slowly, with its peak reached at the weekend of week 5. On this particular weekend, the swim, cycle and run distances covered are similar to the event itself (except we covered them over the entire weekend rather than one after the other). From here, the volume started to go down but slowly, and this was to accommodate more of the brick sessions being performed at and around ‘Race pace’ i.e the amount of higher intensity work was increasing.
The intensity slowly increased from the start all the way to around week 7, a very linear progression. This is mostly because running, cycling and swimming were becoming easier as I was becoming more efficient, so by week 7, I was performing at higher speeds at similar RPE’s to week 1 (and for a recap on RPE - please see performance review 1). The weekend of week 7 includes a recce of the racecourse and a brick session. The bike and run legs of the half iron will consist of 2 laps each, so for the bike, it’s 45km loop and the run is a 10.6km loop. The aim of the end of week 7 is to perform 1 loop of each as a brick session at our estimated race pace, so we can get a proper feel of the course and see where we are at before we taper for the week leading up to the event.
Performing is a skill. Practise it.
This neatly segues into my final point which discusses performance practise as a skill. For someone that is new to a sport, there are a lot of new skills which need practising. It isn’t all about how cardiovascularly fit and efficient you can get at all 3 disciplines. Sure, they’re likely the most important components, but competing consists of a number of logistical and mental skills which you need to get more comfortable with. Because of this, the following was included in the 8-week programme:
A competitive Olympic distance triathlon on the weekend of week 4. A perfect opportunity to be more comfortable competing alongside others, finding your food and water strategies, making sure everything is set up correctly to ensure a quick transition
A brick session on the weekend of week 7 using the actual course. It gives you a chance to practice and become familiar with the course, determine your RPE for race pace on the actual course, and just see how far you’ve come along during the past 7 weeks.
People often only want to compete if they’re in their best shape or have trained for it, but competing can be used as part of the training programme. Use competitions effectively by specifically outlining which goals you personally want to achieve or what you want to find out about yourself. During the Olympic distance triathlon, my focus was on getting used to the new bike set-up (it was all wrong - best I find that out early), determine an RPE for the run at a specific pace post swim and bike, and plan out my transition strategy (which, again, needed a lot of work). Without competition, I would not be able to find this information out. It made me a better athlete. I learnt more than if I had just gone through the miles out of competition over the weekend. So stop comparing yourself to others, list what you need to know about yourself and see if you can utilise a competition effectively to find the information to help you train and become a better athlete.
Just to summarise: I will be doing the 3-minute all-out test in the near future and using it to make programming decisions. However, as I’m new to the sport and coming back from a calf injury, it is best to leave more intense forms of testing for when I am ready. An 8 weeks training programme can be seen as its own mesocycle. You can push the volume and intensity for longer than 3 weeks before deloading. However, if you're programming for longer than 8 weeks, this may not be appropriate. The length of the programme will hugely determine how you structure your programme. And finally, practise competing. Structure it into your training. Make specific goals so you can learn about yourself. Training competitions are a great opportunity for this.
Anyways I hope you enjoyed this episode and found this information helpful for your own training. I plan on doing many more of these so please subscribe to the Progress theory so you get all our episodes downloaded straight to your phone when they’re released. Please follow @theprogresstheory on Instagram and youtube, leave a comment or share us on your story. We really appreciate the help as we grow the channel. You can also find me on Instagram @drphilprice as I document all my training. Also, head to our website www.theprogresstheory.com where you can find all of our content.
We’ll see you ln the next episode
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