Taking An Effective Break Without Detraining

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. With the end of tri and racing summer racing season here in Australia, it's time for a lot of our athletes to take a break. But around the rest of the world, the racing season is just beginning and some athletes might be starting to get in seriously good form, including the pros. But the question remains, it is difficult to maintain a high intensity training program for 52 weeks of the year without overtraining or feeling burnt out. So how do you take a break effectively without risking detraining? How fast does your body detrain and lose all the fitness gains you've worked so hard for? This is our main topic for today. But first, dad, welcome to the episode. Let's start with what are you grateful for?

There's so many things I've been thinking about what I'm grateful for that's been running through my mind and I've come up with, tried to make it as simple as possible with the war in the Ukraine and just seeing the footage of the dead bodies in the streets and you just, you've got to say, thank God we live in a place where we've just never been touched by that. So I'm grateful to be an Australian living in Australia. I feel really sad for the Ukrainians and anybody else who's in a, you know, an unrest situation in their world and it's happening all over the world in Africa, all continents are having, but we've just seen to be so fortunate. Sure we had a tough time in Covid, but it kind of pales into significance when you're talking about people being shot on the street and innocent people just not going about their lives who are unarmed and so, yeah, grateful to be fortunate to live here.

I agree. My gratitude this week is actually an email we got from a listener which I really just want to read out because we both really enjoyed this email and we really enjoy reading emails like this. Gave us goosebumps, to be honest. This story, this person said, I'm an avid listener of your podcast and this, this is a story about my daughter, who was a young doctor, was facing the daunting challenge of applying for highly competitive postgraduate training program and at the time of the application, she looked for my help and advice and I guided her to your Plan, prepare, perform mantra Plan, prepare, perform to Paraphrase it. We meticulously considered the requirements as though it was an Ironman course. She did all the background reading courses, projects and networking that show her aptitude. She was competing against older and more experienced people with experience in that specific specialty. And her. My constant advice was to disregard the other competitors. You have no control about who shows up on the day. All you can control is to be the best version of yourself. You'll be loving this.

Absolutely.

And her daughter heeded all the advice she said to her on the morning of the interview slash race. You will be like any triathlete in the wetsuit, in their wetsuit on the beach before an Ironman. You'll be calm. You have completed the training and done everything within your power to have a good outcome. So you know there will be no regrets whatever the outcome of the race. So go in and execute. And clearly it worked, as there were 53 applicants for 10 places. She was the youngest and least experienced applicant and she got it. So thank you very much for sending that email in that we really enjoyed that story and it really. We're glad to see that the plan, prepare, perform mantra really does apply to life generally.

Very grateful for that email to be sent in. And it makes you feel good that you're having an influence on people around the world, no matter whether it's to do with sport or to do with your work or your family. And that's kind of the goal that we've always had, was to be here and try and give tips to help people get along the journey in their life. And, yeah, I could not be happier or more grateful to get an email like that.

Moving on to what's caught our attention and we'll try and fly through this because there's some big things happening in sport, but we've got a big topic to get through. So, firstly, Flanders happened on the weekend, her favourite race of the year, and it didn't disappoint in both the men's and women's race.

The World Championship of Spring Classics, they were calling it on the coverage, which I thought was incredibly accurate, because as people who have listened to the podcast for the last 110 episodes, we do go on about the Spring Classics and how we were a part of that for five years, taking groups to Flanders and Roubaix. So we would do the Tour of Flanders, Gran Fondo, and then watch the pros, and then we would train in the week and then line up for Paris, Roubaix, Gran Fondo, and then watch the pros. And it was A special two weeks that we will always spend in Belgium. So we have a real affinity and Belgium's like our second country. So we love the Belgians and we love anything to do with it. And to be there all those years and then not to be there for the last two years has been, well, three years now. Very envious that we're not there. But it never fails to deliver as one of the all time great races. And once again you had the best riders. And this is why I love the Tour of Flanders, the Ronda von Vanderen, which is what it's really called. The best riders get to the finish and then they can duel it out. And that's why I love it. And it happened in the male and the female race. The best riders got to the finish and you know, the, the Quarremont is a tough hill, but the other two hills, they sort out the race which, you know, we know we've ridden those, those hills in the, in the actual Gran Fonda. We've trained on them and had a real good go. And the pros make it look really easy when they're, when they're going up those final climbs. And I actually had a, one of the guys we coached say, why aren't the riders standing up? And you can't stand up on the cobbles. It's near impossible.

You see, the tyres will slip.

Yeah. You'll sl. And they're always greasy. And so it's like on ice skating. The cobbles are hard enough, but they're slippery. And the minute you stand up, your back wheel spins.

So and to put it in perspective, your part of the challenges, especially up those really steep ones, is you're almost, you're almost trying to put downforce into the bike as you're pedaling to keep the bike from not slipping. Because if you kind of let up a little bit, even if you seated, if you let up a little bit, the bike does slide and then you're off. And so it's hard to tell on tv, but when you're actually riding your, you really are, you're almost pressing down as hard as you can and you try to sit your ass down as hard as you can just to keep that grip there. Because it's not fun slipping.

No. And the Peterberg is one of the ultimate climbs. It's got 20% gradient halfway through it and the camera view is fantastic because you get to see the riders coming up over that 20% gradient. That's a real kicker at the end. And that's over the journey. I've watched 20 or 30 years of Cancellara and guys attacking there and winning the race from hitting the Koppenberg or the Paderberg at pace and the POG, who was my tip, he did it so well. But incredibly, the great man himself, Matthew van der Poel could hang in there and that was his only chance. And Anemia van Vleuten did have to get rid of Lotta Kopecki in the female race. Exactly the same scenario. And both, both, both van der Poel and Kopecki were able to stay with the better rider and beat them in the finish. So it was a great example of the best riders getting to the pointy end. And then there's certain key things that the riders who came second or fourth in the male race, unreal that it came fourth, that's a whole other story. But Gacha came fourth instead of winning. But you know, you've got opportunities, you need to take them. And you know, he did his best to get rid of, of Matthew van der Poel, but Vanderpoel was just too gutsy and so was Lotta Capeki too gutsy to, and she did it at Strato Bianca as well. She, the two of them, it was a two up jewel and she's beaten it twice now. So, you know, and they've both been on hilly parkours, which means that, you know, wait till they get to a flat stage. You know, this Belgian girl is going to win some races and I know I'm jumping from race to race here, but it's, you know, it is an example of, of, you know, you've got to take your opportunities and if you miss them then you've got to re, rethink how am I going to win this race. And I was loving the commentary. I think Matt Keenan was asking Simon Garrons if you're, how are you going to beat Matthew van der Poel in this sprint? And, and you know, I think he got it really wrong. He, he allowed van der Poel to slow down which obviously allowed the other two guys to catch up. But, but Garcia is going to be able to sprint for a long time and hold power for a long time. That's his trump. If it's going to come down to the sprint, he has to think, what's my strength? Well, I can sprint for 500 meters, whereas Van der Poel's already been beaten in a long sprint the year before. The year before he won in a short sprint. So Van der Poel was very clever. He made it a short sprint by 125 meter sprint and pocket chart. Couldn't accelerate as quick as the big, strong Vanderpoel. That was his mistake. Yep.

It's incredible that he's had three sprint finishes in a row at Flanders. MDVP it was.

And three different riders and he got rolled once and won two. So. So you learn from your. Your poor performances, don't you?

Absolutely. And it was so good for Lodokopecki to be in the Belgium champion colors. Winning the local hero race in front of the locals is.

The crowd went nuts, didn't they?

They were banging their side as I could.

Yeah. There was beer getting thrown and they were watching the big screen. And look, as you and I know, this is the AFL grand final for our Australian listeners or for the American or European Super Bowl. Yeah. Tour of Flanders is the biggest. You know, it's. It's the big race besides Tour de France. It's kind of the one you want to win. I know there's other monuments, but. But ye is the one you want to win. And there's some unbelievably good names and, you know, we've ridden on the course and there's a section on the course which in the women's race, one of the female commentators wasn't Brydie. Can't remember who the other female commentator was, but she was saying, which, you know, is. Every 10 meters on this particular course has got the names of the previous 50 winners on the road, which is pretty special. When you're training, you're riding along reading 1971, you know, this guy won it and it's got the females there now when we there, they didn't have the female riders. So that's pretty special. And you feel like you're part of. When you're riding on the training sessions in between waiting for the races. You love riding on the course to know this is where the pros are. And it's just an exciting time to be in Belgium.

Yeah, absolutely. And it reminded me that, God, we got to get back there because it's so fun to see the best riders in the world riding roads that you know. And it's just spectacular riding and it just. It's the type of riding you dream of, you know. And as much as we like performance here and we sit on the trainer to get the most out of our. Our sessions, nothing beats riding around there, I don't think.

Yep.

Moving on. We had one of the first big 70.3s races of the year on the calendar. Oceanside and it was a pretty interesting race. And there's a bit going on with the pros at the moment with the St. George World Champs 70.3 only a month away, I think it is. And a lot of athletes coming to form this a big test for a few to see who's coming in. There's a lot of stuff going on on social media between athletes and groups, and it's pretty interesting to see. And I don't know how much of it is just joking. And there seems to be a little bit of sniping and some seriousness, a bit of bite to some of the comments on social media, so we'll see how that all unfolds. But Jackson Laundry had a big win, just 20 seconds ahead of what was one of the best sprint finishes I've ever seen in not just triathlon, but in athletics. It was Lionel Sanders versus Rudy Von Berg. And they were coming in and they were slowly just winding up the sprint and there was just a great camera angle from the finish line and you can see them 500 meters away and it's just a dead sprint and they're going a flat chat, which would just be the most horrible experience to have to do at the end of a 70.3. Yeah, I can't even imagine having to grit your teeth like that. And not one of them would yield. One of them would get as far as 20cm ahead, their shoulder would get ahead and you thought that the rope might break and the other person, that's enough to go, but then the other one would come 20cm ahead, but they never let each other get more than half a meter. And then Lionel pipped him on the line, which we're really hyped for him this season. I think he's our man. He's the guy we want to watch. And it was good to see him just get that mental edge because he, he has been frustrated throughout his career about. About not being a good racer.

Yeah, I think you've summed up that race pretty well. Unfortunately, the winner, you know, he lost a little bit of the limelight. But how ironic that Brownlee was only 20 seconds seconds behind second and third and second and third was only 20. Yeah, 20 seconds behind first. So I' seen too many half iron 70.3s. You see a lot in Olympic where people are coming in, you know, two.

Five, 10 seconds apart within 40 seconds.

Yeah, I mean, it shows you the running standard because mostly people can swim together, they can ride together because you got the pace line happening. But when you get off the bike it's quite separated. There's some outstanding runners who can run 68 minutes for a half marathon and all the way down to 75 minutes, which is not competitive when you're against guys who can run 69, 70, 71. So you don't. You don't really get a close finish. But. But to have four guys within 40 seconds is. Is pretty phenomenal. And I can't wait for the next set of races because if that's the standard and they all weren't there, all the, you know, all the guns weren't there, so, you know, I. I think it's. It goes well. And of course, being the first race of the season, people are finding their way because they've had, you know, they had no races. So. So I'm excited. And, and as. As you know, we love people who are. Are like Lionel, who are. Who have looked at themselves and thought, I need to change to do something better. And we talked about this on the podcast before, and now we're watching him intently, and already it seems like he's growing in confidence in, in his training. And now he's had a race where he's, you know, he's really. He's been competitive. He's right there.

Yeah. And someone that is a dark horse is. Is Alistair Brownlee, who, multiple gold medal winner at the Olympics, really is Giving this, this 70.3 distance a hard crack and wants to dominate. And we just haven't seen him much. He's been injured, he's been off the radar a little bit, but he's there. He's still definitely there. And to be only 40 seconds behind, kind of first race back where we haven't seen him for a long time. That'll be interesting over the next month. And then in the female category, really excited. I really like watching Taylor Nib, who dominated. She won by a few minutes. It is only her. Her. I think it's only her third 70.3 ever, maybe her fourth, but she's an Olympic distance triathlete, and last year she. She had debuted her 70.3 at the World Champs, or it was her second one. I haven't got those facts exactly right, but she podiumed at the World Champs. Young athlete. And with Lucy Charles recently out with injury and pulling out of the World Champs next month, Taylor Nib is a massive chance to win that, which would be incredible for someone so inexperienced. And another notable mention, our Aussie Ash Gentle came in fourth.

Yeah, certainly the women's field's wide open now with Lucy Charles Barkley out And it just goes to show, you never know what's going to happen next to any athlete at any given time in any given period of their career. So, you know, people may be dominant and she is outstanding. She is the dominant female athlete.

Athlete.

She was untouchable last week of a generation almost, and. And now she's not racing. So, you know, for people who are trying to race for second, you should never have that attitude anyway. You should be always thinking that you're a chance. You never know what's going to happen to your other competitors. In the email we got, you know, concentrate on the things you can control rather than worrying about who you're against. And, you know, we see that in age groups with the people we coach, who I'm forever saying, you know, don't worry about the rest of the field, who you're racing against. You have no control over what they're doing. You don't know what form they're in. You don't know if they're injured. You don't know if they've been sick. You've got to go with your race plan and race the race, have your plan and race the race. And, you know, the minute you start putting yourself second against someone who you think should beat you, which with, you know, with good reason, but you can't have that attitude. You might as well not start.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And last thing before we get into the main topic is we had another listener question that I just wanted to read, read out and if you have any questions, send them through. We'll either try to get back to you or we'll read about in the podcast. But this is. I wanted to bring this up because it brings up an interesting point. And this person plays just amateur sport here in Australia, just Aussie rules football recreationally. So just for fun and there. But they play for a club. So this is. This actually doesn't happen much around the world where people play properly for a club and train twice a week and play the full day Saturday outside of university level or high school level. I was interested traveling in America. I asked people who were previously in college playing sport what they did after. And they said, oh, there's nowhere to go play. You know, you can go play casual pickup basketball or something. But it's very common here for people to play into their 30s, you know, really competitively and train twice a week. And this is what this person does. And they're asking how can they set up their training week to get fitter when they have to train for this sport. Tuesday, Thursday night play on Saturday. The game's really intensive and so you can't really, you're so sore on Sunday you can barely train.

And.

Yeah, I'd love to get your, your thoughts on this because I have a feeling I'll know your answer. You know, for someone who's an aspiring triathlete or cyclist or runner, how do they, how do they get fitter?

Yeah, well, really, you're putting your eggs in two baskets and, and you either want to continue playing your club sport sport and just, just keep, keep trying to do some fitness on the side or you put your club sport second and you concentrate on the goal of. It was a marathon, wasn't it?

I can't remember what it might have been.

A half marathon. Yeah, he's trying to.

Oh, yeah, it was half marathon.

Trying to prepare for a half marathon.

You're right. Yeah.

And, you know, anything over 20k is something that you can't really muck around with because it could be an extra experience that you'll not enjoy if you're not prepared for it. And, you know, for those who don't understand Australian Rules Football, it is, it has the endurance component in it, but it has mainly short, high powered efforts, plus tackling, plus. Plus getting physically attacked.

Yeah.

And you know, we've got the example of Nathan Jones, who's just finished a 70.3 program, successfully transferring, but he, you know, he left his football behind and concentrated on that. And I've got many examples of athletes, and I don't need to name them because they know who I'm talking about already, who are trying to be a top cyclist and a top triathlete. And I don't mean top as in elite, I mean top in their age group or competitive against their peers. And you will be very good at both, but you won't be at the top of your game at both because they interfere with each other. And just like this example, football has gotten no relationship to half marathon running except that you run in football. When you run a half marathon, that's the only relationship. They're completely different spheres of training. And, you know, it won't help in any way your marathon running, but your marathon running training will help your football incredibly. So the big winner is your local club football and the loser is your half marathon preparation. So the answer is, you know, sure, do the half marathon, but have very low expectations and you will find you'll probably miss more training than you because you're so sore and you've actually tried to do it yourself. Jordan where you were, you were playing at amateur level and you were actually trying to have a mini running career alongside it, but you couldn't do both. It was near impossible because you were so sore from the game. It took you three or four days to rec, can actually train again.

And then you've got training on the.

Tuesday and that's right, so you're back into the actual football training. So when are you going to actually do other training? And you should actually be recovering. So the answer is, look, it's not an ideal position to be in. You probably need to not do the half marathon, but you could do it for fun. Just but have no expectations would be my answer.

I knew you were going to say that and I thought that's just a really important point and it's a tough one for athletes to hear because you have this conversation a lot with athletes and it's not an answer they're expecting. They're expecting a solution to, oh, no, Gerald will have a solution for how I can do both. And often you say, no, I'm sorry, I can't help you do both. And it's actually a tough choice to say, well, okay, I'm going to still enter this half marathon and I'll try and improve from last time because I have more experience, I might be able to fit in some easier endurance running. Somewhere there might be a buy in footy, so I can do that on the weekend. But yeah, the expectation has to be that, that that is not where your priorities are at the moment. And if that's your choice, then be happy with that and have a half marathon career once you decide to stop playing footy.

And to be fair to the couple of examples I was using, the athlete was okay with that, very happy to be, be okay as a cyclist and be okay as a triathlete and never complained and just wanted to do both and, and that's okay by me as well, as long as we both are clear as a coach and athlete when we're working together that you won best triathlete you want to be and you won't be the best cyclist, one of them is interfering with the other so much running as a triathlete is not actually helping your bike riding that much and so much riding is making you too tired to run as a triathlete. So they're counterproductive. But the examples I'm using, they were okay with that and they understood the expectations. Funnily enough, taking this one particular example that I'm using, and there'll be a few People who know who I'm talking about. But, but concentrated totally on triathlon since that period of last two or three years of dabbling in everything that he could possibly compete in, which was unreal. And now he's winning his age group at 70.3 and you know, wow. What. It's, it's brilliant. It's, it's exciting, it's, it's satisfying and it just has rammed home, you know, could have been doing that for a while, but because he's splitting his bets halfway now, he's contributing on one thing and, you know, one Geelong.

And you have to be genuinely okay with it. You can't say you're okay. And then when you get the race time that you get when, let's say you are aiming for 150 and a half marathon and you don't get it because you haven't been able to train properly, you can't sit there and be disappointed. You have to be able to sit there at the end and say, no. This is what I. The decision I made. Moving on to our main topic of the day, let's talk about taking an effective break without detraining. So it's the end of racing season for whatever your calendar is most, for most places around the world, the most racing happens over summer. Let's say you get to the end of the summer. I want to talk about what's your starting advice and what are you saying to our current athletes at the moment?

I certainly have changed my mind over the journey and I think that's a good thing. And I'm happy to admit that, that I may have improved my coaching over the last, last, you know, maybe I've been, I've been helping people since 1987 as a coach. So I reckon in the last five years I definitely have changed my philosophy by listening to others and watching and learning from. From others and, and, and I've kind of had a lot of time to think about because I've looked at professional athletes and, and I've really thought, why, why don't we adopt the same principles with professionals as we do with amateur athletes who are training, some of them just like professionals, except they may be 40 or 50 or 60 or 38 and they're not in the elite race, but they're certainly elite athletes in their age group. So I'm talking about that particular athlete here. I'm not talking about the new comer to triathlon or to bike riding or to marathon running. Running. I'm talking about someone who's actually trying to you know, to stay at the top of their game and be competitive in whatever chosen sport they're doing in their, in their age group. So for those of you who are not in that category, I'm not talking about you. So that's another, that's another method that I'd like to talk about, if you can ask me about that later. But, but we absolutely accept that. You know, an AFL team at the end of their season, whether they get knocked out before the finals, they have a down period, they have a period where they are left to their own devices for normally it's four to six weeks, something like that. Some clubs, if you get to the grand final, you end up having two weeks or three weeks before you start getting back into structured training. You can go through the list of athletes, cross country runners, swimmers, professional triathletes, professional marathon runners. When they get to their A rate as a cyclist, you go and do the nationals or you go to Tour de France, you have a period where you have to have a downtime because you've been preparing and getting your body to peak at this particular time. And as we've said many times on the podcast, you can't hold a peak for 52 weeks. You'd be lucky to hold it for more than six weeks at a time. So at the end of the day, once you've reached your grand final or your a race at the local national level or the Tour de France, as your, you know, if you're an elite, the same for an age grouper who's at the top of his game, whether it's a 70.3, we've just had the finish of the summer season in Australia. But at the end of the day, the point I'm trying to, trying to make is we need to allow our body to actually mentally and physically get over the period of intensity and peak. And as we've said with everyday training, week to week where we train hard, we need to have recovery days. Well, this is the same. We use the six months of training to the A race as our hard sessions. And now the post A race. We need to recover, we need to mentally get away from that know, accountable training. I call, I could, you know, that's the phrase that, you know, it's, it's totally accountable training. You need to keep ticking off session by session and you need to have a period where you're not going to be, you know, have your nose to the grind. You need to have a release somewhere. And just like a professional does, we need the elite age group to think the same way. So this is how I've changed my thought process that I need to treat, treat the really competitive age grouper like we would treat professional and it is really important that they take a period off and there are lots of consequences about what we're going to talk about here. But that's the first and foremost point that I want to make is that's where I've just changed my philosophy a little bit. I would generally treat the age group of the everyday cyclist, everyday triathlete, everyday marathon runner as if it's a 52 week year where they have periods of hard training and easier training which is not too dissimilar to what the pros do. But I'm telling the elite people that they need to actually have a break and not to do nothing but to have a break from structure where you're actually getting a mental and physical release from that.

And why is that distinction so important between, between what you're saying the everyday age grouper compared to the top end age grouper.

Yeah, because the everyday person is absolutely about improving themselves whereas the elite person is improving themselves plus they're trying to win. So the everyday person is not trying to in. And so you need to be a little bit more focused in your. I just think there's more pressure in on yourself expectations wise as compared to the person who's got the pressure of I'm just trying to improve and I'm not going to be pushed or not going to be dictated to by the race that's evolving around me with the other people I'm racing against. Because let's face it, we, we are determined for our people we coach to not focus on anybody else but your own race. And the exception is the guys are trying to win their age group. We're trying to get them to race to a plan. And then my second sentence is but don't forget to race. So I think that's the distinction.

Yep. And so how does that actually look specifically with what you prescribe for the next few weeks?

Post a race for both 10 camps. Yep. So we would select NXA race which is the process that most of them are doing now. And, and that's really straightforward. They're so motivated because most of them have just done their last race was maybe Melbourne or Geelong or it's going to be Port Mac in in a four weeks time or three weeks time and for some it can be Cairns as well. But, but then we, we, we work backwards again. Our program might be another 24 weeks or 20 or 30 weeks. And in that program we need to have, remember when we've come to the actual a race, we've had a week of taper. Okay? So that's one week where you've really done, not done much training. And then post race, you've gone and done your race and had the result, whatever it was. And then the week after you actually don't train again. You just move and try to recover. So in fact, you've already had really two weeks from when you finished your training. Block, block. You had the one week of taper, then the race and one week of recovery. So there's two weeks already where you've detrained. And as you know from the bell curve, you know the detraining has a very minimal effect at the top of the bell curve. But once you go past that two week period, then there's a, a big drop off straight away. So, so the next two weeks is, is I look at it as, you know, you getting away from, from me coaching you, me in your face, texting, calling, whatever, me looking at the sessions, that's not gonna happen. And you've got a period just to mentally and physically relax. And you can choose to move in any way you want. You can choose to ride your mountain bike. If you're a cyclist, you can choose to take the dog for a walk. If you're a runner, you can swim. Just choose to go and swim just recreationally for whatever, but you can, you need to do something in that period. It's not me saying do nothing. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you need to move, but you move at your own pace. There are a group of people who cannot handle this and they still need me to program their two weeks post. So, so we're talking about four weeks in total. The week before the race, the week after, and then two weeks. So it's a period of four weeks after, you know, the biggest detraining comes in that period. So if you keep doing that, it gets worse and worse. If you take six weeks and eight weeks, you're just coming from a long way back. So we determined not to lose all the things we've gained. So that's important that you don't make it happen too long. And as you know from your own experience, if you have a football season and then you don't have another football preseason training session for potentially eight weeks after the season's finished, if you do nothing in that eight weeks, your first couple of weeks, weeks of pre season training, is absolute agony. You got so many doms, you've got sore pain parts in muscles you didn't even know existed, and you didn't even train very hard. So if you keep doing something in this detraining period, as we call it, you will come back on the start of your program in quite good shape. And that's important to remember, just to do something. And it's not about training hard. And we know statistically and scientifically likely that if you did one high intensity session during that period, you would lose less. But my advice is that, no, you need a break from that. And if there is a race that happens to be on in that period and you want to have a crack, have some fun with it, by all means, don't not do it. Because Coach Jared is saying, you know, don't do any intensity. But we do know intensity will stop your fitness from declining so quickly. So. But that's defeating the purpose of what we're trying to achieve here. Yeah, we're trying to get your brain and your body to have a mental and physical break from the everyday rigors of the program.

