Avoid These 5 Holiday Training Traps

The Christmas and holiday period is coming up, and for some people this becomes the best opportunity to really do the fundamental work to set up your whole next year, any races you have and any fundamental training that you need to address in this period. And for other people, this becomes a period of regret. They don't plan ahead, they don't think ahead, they kind of let things get away from them, and then they end up with a bit of January regret where you're starting the year on the back foot, uh, and then that leads into a few months down the line when you want to be in peak shape for your races and you didn't do the proper work in, in what is a great period in December, January. So today we want to talk through exactly how to approach this period, and it's quite different depending whether in you're in the Northern Hemisphere compared to the Southern Hemisphere and some nuances in that. So we want to really make sure we get the message across about how to avoid some critical mistakes in this period, because what you do now in this period can really set you up for the best chance of success come February, March. May, June, when your, when your A race is. So Dad, we do go through this topic every year and we really want to hone in on this message of, of how to get the most out of yourself in the next upcoming few weeks and over the next month.

I absolutely love this period, not only because all the families get together and Christmas and New Year is such a, almost a resetting of what you've done this year and, and thinking about what, what you want to do next year. And you know, the classical New Year's resolution that everybody kind of plays in their head. I'm going to do things differently next year. And possibly you make the mistake of waiting till January to do that when, you know, when you're thinking about that late November if you're in the Northern Hemisphere and the season's pretty much finished. Winter's really approaching at a fast rate. Now's the time to be thinking about not waiting till January 1st. That's actually a mistake as well. Thinking, oh, I'll just, I'll just take, take the time off now and, and reset in January. And all of a sudden, you know, it's the 7th of January and you haven't actually done anything in terms of structure. I don't mean start training really hard if you, you know, if you've, if you need a rest. I mean maintain fitness. And, and there's a whole lot of nuances here depending on where you are in your year. We're where you are in the world. And this is what we want to really get across today is how to manage this and how to get the best bang for your buck out of this period. And, and people think, oh, it's pretty easy, but it isn't. And you either come out of it in a hole because you've done too much, or you come out of it regretting that you haven't done enough.

Mm, yeah, it's— you want to avoid that, that January regret where you come to either January 1st or mid-January, maybe when you're coming back to work depending on how your holiday period looks, and you could either have not done enough and suddenly you're, you're a month behind and you have to spend a month getting back to the fitness that you were. And so you're actually 2 months behind because come mid-Febr— you're still way behind where you were originally, whereas you could be 2 months ahead come mid-Febr. And so, but the opposite is true as well. You can easily fall victim to throw training principles out the window and just do whatever and put yourself in a hole. So you want to explore both sides of the coin because we get it, you know. We have routine and structure all year, and so in this period, it's really tempting to want to do something different, and we actually really encourage that. You know, it's a great time to do something different, but there's ways to do it to, uh, to still either maintain your fitness or get more out of yourself or build on some fundamentals that will help you for next year. Um, we, we get that there's this notion of, I need a mental break from from the structure of the routine of the year. And we would say that makes sense. When you look at your, your week to week throughout the year, when you're working full-time with work stresses, you're trying to fit 5 AM training in or after work training in, that can get relentless. And then suddenly you've got this opportunity with way more time, with probably less responsibilities, whether it's just over the week of Christmas or whether it's over a 2-week period in the southern hemisphere, especially in Australia. Most people have a fair bit, a fair chunk of time off. Suddenly the world's your oyster. And so how could you— the question we say is, all right, great, You don't have to do the same routine as you were doing all year, but there's ways to do this to really have a mental reset from what the normal year is, but still enjoy yourself a lot, but really build a great base to propel you forward for next year.

Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And look, the Northern Hemisphere don't have the same opportunities for holidays in general. I'm speaking generalities here. Most people would only have a period off between Christmas and New Year. So, you know, we're talking a lot of people in the Southern Hemisphere have got, got the whole summer season, which has just kicked off in pretty much September, October, November, December. And, you know, you're kind of at the, the very first third of the season, and you're— you should be trying to get a little bit of a— if you have a period of time off, you should get that little bit of a training camp mentality where you're really trying to do a little bit more volume, because normally you're trying to rush your sessions to get to work. And getting up really early to make sure you fit it in. So this is an opportunity to actually get more sleep, extend your sessions, not the intensity but the duration, and not train more, the frequency, train the same, but, but just use that opportunity to do more zone 1 and 2, uh, work where you're getting a lot of volume in, but the minute it fatigues you to, to prevent you from really getting through 3 or 4 weeks of this, or 2 weeks, which is the general holiday period most people in the southern hemisphere have. Some, some have more, but the general is 2 weeks. If you get to the end of that 2 weeks and you've just overloaded it to the max, you could actually spend 2 or 3 weeks having to recover. And, and that's actually the same situation as not doing enough. You've got this high training, low training. you know, then trying to try and back up again. Just keep it as even as you can, just adding more duration. And, and it's fun to go with your mates who are also on holiday, and before you know it, you're racing each other every day. And, and that's fun for 3 or 4 days, but when you get to day 17 or day 14, everybody's flat on their back, exhausted, and, and then you can't train at all. And that's what we're trying to prevent here. We're trying to give good advice so you actually come out of it just with the best outcome.

Some people equate the break to saying, "I want a break from total structure and do some more fun things because there's an opportunity to go for a 200K ride with my mates. There's this event that's on there. I could just go do a bit of a fun Gran Fondo and that doesn't really fit normally throughout the year." And our answer is always, use the different settings and different, um, time that this, this gives you to do something different and use that as a mental reset. It's kind of a different training structure to what you do all year. That would be a great reset. And if you've got— we're so encouraging of— if you've got some event that you want to do, there's a, there's a fun run on that you want to do, or there's a, there's a bike race, or just a, just a challenge that you and your mates have, we're just going, now's the chance that you can do it, and we can fit in, you know, some, some regular training around that. So rather than what we normally do throughout the year is, is, you know, high intensity twice a week plus your endurance on the weekend, and we're really fitting that around a typical work structure. It's like, okay, well, you've got a lot more time. Here's some things I want to get done this week. How do we chuck those in but still achieve the principles of a typical training week and build around that? And that's the exciting part.

Yeah, I just had an example during the week of someone asking me— their longest ride had been about, uh, maybe 120k, um, and they said, oh, would you mind if I just there's a, there's a ride that I want to commute to, um, to our holiday destination. It happens to be 170k. Is that okay? And I said, absolutely, that's okay. Uh, go for it. It's, it's, it's, it's what we're encouraging. And, you know, he was quite shocked that that was okay. And I said, clearly you have to measure your effort still, so the principles stay the same. You can't just ride, you know, your same intensity that you ride for 120k because you're going to have to pretty much add another nearly 2 hours onto the ride. So you have to change the structure of your ride. But, but yeah, we're all for that. And if you've, if you've got an athlete who's been doing this for 2, 3, 4, 5 years, it's an easier answer than someone whose longest ride is 60K, then they wanna do 180.

Yeah.

You would, you would, you would think differently about that. So, so yeah, it, you've gotta actually know your athlete and know what their capacity is. And just mention that it is a good idea to measure your effort as well.

The thing we actually don't want to see is we kind of don't want you to do the same thing as you do normally throughout the year in this period. If you've got a chance to do something different, you know, we would almost want to see you take on some different challenges. And, and a lot of people fall trap to the fallacy of because I'm in a different routine, I can't train the same, I can't do a structure. And we just say the way that you train throughout the year is we're fitting training into a very specific box. You know, you've got a full-time, got full-time work, you've got a normal routine. We're trying to hit the boxes of, okay, how many swims do we need in a week? How many bike sessions do we need? We need to hit our 2 high-intensity sessions. How many runs, runs off the bike we need? We're trying to really fit some, some key principles around that. But what happens in this period is, is maybe you go away and you don't have access to a bike, or maybe, um, and but you've got, you can run and you can swim in the ocean, or maybe you're somewhere where Um, you do have a bike, but you can't swim anyway, whatever the situation is, your routine is different. Oh yeah, we're trying to train for 3 sports, you know, and there is an argument out there that, you know, people have tried and tested. Maybe if I just did a running block and backed off the cycling and swimming, how would that turn out for me? And a lot of people have tried these different methods and some have more efficacy than others, but, but for if you're, if a discipline is taken away from you, um, throughout this period, we just go bam, now's the perfect opportunity to swim more and run more and finally do your strength and conditioning, which you haven't been doing all You know, we don't just say, oh, you can't train for triathlon. We only train the way we do it all year because that's the constraints we need and we need to improve all, all 3 sports as efficiently as we can. But if you're forced to drop one sport, that is just the perfect opportunity to focus more on the other 2 and come out really strong in those 2. And then you'll obviously have to catch the other one back up, but such a perfect opportunity.

I totally agree. And another step on beyond that is if you have a weakness, on the bike. This is the opportunity to pull back a little bit on the swim that you can maybe still do in the holiday period, and you can still run. Let's face it, anybody can run anywhere. There is probably no place on the planet where you actually can't go for a run.

Some people, some people go to, you know, yeah, some people do go to remote beaches in Australia, for example, or yeah, Northern Hemisphere if you're running, there's snow and ice outside where they they couldn't run. They could only run on the sand or whatever, but yeah.

Yep. So this opportunity is to really work hard on a weakness. And if it is the running that is the weakness, sure, spend more time during the running sessions. Or, you know, you don't get an opportunity during the year to do very much volume on the bike, this is the chance. And again, as long as you're doing it in the right zones and not nailing yourself to the wall, it's It's absolutely fine. And, and not starting fast. That's the thing. It's actually a replica of what you should be doing in a race, isn't it? You know, the irony of that is, you know, your 3 weeks holiday or your 2 weeks holiday, don't start the first kilometer, you know, at breakneck speed. Do it like you're doing in a race. Start conservative and just get stronger during that period of the event or that period of your holiday break.

What should be the overall goal here? You know, we wanna start with that, and we're gonna start going into some nuances in a second, but You want to come out of this holiday period having followed the rules of more easy volume, not necessarily more intensity, or no, no, not more hard days, you know, because your body just— no matter how much you want to and you're motivated and you have time, your body can't just suddenly cope with more hard days. You'll just run yourself to the ground. So it's about respecting the training principles of a structured program, respecting your own fatigue, and fitting training around, you know, your situation to what you need to focus on. But then come out of the holidays feeling mentally and physically fitter but fresher, um, in a really good place to catapult for the year, but most importantly, not cooked.

Yeah, the tough one is mentally and physically not fatigued. That, that's the thing that most people don't achieve, that goal. So there's a lot of goals we're trying to get here. We're trying to improve our fitness, or for some people it may be just to maintain it. Um, and for others, they're hell-bent on not losing their fitness, which, you know, so there's 3 things here. Um, you've got to set yourself into one of those 3 categories. If, if time is limited because you happen to be at a ski resort where you really can't swim, ride, or run very well, um, or you're at a, at a beach resort where, you know, the same thing is there's no real place where you can ride, um, but you can swim and run. So you've got to work out what are the things that you're going to fit in logistically with the family balance and being present as a, as a mum, or being present as a dad, um, that is available. And not the whole thing can't be based around training unless you've got that, uh, agreement with everybody that's on the holiday, then that's fine. But, but if you go in there with that mindset of, you know, you will you'll make it a disappointing experience for everybody. And you know, we talk about this on the, on the podcast a lot. It's, you know, the extreme behavior is, is unsustainable. That, that sentence I've said so many times. So extreme behavior is just going on a train family holiday, but your whole intention, your whole goal is really not aligned with the rest of the family. And that's a recipe for disaster. And if you're not, you're not thinking about that, you should be. Because you could end up having the worst holiday, and the kids, they will have some sort of disrespect almost for you because they think you're not caring about them because you're not spending any time. So we're coming from a care factor here. We want you to achieve a lot of the goals, which is your own fitness, to try to either maintain it, not lose it, or improve it. But at the same time, we're trying to actually get you to get through the holiday and be present with your family.

Yeah, there's some nuanced contrast here, um, because we, we just see this as the best opportunity of the year to, to build a really cool training program based around enjoyment, based around base building and some volume that you don't get a chance to do, and based around potentially working on some weaknesses that you don't get a chance to really address throughout the year. But that is all has to happen in the realm of, of what's available to you, what's plausible, and, and if family time is, is something that's happening in this holiday period, you know, if you're going away with a family or you've got to spend time with family, we— our values are that that needs to be a priority, you know, and, and you need to fit training in and around that. And so family and enjoyment, two top priorities for this period, um, and then building the training structure around that.

Uh, it just brings back memories with, uh, you four kids where we used to load up the trailer and, uh, drive 22 hours to our holiday destination, um, in Queensland from Victoria. It's pretty much halfway across up, up the country of Australia, um, 2,000-kilometer drive. And, uh, and 4 kids, uh, you know, you're up pretty early as, as little kids. And my goal was to try to get all my training, if I could, before you woke up. So if you woke up at 7, I had to be at the door. Luckily daylight was 4:30 or something like that, so I would be up at 4:30 and do something before 6 so that I was, I was there when you woke up. And, and they're the sort of little sacrifices you have to make. And, and remember, that really makes you tired by getting up early. So, you know, you feel like you can just relax and take it easy, but you really need to structure your life around, well, you know, can I get my sessions done before it impacts the family? And, and then when you were older, you weren't getting up till 8, 8:30. So I had this better window of opportunity that I could do all the training sessions as long as I was back before 7:30, and that meant I could start at 5:00 instead of 4:30. So they're the little tricks that I was doing to try to make sure that I didn't impact anybody the wrong way. But you guys didn't even know that I'd been training. You just woke up and I was there. So that's just an example of what you can do to make sure that you know, you're pleasing everybody.

And of course, you know, the Christmas and holiday period doesn't always mean family time for everyone. You know, we want to acknowledge that, that, you know, it's always a positive time for people. And if that's the case, then maybe this is a chance where you get to be a bit selfish with your own training and spend more time in that regard. And so whatever the nuance is for you, we want to help you try and figure out how you can enjoy this period, but really get it, get the most out of it and start 2026 with a head start.

So I just, I get so excited, Gerard, because it's just an opportunity. It's an opportunity for everything. And for those people who've got no constraints, there are a lot of people out there. We're talking about different categories of people here who have different stages of their lives. Where I don't have any young children anymore, although I've got grandchildren. But certainly for someone who's got no restraints, this is an unbelievably exciting time to to venture into. But the excitement can be really detrimental to the end product if you don't think clearly about— and this is what this podcast is about.

Yes, if you do it right, you can have a chat to your coach and you should be sitting down and saying, okay, here's what my plan is over this 2-3 week period, maybe a month. Here's where I am, here's what's available, what are our goals, what do we want to include, what's important to me in this period. But then really specifically, when's the next race? Because it's easy to go off the rails a little bit and veer off course, come back in Jan, Feb and go, oh wow, I just missed 6 weeks of training where I really need to be gearing towards this race, you know. So always thinking about that, that end race goal in mind because it'll come up quicker than you think. So let's go through some nuances and we'll just go back and forth between the difference between Northern Hemisphere in winter and Southern Hemisphere in summer. And the biggest one at first is, is you basically, North is going much more indoor in this period, um, and Southern summer is a lot more chance to train outdoor.

Yep, uh, you couldn't have said it easier. And look, I— having just— we've just endured winter in the southern hemisphere, and we are excited about actually not having to spend 15 minutes getting dressed to go for a training ride or swim or run. You can just put on, you know, a top and, and off you go with the sun on your back. So, so really, you, you know, you've, you've got limitations, uh, with with the cold outside. And a lot of the athletes we're coaching, um, including one of our coaches, you know, just— we're trying to do a half marathon on the weekend. It is ice and snow. It's impossible for her to do it, to do a half marathon. So we just adjust the session. Um, so it's going to be on the treadmill, and we have to make some, uh, structural changes to the outcome of the session, um, where we're trying to aim to get maybe the last 5K really solid on the treadmill, but, but we can't do the half marathon on a treadmill. It's, it's not something that we're encouraged. That's just an example of you having to work with your coach to, to work out what you can do indoor.

And what's, what's our principles and rules around indoor training? You know, because often you can fall to the trap of going, okay, I am training indoor, but I'll try and match that outdoor, for one. But also, if it's just not— you're just not in the same mindset, motivation's lower, it's colder. So what are we really trying to get out of the indoor sessions, whether it's on the treadmill or on the bike trainer?

Yeah, you can't match the duration. That is 100% true. And because you're on a stationary trainer or a treadmill where your foot plant is the same every step, whereas when you're outside, when you land your foot, the terrain can be angled or it could be uphill or downhill. So the foot plant is completely different every step outside, whereas on the treadmill, you're doing the same action. And if you do that for too long, that could actually cause issues with some sort of injury, repetitive injury. So, so we've gotta be super careful that we don't expect that if we've got an hour and a half run that's normally for outside, it's not necessary that you should do that indoors on a treadmill. Same with a, a 3 to 4 hour ride outside. We wouldn't really be thinking about a 3 to 4 hour indoor ride. We'll be taking some of the duration down. And guys like Abrahamsen, you know, he's, he's able to do that. Or, and Sarah Giganti, who's— I've just seen in the last 6 weeks doing 180, 220 range of indoor training sessions, which is incredible. But she's, she's able to do that just like Abrahamsen is as a, as an elite World Tour rider. Both of those examples of the female and male World Tour riders have that capacity to do it. We have some athletes who also can do that at the upper level, but I wouldn't be advising that for people in the, in this, in the Christmas break period in the northern hemisphere to be trying to do that unless they haven't been built up to those durations.

Yeah, and it's, it's, it's tempting, um, to try and smash yourself on the trainer for the same amount of time, but, but one of the few times we see overuse injuries is on the trainer, on the bike, you know, just for that repetitive nature and being really locked in and controlled. So you've just got to watch that. And the other part I think about is, is even though you're inside and it might be warmer conditions, just when winter's darker, motivation's lower, we just all go through that phase where the motivation is a little bit less to get on the bike. And so we do a lot of things to try and work through those periods to make training a little bit more enjoyable or achievable. And what's some things you can do to get the most out of the training sessions and not just sit there doing boring zone 2 on the trainer for this period? 'Cause that is the least inspiring that you can do.

Well, for me, I can't do that. There's no way I can sit on the trainer for 3 hours doing zone 2. I refuse to do that. I'm looking for Zwift or for Rouvy or Fullgas. I'm looking for an event on the indoor trainer. And look, we have one on a Saturday morning here at 7:00 AM for the Southern Hemisphere. Which we've done a lot of during our winter. It's a 7 AM race. It's 101 km. It happens every Saturday. Some weeks there's 25 TriVallo athletes in it, depending on if it's raining outside or if it's cold. And we know that that's pressure on the pedals. That's unbelievable. I can sit there, it's a 2-hour 40 ride on the indoor trainer, and for me to do that without a race, there's no way I can do it. I don't have the mental capacity to do that anymore. But put me in a race situation, there's an example. We also have endurance efforts that we create, a TrainingPeaks session that goes for 2 hours 20 or, or 2 hours 40 or 2 hours that's got variations in zones. So we will start with some Zone 1, then we'll build into some Zone 2, then we might do some strength efforts in maybe Zone 3, then we might hit some VO2 efforts, and then we'll jump jump back to some, to some threshold efforts, then back to some Zone 2. So we're really varying it. I can do that, no problem, 3 or 4 hours. I can sit there, but I can't sit there holding the same power on an indoor trainer. I could do it if I was doing a race recon like Ruby has. These are really good things to do, the Nice course or the Kona course or the World Champs courses where we know they're again at Nice. And any of the, the courses that Fullgas have or Rouvy have, that's all been filmed. I could do that and then use it because I'm changing gears when there's changes in, in terrain. So anything that's keeping my attention, and I might have 3x40-minute efforts on this course, and I've got to ride the undulations and stay in the zones. They're, they're examples of what I would do to make sure that I'm not just sitting there riding you know, 240 watts for 2 hours and not varying that. But I don't think it's actually— it's not a really good training outcome because you're not getting the real-world experience. You're just sitting there at the one number. And that's not real in when you're riding outside. That just never happens.

Yep. That's some fantastic ways to get the most out of yourself. And then also, you know, if you just do a VO2 session, short, sharp, you know, you probably the main set itself is only about 20 minutes worth. And so you don't necessarily have to go longer for better on the indoor trainer. If you do a solid warm-up, do your main set, and then a short cool-down, that can be quite a quick session, but you get huge value out of it. So you don't— time doesn't equal necessarily better. So that's an important part to remember if you're low on motivation for big sessions on the indoor trainer.

Yeah, but I'm just talking mainly about getting the endurance factor. You know, during this period, we want to make sure we're getting that strength and endurance that, that is the cornerstone of every program. You can do the short, sharp sessions, threshold, VO2, tempo, you can do them till the cows come home, but if you don't add the endurance, you're going to be missing out on a huge, uh, potential improvement. Um, your improvement will be so much quicker if you add the endurance session than it is just doing the hard stuff. The hard stuff's great, but they have, they have to work together. Um, And, and I think people forget that. But your point is probably more towards something is better than nothing. If your mental approach is that, I just can't, I can't face 2.5 hours, I can't— well, don't. Just get on the trainer, as you just said, warm up, throw in some 40-20s or 30-50s or 30-15s or 60-60s where you're only doing one set. And I guarantee after you've done halfway through the first set, you go, oh Oh, maybe I can do 2 sets. And, and all of a sudden you've got 50 minutes, and then you go, oh, I'll just do zone 2 for another 20 or 30. Before you know it, you've got 90 minutes, and, and you're coming away happy, you know, because you've almost talked yourself into it. So, so have this mindset of something is better than nothing. And, and I say to a lot of our athletes that we coach, look, if you see the number of— and it's an hour 20 and you've basically got 40 minutes just jump on, forget the cooldown, do as much warm-up as you can to make sure you get the main set in, and get off. And, and that way you're still getting— what are we trying to achieve here? We're trying to achieve consistency is king. Turn up every day. That is a better program than you flogging yourself for 2 weeks and then on the couch for 2 or 3 weeks after because you're so exhausted. So something, something a little bit at a time is better than something a lot of the time hard.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, so if you have that mindset that, look, Coach has said it's okay that I don't have to do exactly what's on the program as long as I'm doing something. You know that 30-day makes a habit. We talk about that a lot. And if you can just get that to happen each day, what, what's my goal? When am I supposed to be doing it around, uh, what's happening during the day? And make an appointment with your training session and just be disciplined. Set the alarm or do it late at night or in the middle of the day when everybody's doing not much. And we are talking about the holiday period. So, so that's the strategies that we're trying to give you so that you can make good decisions, good decisions about how am I going to plan this holiday period.

Yep, spot on. And so the opposite side of it is, is the outdoor training if you're in summer and it's the southern hemisphere. And, and we started to touch on this, but you know, we just think because we can ride outside, we have more time, let's just go for it. And so What do you say to the athlete that comes and says, um, all right, you told me I can— I should just do base volume because it's not about more intensity necessarily, it's just more volume. So here's my plan, I, I can do 4-hour, 6-hour rides every day, and I just want to— I want to treat this as a training camp. I want this as a base altitude camp, and, and I've got the time, I've got the all clear from the family, you know, I just want to smash my endurance out of the park. I'll keep it easy, you know, but I'll just do bulk volume, you know. What's your advice there?

Yeah, it depends on who the athlete is. If the athlete's, uh, been averaging 150k a week for the last 16 weeks, or if they've been averaging 90k a week, or they've been averaging 350— any, any of those ranges will mean a different answer. So if someone says to me, I have my buddies and I, we're planning to do 3-4 hour rides for the first 5 days, um, are you okay with that? Well, someone's been doing 300 or 400K for the last 3 or 4 months, I'm actually not too fussed about that. And they know that if they're gonna do that each day, that they actually have some sort of intelligence that says we don't flog ourselves on day 1. And I would be giving them the simple advice is alternate your intensity. Day 1, you might be thinking about zone 2, 3, 4. Day 2, it's totally zone 2. You're not allowed to go over it.

—or a coffee ride.

Yeah, that would be my guidance. Next day, think about— and you know, when I was overseas with, uh, with Tim Jamieson, who just won the world— won the world title with us, uh, a couple of weeks ago, you know, that was the advice that, you know, him and I talked about. And, and when I was with him, I said to him, you know, I can't ride hard every day with you, I'll kill myself before I get home. And he's going, no, no, that's what we do. Hard day, easier day, hard day. And we're both agreeing and we both held each other back when it was easy and let yourself go when it's up for it. So yeah, you've just got to be smart about it. Yeah, yep.

And remember the rule that your body can only handle a certain amount of intensity. And it doesn't matter what's happening externally, what more opportunity you have to train, your body just can only handle a certain amount of VO2. It can only handle a certain amount of even subthreshold and zone 3. And then it can handle a lot more, um, zone 2 and zone 1. That's why it's kind of the, the, the advice is kind of infinite. How much zone 2 can I do? Well, well, it's probably as much as you've, you've got up to this point. Um, you could probably afford to do a little bit more than that as long as you're fueling properly, recovering, sleeping well, and, and not doing too much intensity. But regardless, your body's capped out at its, um, zone 5. So risk that at your peril to try and just double the amount of VO2 work you do. You'll just you'll run into a hole pretty quickly.

This is the true system of training, isn't it? The 80/20. This is one of those periods where you can— I don't want to say train like a pro, because I don't want you to do that, because they're doing it week in, week out, 52 weeks of the year, a decade of it. You've only got 2 or 3 weeks to do this. So you've got to act like a pro. So the majority of your time should be— 80% of the time should be in zone 2. And I always go as far as to say that 90% rather than 80%, because you're not used to this volume. So the pros are, they're used to doing 80% of their rides, uh, 4 or 5-hour rides, and then 20% of that's they're doing some intensity. So you should probably think about 10% and 90% of zone 2. And that means you can ride long and, and You know, one of the things we— that was the Festive 500, and now I think it's the Rapha 500. They were, uh, great concepts, uh, where you're trying to ride 500k in 7 days, but people just got the wrong idea and ended up doing, you know, how far can you ride in 7 days. And, and I've got so many examples of people who haven't ridden their bike for literally 2 or 3 months after doing 2,500 kilometers in 7 days. And they were doing things like 8-hour days, you know, 7 days of 50 hours of riding, and they just— they didn't recover from it, you know, some of them for 6 months. And, and, you know, we are joking a little bit about here. This is extreme behavior again, by the way, um, and it's unsustainable. But the message is the same, you know, have fun, but, but just be organized and and, and have some method in your— just don't be a free-for-all.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And look, this, this increase in volume really applies very strongly to cycling. It applies moderately to swimming. Swimming is a great sport in that because of the lack of load, you can actually do a lot of volume safely. But the same principles apply, you know. If you jump from 3K of swimming a week to 8 or 10K, you know, the high risk of repetitive shoulder injury, that kind of thing. Just, just any big jump in any sport is not going to be the best thing for you. But But swimming and cycling, much more safe. The rule doesn't really apply as much to running. The— you can't just suddenly do more running volume. You'll, you'll most likely break down.

Oh, absolutely. Running is the biggest risk factor. Um, you know, uh, rather than trying to add more, more duration to your running, you should only be, you know, adding 5, 10 minutes, just progressively increasing the duration, um, and dropping down the intensity, um, and making sure you're running on softer surfaces. And because, you know, a lot of the time you can't do anything but run on the bitumen or the concrete. And, and to get onto the soft trails, uh, that would be really helpful. Um, slowing down, um, if you're adding more duration, and you have to be careful with that. A lot of people think, oh great, we can actually run, run some hard sessions because we've got time to recover, because we've got all day to recover, so let's push ourselves harder. That's true to a degree. You do have time to recover, and you can do a lot more sleeping and taking naps and getting the right, you know, getting your recovery boots on and maybe going into a sauna and an ice bath. There's so many things you can do when you've got time, but it's still really physically taxing to run faster during a period where, you know, you don't have the capacity to really— the risk factor is so high that you'll end up you know, so injured that, uh, you've just wasted, wasted the opportunity.

I think again, it's, it's just being really aware of routine changes and environment changes. And, and injuries happen from, from unexpected or too big a change in loads. And Dane, physio who came on this podcast, running-specific physio, great marathon runner himself, made a really good point that he just said it's not that grass is better than concrete, or concrete's better than trail running, or trail running's you know, better than, um, than sand, you know. All those things are just an issue if the person themselves isn't used to it, uh, or you're overloading too much on one or the other, you know. For someone who runs on concrete all the time, if they suddenly switch to all grass training, they're probably going to get an injury even though it's softer, you know. And it's same in reverse. If you're so used to grass training, suddenly you might find the bitumen gives you too much load and you get injured. So it's not that one's worse than the other, it's, it's really understanding, um, a mix of this. And I will say that that it was an AFL player this year who's taken up endurance cycling, really getting into triathlons. He's still playing, but in his cross-training, he's doing a lot of this work. And he found that finally switching from grass to concrete, he was able to get more out of himself. And actually, it was a really positive change for him. And he went and talked to his teammate and said, we train on grass the whole year, go jump on concrete, it's an absolute game changer. And his teammate got injured. He switched to concrete and got injured. So just proves that what works for one person doesn't work for the other. And so the point I wanted to continue on from that was summer for us means a lot more opportunities to race, and not just triathlons, but, um, and there's not the big, um, Ironmans and half Ironmans kind of stop during the peak of summer, but there's a lot of shorter races, Olympic distance, sprint distance, um, fun runs, 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons. Cycling time trials, cycling crit races. And so the same way for the northern hemisphere, you said indoor, it's a chance to just race and have some fun to keep that enjoyment up. It's the same for the summer, you know, you've got a chance to go have a real good crack at some races. And people ask us all the time, can I do these races? And we encourage racing almost more than anything, unless, you know, some people do love to take it too far and they race 3 times a week. But even then, it's not so bad because there's some of the most valuable training sessions you can get. So what's your rules around racing and the mindset behind it?

I'm just a big believer in, uh, if you want to do well in a race that is your A race, do some more races to prepare for that. And as you said, you can overdo it. But, but yeah, look, for example, um, I'm always searching for whatever— whatever we're coaching an athlete, what is available to them in their area. I'm asking that athlete, tell me what races are available in the next 8 weeks, and, and I want— I want you to put them all down in TrainingPeaks and we'll have a discussion about how— put them all down, and then let's just pick and choose the ones that are really gonna, fit into our schedule. And I want people to race. Training sucks a lot of the time. I would rather be doing a training session that had a race component because I'm gonna— I know that I'm gonna get really good at practicing execution. That's a high-intensity training session, and it's fun because I've got competitiveness in, in myself, and I'm more than likely to be at the upper ends of where I should be, whereas I'm doing it solo, I need to be extremely motivated, and I, you know, I probably won't get the same benefit out of the training session. That doesn't mean you go and do a bunch ride Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday. That's, that's the same thing every day, every session. We're talking about training sessions and then throwing in a race at at, you know, uh, race intensity, uh, once a week or once every 8 days or once every 15 days where you're picking and heading towards. And it also gives you a mindset of, I'm preparing for this event. So if you've— if you're thinking about, oh, taking a day off, I don't feel so good, but I already got an event that's— that's only 12 days away. It's only a B race or a C race, but you still think about— well, I do anyway. I think about No, I need to be at my best in this race coming up, so I need to do this session properly because, you know, I could be 2 or 3% worse at that session, at that sea race than I want to be. And so it's motivating in so many ways. It's absolutely better for you, uh, to be race ready in training sessions. Um, and people take that the wrong way, Gerard. They think that I'm saying go race each other all the time. That's not what I'm saying. Spread these out so they fit in with your program.

Yeah, I agree with that so much. I just love when you put a race into the calendar and you, you, you sign up for it properly and you, you enter it properly, it changes your mindset suddenly. Exactly what you're saying. Suddenly when you think you've got a race 2 weeks away, it's such a motivator for the next couple weeks of training just to get it right because you want to turn up in your best shape. And yeah, again, people can take that too far and put pressure on races. That's not what it's about. You know, you're not putting pressure on yourself, but you, you want to do your best result every time you turn up and pin your number on. And so you want to put yourself in, in the best position to do that. And so by having consistent races in front of you really allows for that. And the last thing I'll say on that is, is if you're a triathlete, if you have the luxury of having a road bike as well, you know, finding your summer crit races is just the best VO2 kind of session you can get rather than doing 30/30s on your own on the trainer around the velodrome or something. Go to a race and you'll be pushed beyond what, what you can normally do by yourself. And if you can't, if you don't have access to a road bike or to be able to do crit racing, find the time trials, you know, find most summer cycling clubs have time trials on where you can just go up and get a 15K effort in or 18K effort. But when you're turning up and there's that race environment, even if it's very short, you're pinning a number on, it's a totally different experience to going and doing a solo FTP test or threshold efforts.

We've said a lot, replicate the race values, the experiences in training. And what better way than find a local time trial? Um, I know the UK has time trials every weekend. Um, Western Australia here in Australia has a, uh, a group called Australian Time Trial Association, ATTA. They have so many time trials, it's great. A local, uh, club here in Victoria called Carnegie Caulfield, they have 5 time trials that they put on. Um, so you just gotta go and search your local areas that where you live and try and find it. And, and, you know, the replicating race conditions in training, that's what it's all about. Um, and it's so good to, to have to understand, think about how am I going to execute this time trial, or it's a 5K fun run, or, or, uh, you know, we had PB meets here in, in Melbourne where, you know, you were doing 800s or miles or 1500s, they were called PB meets where people turn up and try and run their best time. And they were just a training session, you know, but, but people use them so well to, to improve their running. And do it— wait, okay, I was just gonna say, and for swimming, um, you know, there are swim events every weekend, uh, where in summer where we live, uh, you just got to find them, you've just got to research, um And, and, you know, 5K parkruns are everywhere in Australia. They're everywhere in the UK. They're not so prevalent in the US, but they are there. And even still, there's other fun runs of other distance, but 5K parkruns are on every Saturday in Australia. Yeah, at least 50 venues around Australia every Saturday at 7 or 8 o'clock, every Saturday. So you can't tell me there's not an event you can go and do and have some fun. There's sea races. They're just a high-intensity run, a running session where you get to practice execution. It's brilliant against other people.

Yeah, and yeah, with competition. Yeah, yeah. And worst comes to worst, you can do what we do, uh, and just try and get a few friends together, whether it's 3 friends or 6 or whatever, and just say, hey, we're putting a time trial on, here's the course we're going to do, let's all get there together. And it still feels like that race environment when you all turn up and, and, and do that.

So you only need one person in front of you and one person behind you on a time trial to have the feeling of, oh God, someone's catching me. Oh, I, I've got a rabbit in front of me, can I catch them? Yeah. And that's what we want. We want you to be confused about, should I stay in my bubble and not worry about if a guy catches me, or, or ride a little bit above my level and potentially blow up? So, so these are the things of why we have competitions, because it makes you think differently. Yep.

So to finish off, if You know, an athlete saying to you, right, I'm, I'm in the middle of winter, it's— there's 18 inches of snow outside. What are our goals next couple of weeks, Coach? What, what do you want me to focus on? What do you want me to remember? Uh, not, not so much the specifics, but what's the mindset you, you're saying to that athlete?

Consistency is king. You, you just have to have the mindset of, I'm not going to lose my fitness here. If I can maintain, that's a big win. If I can maintain my fitness, I think I've succeeded. If I lose fitness, that's a loss for me. So my goal is to turn up each day and figure out how I can best— if I'm in 8 inches of snow, ice, it's blizzards, somehow I can get to a pool, somehow I can get to a treadmill, and somehow I can get to a hotel gym bike. I've got to do something each day. And if you are skiing, then that's an activity in itself. It's kind of cross-training. It is, absolutely. And even if you do some strength and conditioning without any weights in your hotel room where you are staying, everybody can do a push-up, everybody can do sit-ups, everybody can do side planks, front planks, you know, non-weighted squats. You know, one-legged sit and stand. There's so many exercises you can do. So maintain your fitness by being consistent. Try to do something every day. That would be my mindset.

Yeah, that's the fallacy of the message we really want to hammer home. Whether— where it doesn't matter what— where you are in the world, summer or winter, uh, that to fall into the trap of thinking I can't train normally so I shouldn't train at all, or I should just, you know, stop altogether, is just— it's just a wasted opportunity. That's all it is, because it is your chance to— if you're forced indoors and you can't train as long on the bike or running, or you don't have access to a pool, it's your chance to lift your strength. It's a chance to lift your strength and conditioning, to work on your mobility, to fix some niggles that were there. You know, there's a whole range of things to do that you don't get an opportunity for. And so wherever you are in the world, that becomes true. Some of the final points just for our winter athletes that we had noted down is look after your mental enjoyment. Because it's, um, and prioritize your own kind of mental health, you know, that includes sleep, taking it easy yourself, trying to reduce the stress and the strain. Um, it can be a tough period through winter, and so, you know, we've just come out of it for Australians, but that's really just to take it easy yourself and not beat yourself up for missed sessions and that kind of thing. It's a hard, it's a hard period to stay consistent in, and that's why I'm saying maintain.

You, you may not want even improve one section in this this period of time. You, you may not go up at all. Maintaining is hard, but you— we've talked about this— if, if you have a fitness level out of 10 and you're at 4 and you don't do anything during this period, and you've worked so hard to get from 2 to 4, you've still got a ceiling of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 left in your career, but you've worked really hard, you start to lose your fitness and you are going to have to spend spend another 4 weeks getting back to the 4 that you were working so hard for, for 3 or 4 months, and now it's— you know, 4 months later, you're now back at where you were after the first 4 months. Every week you lose training, you lose a week of fitness. So it's almost like for every week you have to do another week, so it's 2 weeks. So, so just be mindful of that. That's my mindset. If I've worked so hard to get this, I'm not going to give it away. I'll find a way. That's the motivated athlete. That's the one we love, who's just on board with this. That's the conservative mindset.

The opposite side of that coin, and we have a lot of triathletes go through with this mindset, is indoor training can be some of the most effective and efficient training you can do and build the most strength. And if you really commit to it, and if you do the most you can indoors, you can come out of this period absolutely flying. You know, if you're doing 3 hours on the trainer every Saturday morning, if you're doing all controlled VO2 sets throughout the week. People know we don't like ERG mode, but people confuse that with us, that we don't like the indoor trainer. We love the indoor trainer. It's probably the best tool you can have, which you have to ride outdoors because racing is outdoors, so you need to learn. Otherwise, we would train indoors all the time because it's the most controlled and probably efficient training. And so if you do it properly, you can come out of this period really, really flying and in great shape.

You could move your number from 4 to 5 to 6 if you do this well. We have the example COVID. We had, you know, some countries had 6 weeks where they weren't allowed to go outside. We had 12 where we were. And I still don't have a lot of the athletes that I'm coaching, they've never hit those power numbers that they did during that 12 weeks since. Because it was 12 weeks of, you know, pretty much 7 days a week riding. And we, we structured their sessions so that it was easy Monday ride, Tuesday with some intensity, Wednesday with Zone 2, Thursday intensity, Friday easy, Saturday that 3-hour, 4-hour ride. Sunday, basically recovery ride into some sort of zone 2. And did that for 12 weeks. And then we had, you know, each 4-week we tested, but it was just— it was like a lab rat experience. And that was incredible how those athletes improved so much that their power numbers, they've never seen those before and since.

Yeah, last point on, on the winter training is in terms of thinking ahead, try and pick a spring goal to get excited for as soon as you can. If— what's the earliest race you could pick? Could you find a half marathon last week of February or first week of March or some sort of race? Doesn't have to be a race, but something to just keep you going when things are getting tough and you're going, oh, I'm only 8 weeks away from a half marathon here. That's going to motivate you to, to get through training.

No doubt about it, Jordan. Uh, I couldn't agree more. Just have a goal. It makes me get out of bed, no problem.

Yeah, and so flipping that same question to the summer athlete, and they say, Gerard, I've got, I've got 3 weeks ahead of me, how are we going to structure this? I've got a lot more time, I've got a lot more flexibility, um, what, what's my goal here? You know what, and what's the mindset you really want to finish off with for everyone to remember?

Yep, there's always going to be 2 camps here. Great, great opportunity to have a total rest from the structure, and I'm mentally drained, I'm physically drained. That's the athlete that we have to do that winter example of, stay consistent. If you're, if you're actually so burnt out that you've convinced yourself you don't want to improve here, you want to, you want to have a mental reset, you need to have that consistency is king attitude, which is just do something really easy each day to maintain your fitness. Your goal is to not lose it, but the majority of the, the camps are in the— I've got all this time 'Now I am going to train the house down.' So the motivated athlete here is the one we have to actually grab by the reins and hold back, um, and, and just get them to understand that, uh, more is not always better, um, and you could, uh, really destroy your season if you don't think about this properly. So don't go crazy and train the house down without some thought put into it about hard days, easy days, uh, increase the duration but not the intensity. Um, and you know, the frequency is okay, but not more than, you know, what you've sort of been used to for the last 6 months. Your experience, not experienced, average, you're a new, new athlete to the sport, it's not your opportunity just to go flat out. And you know, you've got to think logically here and and really, you know, plan that— plan the program and discuss it with your coach so that everybody's clear that at the end we don't have this 'oh no' conversation. Oh, sorry coach, I'm just too exhausted to actually resume the program.

Yep. And what about— this is a golden question that comes up a lot— I can train twice a day. What if I do two a day? I want to do— I want to train like a pro. What if I train in the morning and train at night? And I know it seems and the athlete. But yeah, what's your answer?

Yeah, absolutely love it. And, you know, it's like someone asking for overtime and they can't do 5 days of normal work. Hey boss, can I do overtime? And the boss turns around and goes, you haven't turned up 5 days in a row, what am I going to give you overtime for? You know, if you're an athlete who's in the camp of they hardly miss a session, then they are training really well for the last, you know, 10 years, 5 years, 6 months. Where they're really, really good trainers. And I would say you are fully deserving to do double sessions, but we have to be very sensible about how we do it. Someone who hasn't been consistent for a large chunk of their previous period, and then they ask me to do double sessions, I'm laughing. I'm saying, mate, you just turn up and do one session every day for 30 days. That would be my answer to that person. Don't worry about doubles, you just do one session every day. And you know, that will be a challenge to you. Don't worry about doubles, just do one a day.

Well, that's it. So if you— we really hope that helps you get through this period. If you want specific help with your own program, this is our last week that we're accepting interviews and applications to get on the coaching program until next year. So if you don't want to wait and make that mistake that we're saying, don't wait until January 1st and wouldn't even be starting January 1st. It'd probably be later when we're accepting applications again. If you don't want to wait and waste this next 4 weeks plus and you want to get in, this is your last week to get in. So, go to travelocoaching.com.au and apply to get coached there if you want specific help of how to get the most out of yourself. Whether you're in the North or Southern Hemisphere, anywhere around the world, we can help you get through it. And to avoid that January regret, you want to do it right now and get on top of it now and not wait until mid-January and go, "Oh, I'm a month behind," or, "I'm 6 weeks behind." where I could be. So thank you as always for listening. If you want that help, go to tribalocoaching.com.au. Otherwise, thanks as always, and we'll see you in the next episode. ¡Gracias, Gerard Donnelly!