So the race season is done… you have had your 2-3 weeks off and enjoyed your full recovery… so now what? Straight back to hard training as you do not want to lose all your hard earned work over the year and not take a step back in fitness and speed?
First off it would take too much time and many pages to describe what actually to do over the winter months… as a Master Coach for TrainingBible.co.uk I think Joe Friel describes the key phases of training for endurance athlete’s perfectly in his TrainingBible books.
If you need to know how to break down your whole season into the correct key phases of training to get detailed structure of the types of energy systems you need to work on and how to prepare for a key race, then buy the Cyclists’s TrainingBible 4th edition if you are a cyclist / road racer or sportive rider, and if you are a triathlete then purchase the Triathlete’s TrainingBible. Both fantastic resources and a wealth of knowledge.
If you are like myself and looking to know exactly what you should do more so in each session and want a more detailed approach as a top age group athlete and want to perform at your best, then I highly recommend Joe Friel’s new book Your Best Triathlon: Advanced Training For Serious Athlete’s.
The key of the first part of your winter training is about full recovery… that means allowing your body to fully recover from the many months of arduous training and racing so that you can regenerate, repair and get stronger again. Sure you will lose a little fitness over the 2-3 weeks off proper training and maybe put on a few pounds… but this is good! You cannot keep so lean 12 months of the year as your immune, hormonal and muscular system will simply be too stretched. So embrace the few weeks after the recovery period and then start to find your training groove again. This next period is called your preparation period (preparing your body to train).
During the preparation period you are trying to get some easy to moderate activity / exercise in again and simply training as consistently as you can. Finding a nice rhythm and pattern each week that feels comfortable with your working, family, social and domestic schedule. You also have to consider that over this period you will probably have Christmas and New Year celebrations to content with to so why not let your hair down, eat well and be happy with family and friends, train little and often and relax with no fear of losing fitness, speed, strength etc… you will! I cannot emphasise this enough… embrace this fact that you need to take a few steps back in order to advance many steps forwards over the next 5-6 months… Yes 5 months! It’s December now… 4 weeks preparation training takes you to January… then that leaves 5-6 months until the start of the season for most in May – June! Almost half a year!
Obviously you don’t want to lose all your race fitness and speed from the season so you don’t just train easy volume… many think winter base training is about low intensity, moderate volume training that is slow in comparison to your race training in summer… of course it will be! But… doesn’t mean you can’t add the components of speed and strength to your training such as:
- GOLF swimming in the pool (add stroke count & time over 50m, aiming for best score) on lane times (30sec rest approx)
- High arm turnover sprints over 25m with 45sec recovery
- Short race pace threshold swims of 100m off 30sec
- Swimming with paddles to develop upper body strength and catch awareness of your stroke
- Pulling work with a pull-buoy, paddles, band (or mix of 1, 2 or 3 of these… try band only over 25m!)
- Single leg cadence drills on bike to develop a more efficient / economical pedal action
- Fast ‘spin up’s’ above race cadence over 20-60sec off same time recovery at 20-30rpm slower
- Over geared strength work in aero position at 55-60rpm but at aerobic heart rates (try 5x5min off 2min at 80rpm)
- Try pushing a large gear (52/53 x 12-15) over rolling terrain keeping heart rate aerobic
- Accelerations 10rpm above normal race cadence, then 10rpm below normal race cadence, aerobic effort
- Running strides over 20secs or 100m fast and relaxed off 40sec walk recovery
- Short hill reps over 10sec on grass off walk down recovery
- Running drills (high knees, butt flicks, hops on one leg, skips for height, fast feet etc…)
With so many technical and speed skill related exercises you can implement into many of your normal easy to steady sessions you should never get bored, and you will slowly build your ability carefully so that your race pace training in the build phase in 12weeks onwards are handled without fatigue or breaking the body down as you will have become more resilient, more durable and simply more stronger to deal with anything that your throw at it. Should you not spend this valuable time training your base level of fitness then you are compromising your ability to take your body to that ‘next level’.
I know we are not elite / professional athletes, but we can learn a lot from them. Most top professional athletes will be now getting back to basics and building their base level of fitness again… but with many years of this behind them their base training will be longer and harder than yours! So always think about how many hours you can dedicate to your training each and every week. Spend more time in your base zones with minimal lactate threshold and anaerobic zones for now, then when you are in your build phase and preparing your body for the demands of racing, you can unleash all this fury, energy and harnessed strength with more specific, faster sessions… but now your body will be able to resist fatigue and recover quicker!
Here is what Joe Friel recommends with regards to the amount of training one should be doing during the base phase. Please note the chart is based on power showing actual output of work… heart rate is input or intensity but doesn’t tell you what work is being done (power, speed, pace etc…).
Joe says:
“While this is a power chart, for running a pace distribution chart would look like this also. If you only have a heart rate monitor then it would be the same sort of distribution. The problem with heart rate is you don’t know what you are accomplishing since you aren’t measure output. Unfortunately, all heart rate tells you is input, which is similar to effort. You don’t win races on based on effort (input). Everyone is trying hard. You win them on pace or power (output). Knowing both input and output makes training multi-dimensional.
Keeping a watchful eye on your intensity distribution, as with this chart, is very effective at this time in the season. It keeps you focused on what’s important. If you are in the early stages of your training season then now is not the time to be doing race-intensity workouts. There’s plenty of time for that later on in the build period. The most basic ability for an endurance athlete is aerobic endurance and now is when you should be developing it.”
Check out Joe Friels fantastic blog: