5 Reasons To Change Your Training Program Now

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Athletes often make the mistake of doing the wrong type of training at the wrong time of year. How do you know when you should be doing what type of training? When should you be doing your strength block versus your threshold block versus your base or build block? When should you spend more time focusing on your weaknesses versus continuing to improve your strengths and things you're already good at? These are all common questions when designing a training program. So today we're going to discuss the five major reasons you should think about changing your training program and what you should be focusing on instead. Dad, welcome to the episode Big One. Today we've got a lot to get through. Let's start with our normal segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jord. And for those who are watching the video and not listening, the reason why Jordan's jaw is yellow is because he's had four wisdom teeth removed. So I imagine he's grateful for painkillers, but we'll see what he's grateful for. But what am I grateful for? Well, during the last two years, my wife and I have been lucky enough to escape Covid. So far. We presume we're going to. All of us are going to get it. It's going to be, at some point, there'll be more people who have had Covid than haven't had Covid, and we're in that category still. And I'm grateful that we haven't had to experience the, you know, the uncomfortableness of having Covid and everything that goes with it. And, you know that that goes with training. You know, it is going to knock your consistency, you know, way out of left field. And. And I'm so grateful that so far I've avoided it and I'm doing everything I can to keep avoiding it. But, yeah, that's my gratitude.

A lot of people have said to me, oh, I kind of just want to get it and get it over with. And I. My reply to them is, no, you don't. I know that, yeah, a lot of people are going to get it. It might be inevitable, but for me, it wasn't a fun experience. And for a lot of our athletes, it's interrupted their training enough that you'd rather just not get it if you can avoid it.

I think most people are looking for the timing of it, you have time when to get things. So unfortunately, you know, I'm getting text messages, you know, unfortunately I have got Covid now.

Sorry, Jared.

And I'm saying it's not your fault, you know, it's just going to be inevitable at some point.

You're right, my gratitude is for painkillers, but that's not my actual gratitude. I am just grateful for that. Firstly, before I say my gratitude, I want to say that a listener emailed in a really nice email just about how much they value the podcast, how much they are using the training tips to help them in their training and racing. But more importantly, they said the biggest thing they've taken from the podcast is the gratitude and how every day they actually are feeling really grateful to just be able to use their body and train. And that was really powerful and I really liked that email. So thanks for that listener for sending it in. And that's why we do these gratitudes at the start of the episodes. But my gratitude is quite simply think, I think since the 1st of January and I don't want to curse this, so I'm touching wood. But since the first of January we've had I think two days of rain, maximum three, but I'm really sure it's two. And that is an incredible run of weather and it is so nice just to have that stretch of really good weather. And I'm really grateful for it. And I think everyone's mood is improved a little bit in this warm summer weather. So that's my gratitude. Moving on to our next segment and what has caught your attention? So dad, what has caught your attention recently?

I suppose putting my coaching hat on, I'm really sometimes probably thinking that I'm not getting my messages across and I want to really get people to understand that your training and testing accurately is the key thing to enabling you to prepare a really good race plan. So, so I've had a few comments saying I didn't realize that, for example, the sub threshold session which is crucial to race practice for 70.3 as an example, and you use those sub threshold sessions in training to work out what race plan, what, what power strategy you're going to use on race day for a 70.3, and if you've been doing those sessions inaccurately and what do I mean by that? I mean if you start at point a and finish 3/4 of the way around down the road and then turn around and say you're doing a 30k effort and you do 24k in one direction and 6k in the other direction, you have got a very inaccurate model to use when you're looking back at your training history to use as a race plan example. So we want it to be even out and back so, so that you've got equal amount of time with the headwind and equal amount of time with the tailwind and equal amount of time in the undulations. And if it's, if it's not done like that, you've got one direction, it could be a tailwind the whole way. Your power will be accurate, but your average speed is what we're also looking for. The average speed against what power. And if you do it in one direction, you have a headwind the whole way. You could do the appropriate power that you're asking for, which might be 200 watts, but you could average 24Ks an hour into a headwind for the whole 30K. Or if you're going with a tailwind, you could average, you know, 45Ks an hour. That is useless information to use when you're trying to see what your predicted time is going to be against your average speed and then your power. The three things that we use in our race plan is the average power for your, for your effort, the average speed, and that will then dictate what the time is for your 90km. So I'm really trying to get across that. You need to understand each session and the requirements so that you get that right. So it's useful for when you're preparing for your race plan.

And the same goes for if you do one of these training efforts around a loop. So you might do like a A In Melbourne, for example, there's the Albert Park Loop. So you ride around the park and it's a, it's a 5k something circuit. But if you start and finish at different points, you might have gotten an extra half a lap with a massive tailwind, which is often the case at that particular course. And so that's not helpful data either. And so you said athletes, you know, you might be doing a 30k time trial, but do it based on the full lap compared to the distance. You'd rather than do 28.7k but complete the laps rather than getting to the 30k but have incomplete laps where they got more of a headwind or tailwind because it affects the average speed.

Spot on.

What has caught my attention is I have been delving a lot into nutrition studies just because nutrition is still such a complex topic, especially in the endurance and triathlon world. And there's constant new research coming out and I we've had Dr. Harry on the podcast which is super valuable information but it's something that people still aren't getting right and such a major part of racing when there's no clear direction. So our goal this year is that to actually really help triathletes with nutrition and release some really helpful. We've got some plans in the works to help release some things that are really going to help people with a nutrition strategy, a really specific nutrition strategy. But anyway, a key point of the study was I wanted to point out was look, looking at carb loading and this study analyzed 67 previous studies over the last 30 years and gathered up as much information as possible to provide some as many updated reviews and recommendations as possible. And basically their summary on carb loading was I'm going to quote this here. For events lasting greater than 90 minutes, glycogen supercompensation, otherwise known as carb loading in the preceding 36 to 48 hours before your event may help improve performance by 2 to 3%. So that's an important factor. But you know, 2 to 3% doesn't sound like a lot. But if you take 2 to 3% of a half Ironman or Ironman, you know, 2 to 3% of 4 hours or 2 to 3% of 10 hours, that's a lot of time. You know, you're talking potentially 10, 20 minutes there at 2 to 3%. So that's not a small amount. Traditionally it had been recommended that in order to double glycogen stores in this classic super conversation or carb loading model, uh, you would have to exhaust your glycogen stores with high intensity exercise prior to a high, high carbohydrate intake. Um, but recent studies have shown, and this is the point I thought was interesting and it would be good for athletes to know is that short term high intensity exercise followed by just a one day high intake of carbohydrates similarly achieves the glycogen super compensation or carb loading and can maintain that for three days. So if you just do a one dot, one day high intensity session and then their recommendation of carbohydrate intake, quote, unquote, carb loading amount is 10 to 12 grams per kg for the day and that's up from a daily recommended range of 6 to 10 grams per kg depending on the athlete. So if we take a hundred kilogram athlete for example, they would normally ingest 600 to a thousand grams of carbohydrate per day. Uh, Depending on their training load and in this super compensation period they would then ingest a thousand to twelve hundred. So well above that for, for a seventy or eighty kilo athlete. Uh, it's hard to do the maths in my head without a calculator in front of me, but it would be something under that. But the, the, the latter point about the fact that it could just be done with a short term high intensity bout followed by a massive increase in carbohydrates they said is really important to consider clinically as it gives the athlete additional flexibility with gastrointestinal intolerability or GI distress prior to competition. Competition. So a lot of athletes suffer from stomach problems in the race and often trying to carb load for three days up to your race ends up just contributing to the problem. Whereas this is basically saying, you know, this recommendation, this strategy isn't as aggressive yet still has the same results. Um, so I thought that was really cool and just a, a unique way to do it. It's actually in line with how we like to prepare for a race by doing you know, a really short high intensity session three days out. Um, and if you just follow that up with a higher carbon carbohydrate intake then that's a good carbon race strategy.

That's a fantastic article Jordan. Um, you know, just so happens that Geelong 70.3 is on Sunday for a lot of athletes that we're coaching. Um, and they would, you know, they would be on Thursday be doing a relatively high intense session and it's really good to know that they could end up doing one 24 hour period of, of carb loading, post that high intensity session and get to race day with getting Almost the same 2 to 3% outcome improvement and you don't have the same bloatedness. You don't feel like you could possibly put on two or three kilo, um, and you just, and trying to carb load and you're a heavier athlete and you've done all the work to get yourself as lean as possible and it can be undone. So this is really significant and something that I'm going to actually try for my B race on Sunday. So you know, do the high intensity session and then spend 24 hours.

You.

Know, trying to load with some carbs more than I would normally and then reserve, revert back to my normal eating habits and see, see how that comes on race day. But as you know there are many variables and it can always not be oh I did well because of that. Well it could be but it also could be because I trained better or I prepared better, I had a better race plan or et cetera, et cetera. It's never one reason, but it could be a contributing factor.

Yeah. And you might, you might just energy wise feel subjectively quite different to what you normally do. And so you do this experiment and think, oh geez, that, that was nice. I'm going to try that again. Um, just in terms of application, like we said, the recommendation was 10 to 12 grams per kilogram. So dad, you're about 70 kilograms. So you would just times that by 10 to 12, and that is the amount of carbohydrates in grams you want to take in, which is a lot. You know, I would guess based on your daily intake, you would be having 300 grams of carbs per day, something around there. And so to have 70 times 10, at a minimum 700, that's almost double what you normally have. So it'll be interesting to see how you feel with that.

I think I can give it a go. Jordan. I'm pretty, I'm pretty good with the sweet tooth.

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Muffin. Muffins. You know, they're always staring at me and I don't get them so I'm allowed to.

This, this summary didn't actually give any indication as to what source of carbs, but we'll get into the topic of today. So five major reasons to potentially change your training program right now. Is there a time when you would change your training program? And on this note of preparing for the race on Sunday, dad, you've got, you're doing the 90 kilometer time trial on the weekend as part of the team's race for the half ironman. And you did something different today. You did instead of a short high intensity session, you've done a 30 minute time trial, a threshold session. And why did you, I want to ask you straight off the bat in terms of talking about changing your program, why did you decide to do that which is different to what you'd normally do, a threshold session so close to the actual event?

Well, it's great that this topic is being talked about today because you know, I've had 30 or 40 years of, of the same type of preparation taper plan going into each event which has been reasonably successful, you might say. But just because it's reasonably successful, does that mean I can't do better than that? So I like to experiment on myself and this is an experiment that I'm doing. It's not my a race, it's a race. I, you know, and that is another question in itself. You know, for me, whenever I put a number on, it's an A race. But, but I know that, you know, I'm not the A race refers to how tapered am I, how fresh am I? Um, in my mind, it's an A race. Every race I do is an A race. I don't care if it's marbles, it's an A race. Marbles. Marbles race. So, so the point I'm making is I'm trying to see if I can improve my, my, my preparation for a race, if I can, if I can perform better. And already I've added one change, which is your recommendation to carb load for one day rather than three. And now I'm doing a second change, which is not do a short high intensity session that's kind of over, under, but do a threshold session. Um, so that was the, that's the one reason I want to see if I can improve my preparation and the outcome will be on, on race day, I'll be able to decide that there's another reason as well. I'm not a hundred percent convinced about my current accurate number, my, my FTP number. So, you know, I just want to reconfirm in my own mind, put myself at ease, that yes, this is the number I'm taking into this race. And my race plan is based around today's threshold session, which is literally three days before the event. And you know, people might say, well, that's, that's too intense for, for, you know, something that's so close to an event. It might well be, I might perform poorly on the weekend as a result of that. I'll never know. It's exactly for that reason. It could be that, you know, the carb loading didn't help me either. But we'll soon find out whether it was a contributing factor to a good performance or a same performance or a worse performance. But I do know that I'm going to try and do things differently to see if, if it does make a difference. And, and that's what I do as a coach, to try things on myself before, you know, and obviously getting some anecdotal evidence from proper scientific studies to back up my thoughts and things, theories. And you know, who knows, people could be doing threshold sessions as part of their. But you know, you've got to remember, and all jokes aside, everybody is going to have a different reaction to different tapering methods. And what works for one person is not a blanket method that you would use for every single person. And that's one of the jobs that each athlete needs to find out is, well, you know, in the post race analysis, how was my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday before race day? You know, what things should I maybe reconsider that were good or bad or poor? And, you know, these are one of the things that I'll definitely be looking at. You know, was that helpful? But it's certainly from a psychological point of view. I confirmed the number I'm thinking I should be riding at is exactly right. So, so that's good. It gives me confidence. I'm happy with that. It's still fractionally lower than I'd like it to be. But that's the reality of I'm going into, into the race with a real number and I'm not going into the race with a fictitious number that I, that I have ambitions for. And if I feel good throughout the race, I will start to push myself. But these are examples I'm trying to give to everybody I coach that, that you can't go into a race with a number that has no relevance to you. You know, the ambition and ability, that confusion topic that I keep saying, you know, what you want to do and what you really can do, they have to be very closely aligned. And, and if you get that right, you won't make a mistake. But if you, if you have unrealistic expectations of the power number, you'll fall flat on your face, you will absolutely creep home, and then you won't be able to run. So, so it's a harsh lesson. But, but that's why I said in the, what's caught my attention. You know, getting the training right prior to your race plan is absolutely crucial. And that's the numbers that you're going to work, work from. So that's, that's kind of the reason I'm doing it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good answer. And that, that middle reason you spoke about really ties in with this topic really well. And it's kind of the first major reason you should consider changing your training program is if you have time and you're at a stage of the year where the result of the race isn't your, your big goal race. Like you said, every race you want to do well in. But it's a good opportunity to change things up and experiment a little bit and see if you can improve on a routine you already have. Even if you have a race routine that you know works really well and suits you, sometimes it's a good idea to experiment with that. And you'll get a winning answer either way. Either you'll find out that, wow, I can do something to improve that, or you'll find out that, no, this is a really good routine. I shouldn't, and I shouldn't mess with it.

Yep, I totally agree with that. And, and as I've said many times, you just have to find out what's working for you. And as you get older, through your journey as an athlete, that may change. And at the start I said just because it works doesn't mean that you can't improve it. And that's what really the basic overload principle is. You set a standard and you want to get better. So you try to train a little bit harder or a little bit smarter or do something different that's going to, that's going to improve you at the end of the day, that's what we want. We want to get improvement for all the effort we're putting in.

Another major reason you might need to consider changing your training program is to focus on a weakness of yours. And you might have a really clear weakness. You might be a unbelievable rider and runner, but a horrible swimmer, or you might be a gun swimmer. You're getting out of the swim leg first and your, your bike's quite good and then you're running is 10 minutes behind the rest of your pack. So. Or if you're a cyclist, you might have a lot of aspects of your cycling down pat, but you really weak on certain sections and that's letting you down in races. So when is it time for you to bite the bullet a little bit and focus on those weaknesses? Because doing that kind of training really sucks because it's, you have to go through that whole adaptation period of your body getting used to it. You know, you're not performing well. You're, you're a lot further back than you used to be because you're strong in other areas. So when is it time to bite that bullet and spend some time focusing on your weaknesses?

It's funny because it hits you right in the face the minute you finish your event. You get clarity, don't you? You have clear understanding of what you did well and what you did poorly. And if you don't have that, you need to go and search in your post race analysis. So as soon as you finished your A race, that would be the time for me where I would go, okay, and let's just take one sport. Let's not talk about, I'm weaker in one of the three or compared to the other. Just I, I was able to ride the power for 70k and then I faded badly. That is something I need to improve. It's not because I started too high. I started at the right number. I started bang on my plan and 250 watts is what I was trying to ride it. I got to 70k and all of a sudden 250 became extremely difficult to push. And then 245 became my next norm. And then 240 with, with 5k to go, I was pushing 240 instead of 250. I dropped 10 watts. There's something that needs improving and that is being strong at the back end of a 90k time trial. So you've identified something straight away. You need to improve your endurance aerobic fitness. And so I would then go out and start to do sessions that are going to enable me to improve my aerobic fitness, which might mean doing some more endurance, getting some strength into my legs so that I am strong in the back end of any of the races that I do that I can hold the same power no matter what I'm talking about as a swimmer or a runner. I can hold the same pace when I'm running and not fade from 5 minute K pace when I'm trying to aim to run the whole, the whole half marathon and I end up at 5:20 for the last 5K. That's because I don't have the endurance or the strength to keep holding that pace. So I might need to go back and do more of that sort of strength work and longer endurance work to enable me to stop fading. So there's an example of things that you can, you need to identify first where your weakness is. So you may have sucked at the swim. And most people know whether they really good swimmer, an average swimmer or a shocker. And you know it's a work in progress with the swimming. It's not going to be something that you can improve in a minute. You know, it could take a year to improve. You know, we've got plenty of examples of people improving 20 seconds per hundred. But they started at 140, sorry, 240 per 100 meters and now they're down to 220. So those improvements are probably expected if you get some really good stroke technique. But you still suck at swimming. So if you're swimming 220 per 100 and your goal would be to start to get down to 2 minutes per 100 and now you're starting to be with the field in most races and that can happen, but that's Going to take a long time. It's not something you can fix in a phase of a year's training. It is a long term plan where you have to accept that it's a big picture and it's going to take a year or 18 months or two years to go from 240 to two minutes. And let's face it, 40 seconds per 100 is a lot to knock off. It's like saying I want to, I'm 100 kilo and I want to be 80 in 18 weeks. You know, well that's probably way too quick to do that. You know, that's, that's something that's unrealistic. So you want to, you want to actually change things that need help but understand the timeline that it's going to take. So that's one aspect to look at. So as a bike rider and as a runner you have ample opportunity in the period straight after your a race to start putting down in note form what things you want to focus on. Yes, I need to be stronger at the back end. I'm just using that as an example or, or my, my FTP is actually too low for me to actually ride any faster than 35ks an hour in any race. The only way I can ride faster is to improve my FTP. So I start, I need to do be doing more threshold training and more VO2 work. That's going to build my engine, that's going to give me a higher FTP which means I can ride a faster time or higher average pace on the bike. Which means my 230 for a 90 kilometer time trial can now be a 2:25 just because I've improved my threshold. Um, so, so they're things that you will find out soon as you finish that, that a race and they're your goals and you need to write them down and make that a focus. I've just given two examples. One, to improve your endurance post race due to the fighting aspect one to him. If you want to ride faster as an example you need to improve your FTP or your VO2 as well. So, so there, that would be things that you would then put into place and if your A race is followed by which it should be with a period of downtime where you're recovering your next day race, you know, shouldn't really be four weeks later. It should be possibly three months or six months or even if it's a massive ironman that you've just done, it could possibly be eight months, you know to 12 months later. So so that's a good period of time for you to work on those things. Unlike the swimming thing which know is really a year to two years where we're really focusing on trying to improve that. So there's lots of little things you can do straight after your post day race that you can set yourself goals, make sure that they're the focus of every week and, and then you won't have this negativity associated with oh God, another threshold training session. No, I need to do this because if I want to actually ride, you know, a three hour to a two hour 50, 90 kilometer bike leg, this is the session that's going to help me do that and that's a motivator to me. You know, many people out there are going, you know, I'm trying to my ass off and I'm not getting any better. Well, you're not training the right sessions. You know, you need to identify where you're weak firstly and you know, if you see someone who's able to ride, you're a 2 hour, 45, 90, 90 kilometer bike rider and you see someone going 2 hours 20. Well how do they get there? Well, you know, the sessions that you need to do that are varied and vast and, and you know, they're the things that you need to focus on. You know, even though they're hard in training, you need to know that if I do these sessions it will make me a better bike rider, for example. So embrace those sessions because you know the value you have of them. And I suppose I really get frustrated with people who go, oh, you know, the negative side of doing threshold or, or VO2 because it's so difficult. Well, just remember you're asking to improve yourself, don't avoid the things that are going to make it happen. And remember there's not a lot of people training like that. You will all of a sudden start to be a better triathlete because of that and people will notice it. What are you doing? Why all of a sudden you can ride a kilometer an hour faster over this distance of 40K. You know, what stuff are you doing? It's your little secret that you've, you know, you've basically identified where you're wrong. You found out when to do it in your season and come the next test, which might be your next B race or C race or time trial or you know, testing or your A race, that you are a better athlete than you were post last race. So yes, it is important to know when to do it. And as I say, as soon as you finish your last a race, that's the time to be really critical of your own performance.

So that based on that summary, you're a big believer in identifying the weakness straight away and working on it straight away. How much should you sacrifice other parts of your training program and things that you're doing really well for your weaknesses? So I know this is, I know your answer is, as always going to say it depends on what it is. But in some of those examples, you know, swimming weakness. We spoke last week on the podcast about there's not much point in, in doing more than two or three swim sessions a week because of the minimal time gains possible compared to the bike or run. Um, you spoke about bike endurance. You know, how much do you start focusing on these because the more you do that, something else has to give in your training week. So how do you approach that kind of sacrifice? And yeah, what's your mindset around that?

Yeah, I, it just doesn't have to be as a swimmer, biker and runner. It could be that what's holding you back is your poor flexibility or lack of strength or lack of core in your body. So it might be that you need to add other things into your program as well. And you know, being able to be unable to hold form is another example of a post race analysis. I mean your body posture form where as a runner, if I took a photo of you in the first 2 or 3k and then I took a photo of you at 4,48,38k in the marathon, you will possibly look differently. And the guy who has got really good core strength and flexibility, I suppose with his, with his action is going to run and look the same even though they're fatigued. And you've seen so many good bike riders who, who are riding beautifully and all of a sudden they pop and you go, I didn't see that coming. And it's because they've got such great form. It's just that their fitness let them down. They had great core, great, great posture, great efficiency, great efficiency. But they're just. Fitness was the thing that, you know, and I've, I've been around guys who look at me in bucks and all of a sudden they dropped and I, you know, you know, when I've spoken to them and say I haven't been training, but they still look like they're, they're pedaling or running or swimming beautifully. It's just they lack the fitness to keep it going. So. Yeah, so, you know, to answer that question, I think that's, that's what you should be, you know, focusing the most on is sacrifice. Sacrifice the general. To be more specific, we always advocate that if you bring everything along the journey, bring your aerobic fitness, bring your recovery, bring your tempo, bring your threshold, bring your VO2 and just spend a little bit more percentage on the things that are weaker. Because in our training program we're concentrating on all those things. So you know, keep the recovery the same, add more time to the endurance, which might only be adding 15 minutes or, or 20 minutes or 30 minutes to your endurance ride, changing it to the hills rather than the flat, doing the VO2 set where you know, you're concentrating on doing a block of that rather than just doing, you know, one race ready phase of that. You know, do that in the build phase as well. Um, so, you know, in the base phase is obviously the period where you can do a lot more less intense stuff. But, but introduce that threshold writing in there straight away if that's what's lacking. So that you know, the more times you train at Threshold and for those who listen to Anna Davis's World one hour accomplishments from last week's podcast will understand the specificity of what it takes to be the best one hour female, you know, 57 year old and second best in Australia and ninth best in the world at 57. It's because she's specifically training the things that are going to happen on race day.

Hyper specialized.

Yeah. And so you know, as a triathlete, it's a. The bike I'm picking on here or the run, it is a threshold time trial. So you need to spend time at that. And because as human beings we like to avoid the things that are uncomfortable, we avoid doing those sessions. And you know, from what I've told you in private, that the last since the nationals road race on January 13th or 14th, I've probably done eight threshold time trials since. And you know, there is no way known after my post race analysis that I was going to. This is a great example of me talking the talk and actually doing something about it to myself. And I don't expect that I'm going to improve in three weeks. This is a big plan that by August, September, October, all the work I'm doing now is going to prove fruitful. But it's very uncomfortably mentally and physically to line up a minimum at this stage once a week for a threshold race. And that's what I've been doing. And, and that takes a lot of mental strength to line up and know that you're going to be suffering for, you know, just, I just did a 30 minute one. Whether it's 23 minutes, 20 minutes or 10 minutes or 40 minutes, it is going to be you on the, on the rivet for that period of time. It's uncomfortable and it hurts. But, but I'm all the time thinking this is going to make me better. That's, that's all I care about. What do I need to do to get that number from where I don't like it being to where I like it being? And that, that is the basis for my thought process.

I'm really glad you gave that example of yourself. So, you know, if we're taking, I want to, I want to dive into that example just a little bit more. And you've done the postgres analysis. You identified a big weak spot that you hadn't been focusing on enough. You've started smashing it and really focusing on that. So much so that you are doing that session more than others. That means some other sessions you'd normally be doing have. You've dropped them for the time being. How long do you plan on doing this for? What's your, what's your general plan around it and how long do you think is wise to do for before you start reducing some of the other core sessions that you normally do?

Yeah, and I, you know, we always talk in blocks and some of our blocks are two weeks, some of them are three weeks. So, you know, with the recovery. So it ends up being four weeks with the recovery or three weeks. So my plan is to do two blocks of this as my, as my, you know, and unfortunately just happens to be in the middle of some of the triathlon races. But that's not my A races. These are, these are, these are events that are going to help me get to my September. And you know, that's where I'm working backwards from. So I'm going to be doing eight weeks of this and then reintroducing some of the VO2 stuff that I've actually stopped doing. It's really the whole big picture. And that's just one session and making sure that I'm actually building the leg strength again by getting back into the hills and making sure that I do have an average of, you know, 3 or 4,000 meters of vertical elevation average each week. They're things that, that are crucial to me being strong again when it counts and not being susceptible to fading. Um, which is, you know, my race plan was good, but my power number was too low. So, so I want the power number to go up So I have to do these things to enable me to ride faster and, and that's as simple as I can make it. But yes, I, I definitely have to have a enough period. So in my opinion, you need two blocks. You know, I always talk about 30 days, makes a habit, but basically two blocks, which is, you know, 60 days roughly. It's, it's 60 days for me. I've got the habit after 30 and I'm getting some value after 60. If I kept going for 90, it would still be okay, but I'm not sure mentally whether I could do, do that for a 12 week period of doing basically a race. You know, we raced on Sunday and I raced on Thursday, basically. So I've done, you know, in the space of four days, I've done two races. So, and I don't, I don't like talking about myself, but I'm just giving these examples of, of how I'm experimenting on myself so that it will be evidence for me to help coach people better if this is a weakness in their, in themselves. And I know that I've done this before, so I know that it works, but I'm actually revisiting stuff that I knew worked but I was avoiding and you know, it takes a really poor result in your own mind to get you motivated. Gets me motivated anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about the race ready kind of phase and that example of Anna Davis, you know, how she approaches race specificity. But before that, when do you send people or athletes back to a base building phase? When do you say, you know what you need to go and have one or two or three blocks worth of base building to really get some endurance back? Because that is always a key part of an underlying foundation as you talk about with any training program. But when, when do you decide that, you know, someone needs to stop training hard or stop, you know, doing such high intensity stuff and go back to that?

Yeah, I could use some, some events as, as a help. Um, I suppose if you, one of the big cycling grand fondos is the, is the peaks event which is 200, 240k, 4500 meters elevation with three massive climbs that, that you know, that are over an hour and a, between an hour and two hours. And that's an event that you need to prepare the base, the base phase properly. And so you know, if you, if you come eight weeks out from that event, you, you're in a hiding to nothing, you're going to struggle, you're better off coming in, you know, that's something like 24 weeks out. And it also as I say many times depends on what your current form is, current fitness. You know that event is coming up in four weeks time on Labor Day in March. So the majority of the guys have, have had a great you know, October, November, December of getting hill training, strengthen their legs, building up from, from three to four to five to six hours and they've, they've progressed to seven hours. Some guys have done a couple of 10 and 12 hour rides with, but they didn't start with with 12 hours. They, you know that is not what I'm saying. That's you know the base phase, it seems the reverse, the base phase is getting your body ready to, to be able to handle the load. That's going to happen as you get towards your a race. And this is an extreme example. I'm using, I could use Ironman but I'm using you know, for the average rider this race is, it's not a race. This gran Fondo is between 10 and 12 hours. For some it's 14, for some it's 8. So the range is vast. So you would think that we would start with you know, really long slow training. Well we do but we start with three to four hours. But if you've already come you know, with, to the program or to this event already with four hours, four hours to five hours for the last seven years then you don't need to start at three hours or three and a half, you know and you don't need to be ramming seven 10 hour sessions in October. You don't, you know that that will get you informed for Christmas. So you know, specificity of the event like we talked about with anna, for a one hour stuff. Well this could be possibly a 12 hour event. So you need to know that your body can cope with the nutrition and with the, the fitness factors and the elevation that's required in this event closer to the race. So you want to be doing your, your six, seven, eight, nine hours, you know, eight weeks out. That's, that's probably the last, the last time you've done your base where you've built up to that and then the last eight weeks is you know, progressing longer and getting yourself prepared for the requirements of, of the time of that event. Um, so it's, it seems like the base phase is you doing longer stuff like the 12 hour stuff but it's the reverse. Um, and that's the way that I would prepare any athlete no matter what level they came to me. Um, they would be doing the longer duration training, but they still do the high intensity stuff during the midweek. But their load and their ability to cope with the load has to be progressively introduced week by week, block by block. And doing it the other way will cause you to burn out too quickly. It'll cause you to get to your peak form at the wrong time.

Sorry, is that what you mean by reverse is you're saying people would associate base building with longer stuff, endurance, but you can't just start a base building phase with, with really long stuff. Is that what you mean by reverse?

Yeah. You can't start with 10 hours.

Yeah, yeah.

When your, when your body has only been coping with. Let's use the extreme example. The longest ride you did up until when you started the peaks program, which was a 20 week program, the longest ride you've done was two hours. So we can't start you with the long slow ride of 12 hours. That's what I'm saying.

So basically you don't, you don't need to send anyone back to a base building program if they've got that, if they've got that endurance behind them and they could just go straight into a five hour ride or six hour ride. You're only sending people back there if for some reason they've lost that endurance and they need to progressively build that.

Yeah. So there's two types of riders who come. One, one rider who's who's already been doing this for eternity and, and the other rider who's who it's basically new to them and, and they won't cope with anything but slow progressive build. So, so you know, that is my opinion of how, how, you know, you can't just throw a base program at every athlete who, who has got different requirements. You know, everybody's happy to say let's do a base build and race ready and, and taper phase. And that that model is fantastic. It's perfect. But it, it's, it's written differently for each person. It, it has to be because some people come with no experience, some people come with general fitness and some people come who are unbelievably fit. And so that, that specifically has to.

Change so that, that is a perfect segue into understanding when you should move through the phases. So you need to do, you need to do this base building kind of a block if you identify that. Wow, I actually can't handle a five, six hour endurance ride. So I need to spend a block building up to that and then you can move into the build phase. But I want to start talking about the race ready phase. And you really like to look at the professional cycling formula and how they use the same formula year in, year out to really get themselves into race ready form and when that is, when it's appropriate time to change your training to that.

Yeah. And look, we've got to mention these are professionals and we're trying to give advice to the everyday average triathlete cyclist and runner and mountain biker who's got a job and a family and all sorts of time limit on their, you know, their days. So let's just look at what the pros do so their formula that until someone comes up with a better system. And I'm backing that the Norwegians will at this point. But the formula is normally you have your, your season and it finishes. For example, it might be the Giro might be the end of your main. That might have been your A race or the Tour de France might have been your A race or the welter might have been your A race. And then the world titles are normally after that. And then there's just a whole lot of other races that they like to do because they're professionals. They need to race the Spring Classic. So there's kind of the years divided pretty normally except for a Covid period. But normally we have the Spring classics in March and April, which leads into the Giro, which leads into the Tour, which leads into the Welter, which leads into the World Championships. So that's how the year's broken up. So a lot of the proteins were, will make, you know, a period after the World Championships is the break period. So they'll have all of their professional contracted riders having a break from riding. And that might mean completely off the bike. And you know, just like as a footballer, you know, coming back from preseason, you don't want to actually sit at home watching telly eating pizza and drinking beer. That's not what they're saying. They're saying that you just need a rest from the, you know, the everyday, you know, ride your bike for fun with no set program and, and, and do some other stuff, some cross training and do some walking and hiking and, and just keep yourself fit and go to the gym and, and do some stuff like that. They're not, they're not pushing people. But don't come back to the start of the program unfit and unhealthy. Keep yourself, you know, keep yourself fit and healthy during that period. So, so the next thing they're doing is they're meeting for a training camp and that would normally be at Altitude. So they would go to the Sierra Nevada in, in Spain or they would go to, you know, Tenerife on the Isle of Man or wherever, to the, you know, the French Alps. Etc.

That's kind of an example, isn't it, of going back to base training. But because they've already got such a good level of base, they're not starting from scratch. They're starting from, you know, the high level that their fitness is at and then building on that.

Yeah. And they're doing lots of, you know, I watched Simon Clark come home from, from Europe and he happens to just live locally and it was interesting watching his preparation. He was trying to really get into some great form for the National Road Race in January and he got home, I don't know, I can't remember was September, October, November, I'm not sure. But it was great to see him doing some really good base training around the Dandenongs and getting some altitude into his legs and he was doing regular three, four, five hour rides and, and just enjoying his bike riding. But he was still doing some, some really good training and, and he was trying to get selected for a team because he was out of contract at that particular time. So it was important that he did well at the, the Australian Road Championships at Bunningham. But as it turned out he got offered a contract with Israel Cycling professional road team before the national titles came. So he, he didn't actually get to do that race but his form warranted it because he kept himself in good shape from, from doing this base phase when he came back from Europe and, and being in the Australian summer, he was able to train whenever he liked and daylight savings he had, you know, instead of having a European eight hours of sunlight, he had, you know, 16 in, in, in, in Australia because, you know, it was daylight at 5:30 and didn't get dark till 9. So you know, he had all this time and so it was a good example of someone really getting themselves prepared pre and then. So he's gone from this summer to, I think they went to Spain I think for their training camp and, and it was great seeing him in with the team and you know, riding really solidly with the team and he was well prepared for the training camp. So the training camp is not about flogging the riders, it's about actually getting them to gel as a team. That's probably the most important thing is to train together, but to get some strength. Why are they going at altitude and why are they in the, in the mountains? They're trying to build strength and endurance where their breathing's minimal. And we know from what the Norwegians have done with triathlon that that is a key, a key part of their program, getting strengthened strength at altitude. And we know Jan Frodeno does the same as a triathlete. You know, he's back there at the moment doing, doing altitude training. So, so we know that that formula works, you know, but as an age grouper and someone who doesn't live near the mountains, that's near impossible to achieve. So, you know, you try to get yourself some training sessions that are near some hills where you live and if it means you have to drive a little bit, that's what you should be doing, or ride a little bit longer to those hills. But that's an example of getting the sessions and the blocks done at the right time.

And I guess that example of Simon Clark is really a specific example of your golden principle for an athlete. And that is what this professional cycling formula is basically all about. And that is that you want an athlete. The gold standard is to have this fitness fire burning all year. You know, a really healthy lit fire that at any point in time you can change your program and lift the intensity. And that's probably why Simon did so well, is because he kept that fire burning while he was in Australia and then he can just go and lift the intensity up when he needed to and go to that program. So you basically identified that at the start of the, you know, talking about these reasons you might need to change something is identify a weakness, then change that. But if you are really a well rounded athlete, um, and as you just identified with the base training part of the program, you don't ever need to do something drastic and change to a really, you know, just pure base building block. If you have this gold standard of being a well rounded athlete that has this fire burning all the time. And that's the aim, isn't it?

Yeah. And, and that's amazing because people who come to us who are just new to it don't have that. I call, you know, fitness in the bank. You know, how many years have you been doing this? And that is in the bank. It's a vault. It can't be taken away from you. If you've been doing it for seven years, you've got all, you've got seven years of good, bad and shocking training in your bank. And that just doesn't disappear. It is value, whether it's being crappy training sessions, but you're still trained, whether they're the right ones or wrong ones, you're still building some level of fitness in your bank. So if you come in and you're new to it and you have zero in your bank, then your body can't cope. So it's a completely different scenario and you have to identify yourself, who are you? Are you someone that's got that and doesn't need the same base building? Or are you someone that's desperate for that? And one of the reasons why we test people at the beginning is we want to find their level, where are they in their level. And we can find that out straight away as a swimmer, bike rider or a runner or a mountain biker, it doesn't matter. We can find that level where you're at by testing you initially. And then, then you can see, you know, questions like, what's your longest run? You know, how many swim sessions have you been doing in the last four weeks? What's your longest ride in the last six weeks? You know, when was the last time you actually raced? Have you done any races? These are questions that are going to give us a really clear picture of who needs what at what particular stage of their journey. And hopefully they're coming to us with an aspirational goal that's 24 weeks away or at worst 16 weeks away. And not something that's happening in the next six weeks. But yeah, you know, the professionals, getting back to that, the professional rider has got this get together, train solid, get the leg strength and endurance, not doing too much different, but doing it as a group at altitude, in the hills and then, then what do they do next? They go and find as many little races as they can. You can see Ella Philippe going, I just watched something, I don't even know what the name of it was. It was a three stage race in Spain and here's Ella Phillipe smashing himself around this race. And the last the GC was decided, you know, no one even knows this race was going on. Probably the GC was decided on the last, the last climb of the day. It was, it was a serious climb, was 1500 meters, you know, and here's Alapha leap out of his seats trying to stay with the league guy. He ended up losing the GC by 20 something seconds. But he was not relinquishing that, that GC without a fight. And, and what is he doing that for? Not, you know, he obviously wants to win gc, that's the main reason he's doing it for. But he knows that this is going to get him into an incredibly fit position when it comes to whether he's doing Milan San Remo as his goal race or whether it's Paris Roubaix or whether it's Tour of Flanders or you know, flesh will own. But he has got one of these races or if not five of them in his, in his sights that he wants to win and he will win one of those monuments. But why? Because he's now got competition racing. He's done his altitude now he's got the competition, the intensity and then all of a sudden he'll start doing a lot more serious, well known races that may not be his A race. You know, he might go and do the first race which is the new splat race, which is in two weeks time. He might do that and finish eighth, you know, and he doesn't care about that. It's still another competitive event for him. So that when he gets to, I'm imagining the Milan San Remo is the one he wants to win, that's what I kind of predict that's going to happen. But uh, but you know, that's what he might be working backwards from and we don't know, I'm guessing.

But he's, he's a really good example, isn't he, to, to watch for this because every year come February he's willing to do this. He's willing to turn up to all these no name races and flog himself and put himself in the red zone and, and blow up and ride really erratically and it's just exaggerated because it's alaphilippe. So that come April he's in the form of his life.

Yeah. And he's, he's at ease in his mind that, you know, he actually nearly won the thing. But he's, he's not racing logically. He's actually putting himself to the sword and not protecting himself. It's, you know, using it, you know, and you should never, you should never race to train. You should always train to race. But he's using these for a purpose. And don't, don't misunderstand, he is trying to win but, but he's not, he's not protecting himself to win it. Like he's, you know, he's not got the team around him, he's just out there on his own. You know, one of the guys from Quick Step came up behind him and you know, he was a chance to move up the podium, he wasn't helping Alpha leap that much. So it's kind of not, that's not what it's about. But when it Comes to the real thing. It is. So, so then, so then he comes to this phase and just to go on using this example, I know it's probably going too long, but. But then once they've finished the Spring Classics, they don't keep to form. They go back and start their team build again. They will probably go back to altitude again because his next race will probably be, and I'm not trying to predict here, but it'd probably be the Tour de France. So, so then he's got from April to July to go back and repeat that, go back and do some recovery from the Spring Classics, do some, you know, fun, easier riding, almost like a, you know, a little mini break. And then he'll go and do the Tour de Swiss, which is a, you know, three stage race or the Paris Nice, you know, do all these stage races that are going to get him used to get his body adapted to day after day after day after day racing so that when it comes to, you know, 21 days of the Tour, he can cope. So, so he's again got the same formula, you know, recover, go to altitude strength again. So they're repeating the cycle and then he'll do the same for the world title. It's no coincidence that he actually won the world title. Him and Peter Sagan. Sagan won it three times and Alphleet's already won two. So that formula, that's for a professional, it works. But what we're trying to say is as an age grouper and an everyday person, if you keep that fire burning, you can jump up for the race in eight weeks time. Um, it's better if you pick one race and work towards it like we've, we've given the example. But if you want to do multiple events during the year, and let's face it, we're not professionals, we're doing it for fun and we want to, don't want to miss out on a lot of races. So we could have lots of races in our calendar that we want to actually go and do. Um, and so therefore, if you just keep this level of fitness going where you do, for example, after the Geelong half Ironman, I would not continue training people that week or possibly two weeks after that. They would be doing absolute recovery. But it also depends on when the next race is, how long their recovery goes for. Some people who don't have a race for a while can recover longer. Some people are lining up for Melbourne. It's a quick turnaround and back into it. So every situation deserves a different outcome. And so there's no one fit fits everything. And you can say that about 1,000 topics that we bring up, there's never one fit that fits every scenario. So you need to be flexible. But the generalizations we're making here, you should be really thinking and using.

