There is so much information these days out there shedding light on all kinds of insights and secrets to achieving ones best in multisport. You have magazines, books, internet and of course fellow triathletes all putting their 2 cents in. In fact there is so much out there that it actually becomes hard to know where to begin when seeking a multisport edge. This is especially true for newcomers in the sport. Multisport can get very confusing if you let it, but in the beginning it doesn’t have to be that way. The basic and possibly most important element for multisport training is consistency. Consistency is obviously an important element for any athlete, but its even more important for a multisport athlete.
Multisport athletes are spread much thinner in training for all those different sports. A single sport athlete doesn’t have to fret as bad when missing a workout. A pure runner may run 6 days a week and if they decide that they want to cut out a workout or two, or even a whole week or two it won’t hurt their fitness. Making a habit of cutting workouts is a different story. On the other hand a multisport athlete has to be a little more careful with cutting workouts. A triathlete may swim thrice, bike thrice and run thrice a week. If they cut any of those workouts they are cutting 1/3 of their total volume of training for that sport. This is why it is so crucial in multisport training to consistently have “touches” in all sports trained. Outside life factors that effect training are inevitable, but if one can at least get a small “touch” in that one sport when these outside factors change plans, they will be so much better for it. Outside factors also bring us to another important element in consistent training.
To help achieve consistency in training one must also be flexible in training. The planned week will most always not go according to plan time wise or even recovery wise. Some feel that they have to get a certain workout in at a certain time no matter what. Though the attitude is good, this kind of mindset can actually be detrimental to ones training. A better mindset could be “let’s try get all the workouts in for the week no matter what.” So this may mean Friday’s long run may have to be swapped for Saturday’s 30 minute cruisy run. You have a dentist appointment after work Friday and by the time you eat dinner and help the kids with their homework you would be going long at about 9 o’clock at night! Doing a long run this late will just push back much needed “relax time” as well as when you go to bed, thus hurting recovery for a “big” weekend of fun and training. So Saturdays 30 minute run could make Friday a lot less stressful and make Saturday’s training that much better. This same kind of swapping is beneficial when you don’t feel recovered yet for a certain hard workout. Instead of just digging yourself into an over trained hole by going ahead with the hard workout, you swap it for an easier workout, recover and then do the hard workout later in the week when you feel stronger. You still are getting all the volume in for the week, thus remaining consistent, just doing it not as planned. Other times you may feel so drained that swapping will not help, in this case do NOT go ahead with any workout, bag the one in question and see if you can progress with tomorrows training as if nothing was changed. It’s far better to bag one workout then go into overtraining and later on having to bag 5 or 6. So “bagging” that one will help you be more consistent then doing it. There is no place for control freaks in multisport training.
When talking about training consistency one has to look at all sides of the training spectrum. Just as missing too many workouts can hurt results so can doing too many. Too many workouts without regard for recovery will lead to overtraining, which will lead to a break in training consistency and again fitness will suffer. One must be able to find that proper balance of training hard consistently as well as recovering consistently. There is a major difference in being highly motivated and just plain obsessed. Don’t forget to have fun! Multisport is just that -- a sport -- and sports are fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment