5 Pillars of a Successful Training Process

Workout With Purpose

Do you get on the bike with a specific plan or do you just wing it? If your intention for the session is an afterthought or you just do whatever feels right, your sessions will become stale and your progression will stall.

Ride with purpose and reap these rewards:

• Prepare the body and mind for a productive training session
• Balance the overall training stress you are applying and achieve adaptation across the full range of intensities
• Minimize training injuries and maximize training time effectiveness

Stick to the Plan

A training plan is the product of considerable thought and planning. It is designed to address all the demands of your discipline or target event. A good plan will have the proper mix of intensity, duration and recovery. Don’t get lazy and avoid the hard stuff or skip the easy stuff. Eventually this will come back to bite you. In the absence of a plan, training usually becomes homogenous and comfortable. In order to progress, you must maintain a level of stress that forces the body to respond and adapt.

See Progression as More Than FTP/TSS

Many aspiring cyclists define their success on the bike through strict subservience to various acronyms of training load and performance (FTP, CTL, TSS and others). Chronic Training Load (CTL) has become synonymous with “fitness” (Strava and Training Peaks have renamed CTL to Fitness). Athletes continually monitor TSS,ATL, TSB and CTL and associate their ability to perform with these numbers. The thought of “functional” progress from week-to-week rarely crosses their mind. It’s just about much can I increase CTL and FTP.

Note that even though “functional” is part of the term functional threshold power, FTP is not the only or even most relevant performance metric for ALL cycling disciplines, events, etc.

Progression in training is achieved through a system designed to move us closer to our goals. The successful athlete embraces the importance of progression, but also expands the scope of what it means to progress beyond simplistic metrics:Repeatability – over time are you able to achieve more repetitions or time at a specific intensity?Rest Periods – over time can you accomplish the same work volume with fewer or shorter rest periods?Volume – are you making measurable increases to your total training duration from week-to-week showing your increased endurance capacity and workload tolerance?Perception of Effort – progression doesn’t only appear as the ability to achieve higher outputs.  Are you accomplishing more with the same perceived rate of exertion, or accomplishing the same tasks with less effort?

Value a Balanced Approach to Intensity Distribution

Anyone can put together a workout or training plan to make you go hard and suffer. Over time such an approach will lead you straight downhill into injury, burn out, lack of energy, and motivation to train. Overtraining and burnout follows from trying to empty the tank in every training effort or session. The art of balance allows you to go easy on purpose and control your effort to make consistent progress, avoid burnout, and ultimately achieve more in training. Welcome the rest periods, adhere strictly to effort level–don’t go 100% when 85% is called for, and carefully consider the value of doing “extra”.

Train for More Than Intensity

Higher power, increased heart rate, increased speed, race the clock, beat everyone else, make it hurt, no pain no gain…these are common training mantras. The best endurance athletes in the world put in a LOT of time at lower level efforts. They also put in “hard” work, but they realize that improved performance comes from well-dosed and frequent training stress. Aim to SUSTAIN, REPEAT, and be CONSISTENT, don’t aim for suffering.

I have a few 2021 spots open for coaching. Also check out my training plans and training club! Head over to Winkler Cycling and join the crew!