So I guess to finish it off and to summarize, we've really identified some of the key physiological reasons to change a training program. And that's based on your clear weaknesses that you could identify or what phase of training you need to go into, whether that's a strength phase or a base phase or a build phase, or get yourself into racing form. And they're all based around training physiology and improving your physical performance. But I know that as a coach, you also look for some other factors that aren't necessarily related to training as key indicators and key factors as to why someone needs to change their program. And I want you to talk about some of them, but some of them might be, you know, demotivation in an athlete, or just you look back on a month and an athlete has slowly increased the amount of sessions they're missing or, or repetitively getting sick. You know, these sorts of alarm bells or red flags are things that come up that are really high indicators that someone needs to change what they're doing and do something different.

Yeah, it's a hard conversation to have, isn't it, when someone's performance is stagnating or actually going worse. And the job is between you and the athlete to identify what is actually going on. And it's really normally quite clear. And all the reasons you just gave are generally the reasons. There's always going to be a case where they have ticked every box, they've done everything right, and they're still not improving. That's when you need to really hone in specifically on, well, this program is not working for you. We need to change something asap. If we've eliminated the fact that you've lost consistency, you've been sick, you've been injured, you've had a crash, you know, you've been ill, you've had Covid, you're not motivated. You know, if once we've eliminated all those things and we're still left with you've done all those things, well, then that's the time to, you know, ask yourself, well, what are we doing wrong here? You know, have we not concentrated on the weaknesses that you have now shown that stops you from improving and you need to change something. The definition of insanity is keep repeating the same mistake and expecting A different result. So this is the only time where I would say, okay, let's change it. Let's try something completely different from the norm and experiment. Let's flip it around, let's do more of this type of training. You haven't done a lot of that. Maybe you need more of. There will always be a reason, though, so. So the hard part is finding out what the reason is and if you've eliminated all those and it comes back to the sessions aren't helping you, which is really not going to be, you know, it's a low percentage. This could be in the 1 or 2% of people because generally over the journey it works. If you do everything well, you will slowly improve. Just chatting to someone you know before and, and they've, you know, smashed out their hill climb FTP from 260 to 308 in the space of six months, it's fantastic improvement. So many things they did well, they trained well, they, they ticked all the boxes and they've learned how to execute the hill. When they first did it, they were too hard at the start, faded and crashed and burned and now their execution. So there's so many reasons why they've improved. It's not just the training, it's, it's other factors. So those other factors are important and so is the training. But at the end of the day, you know, it takes time for these things to change. It's not going to be, I'll just do this for the next three weeks. Like I gave the example of myself that, you know, I've only gone up 8,8 watts since 16 January, which is four weeks. And some people might say, well, that's unreal, and it is, but I'm still a long way from where I want to be. But it's a start. And, you know, and losing, losing 10 kilo, you know, that can't happen in two weeks. It has to take six months or a year to do that so that you give yourself a realistic chance because anything that's, that's unsustainable, well, you're going to fail at it. So, you know, it has to be balanced. So, yeah, that's probably the last thing I want to say on that. And that would summarize it well, because there would be always reasons why you need to change things up. It's just trying to find out what you need to change and why you're changing it. I think they're the key things you have to ask yourself.

And I guess to finish off, I really want to Ask you this point, because there are some athletes, maybe you'd call them the star athletes, that you do not want to change their program, you don't want to change their formula. You just want them to keep going like they are because year on year they're improving. And there's, again, this has been a lower percentage of athletes. But yeah, what's, what's kind of the identifying factors for someone, an athlete, to say to themselves, no, I'm going really well, and I just need to keep what I'm doing, what I'm doing, because I'll, I'll continue to reap the rewards.

Yeah, look, we have talked about this many, many years ago in some of the podcasts when we first started was if it's, if it's not broken, don't fix it, you know, but you always want to try and improve, don't you? You want to tinker, you want to, you know, you want to experiment a little bit here and there. But you're right, we've got a small core group of people who are still improving and they're already at the top. They're national title holders, they're Australian champions already in their age category, but they're still improving. We still had another example of that on the weekend when we did a race, just a local Trivello race, and almost 90% of the of the riders in that time trial did a pb, you know, and they're absolutely nailing their program. And I'm not tinkering with that at all. That is something that, you know, unless something starts to go wrong, we will, you know, we will keep that journey going. And that's the beauty of having anecdotal evidence from years and years of training people. You find out eventually what makes a person really click. And getting that person to click at the right time is the key. And that's why you have to have and be able to identify reasons why you should change. And if there's no reasons, then don't change.

Experiment, but don't change.

Yeah, you shouldn't change for the sake of change. And for example, if, if we're trying to improve threshold, there's only so many ways you can improve threshold. So, you know, if it means that you have to do 5 minute efforts or 8 minute efforts for 12 weeks, then don't complain that the session's boring, you're thinking about it the wrong way. The session is getting you the outcome. So embrace it and have the mindset that this is what I need to do and I can't wait to see if my numbers are the same as last week or I can fractionally push myself a bit better. And that's the goal of looking at it the right way rather than going, I've got 12 weeks of threshold, you know, five by five or four by eight or whatever the session's asking you to do. You know, if you look at like, oh God, same old boring session as we interviewed Moneghedi, same old boring monafart like he did for 20 years is is something that he advocates and has, you know, made him one of the best marathoners of all time. Yet he did the same session week in, week out.

That's a good way to finish. I think there's a lot to think about there. You know, when you're thinking, and that's the nature of a training program is it is complex and it is based on pretty similar principles. And ironically, that last point, you know, don't fix things if they're not broken. But it really is important to think about what factors apply to you which mean you need to change your training program. So we'll, we'll leave it there. It's been a very packed episode. We hope you can think about some of these factors, whether they be with regards to your training and your training block or whether they're regards to your own, you know, your own life and maybe any emotional factors or mood factors that are impacting your training. But that self awareness is really key. So use these factors, see if there's something you need to change and hopefully that can help you improve like the future. Thank you very much for listening to this episode. We'll see you on the next one.