And we, I mean, you've referred to it as a D training period, but we don't actually call it that. We don't say to our athletes, well, now you're going to go detrain for four weeks. That's not, that's not what it is. It's a recovery period. It's a refreshing period. It's reset almost. And the detraining can incite a bit of a panic because as athletes, you work so hard for any potential improvement. And then when you hear the word detraining, you want to stay as far away from that as possible. And so the point you're just making about weighing up the benefits of a rest compared to the potential of detraining and losing a lot of fitness, in your opinion as a coach, the benefits far outweigh the potential of detraining because it's just not possible to maintain this high intensity training program mentally and physically, as you said, for 52 weeks of the year. And that's just going to lead to burnout. So knowing that we want to take a purposeful reset and knowing that's going to result in some D training, we want to understand what the literature actually says about what's going to happen to your body. And you made the point that in that taper week, you are potentially detraining straight away, which is why it's so important to keep some high intensity in that week, to keep you sharp and, and minimize that. You want to keep your fitness, but get yourself as fresh as possible. And then when you race, you'll get fitness gain from that anyway. So it, it will balance it out a little bit. Um, and then that recovery week, naturally you're going to lose some. And that's why he's talking about the D training process immediately beginning. When we're referring to D training, we're just referring to the fact that the body is not getting a stimulus of overload and therefore it's not improving. And you know, the easiest, easiest example is your heart is a muscle. And if there's, if that's not being worked to a certain stimulus, that muscle is going to detrain. And as soon as you stop training with any intensity, the literature generally says that the first one to two weeks is a general minimal loss, but you have to accept there is a definite loss there. Over the first month, you will lose the most fitness. So let's say you took another two weeks completely off. That would be the most fitness you lost. And then it does start to taper off a bit, which you mentioned with that curve, but you continue to lose much of your fitness gains. But just like someone who starts training program, the most gains are early and then it tapers off the fitter you get. You can't just keep progressing at that accelerated rate. It's the same with day training. You don't actually, you lose it at an accelerator accelerated rate early, but it can't keep going like that. It tapers off eventually. And we'll talk about kind of fitness bay in the bank in a second. But I want to weigh up this balance of, of break, needing some intensity, dropping the volume. Because the literature also says that if you just included a little bit of intensity in there, you would dramatically decrease the amount of fitness lost. But as a coach, you are really adamant in that's, that's the type of training that, that mentally weighs an athlete so much. It can weigh you down. And that's where the, the benefit of a mental break for you outweighs the, the fitness you are naturally going to lose.

Yeah, And I just think about the examples of. So you've, let's just take the scenario that you've done your. A race, you've had your weak taper, you had your weak recovery. Then coaches said, right, two weeks of you just doing whatever you want. And I get the phone call, there's a race on the second weekend, I really want to do it. Is it okay? And my answer will be, sure, it's Absolutely. Okay, so let's get that out there and then I'll say however, the purpose of the two week period, so that's a four week, two total. The purpose is for you to not do that for your mental and physical well being. And in six weeks time after that, so week 10, so you've had, you've had two, you know, a week of taper, a week of recovery and two weeks of basically rest and recovery. And then six weeks later, if you've done a couple of hard sessions through those two weeks, you will sort of be in a state where, where I just don't feel like I've had a rest mentally. That's probably going to happen. And you don't want to be in that position at week six or week 12 of your 20 week new program. You don't want to feel like that. You want to feel like I'm so motivated after this rest period, I can't wait to get back into training. Whereas if you've already done a couple of hard sessions, it almost feels like you haven't had a rest. Because you know how hard one hard session is is whether it's a race or whether you go riding with your mates and all of a sudden you come back to your program, you actually haven't really recovered. And the other thing which we will talk about, which is fitness in the bank, but that's the reason why you should relax your brain knowing that these are things that are going to behold you in good stead when it counts. So it is a mature athlete who can do this. An immature athlete will go, yeah, yeah, coach, whatever, and then go and do eight rides with his buddies and, or her buddies and smash themselves and come back to week one in a worse state than they were supposed to. You know, their fatigue will be high and their motivation will be still quite good. But in week six and week 10, I'm going to question their motivation because they'll be really elaborate a little bit, you know, geez, this is, this is getting hard because I didn't really take a proper break. So, so that's my, that's my advice to the people. So it's like a spoil sport approach, you know, you, you want me to take a break from the, from the structure, yet you don't want me to have fun. Well, you can still have fun with your mates, but when they take off up the road, you just tap away and you'll meet them at the coffee shop, you know, or don't ride all the time with them. Just take one, one Ride where you might actually have a little dig. But you know in your mind that that's not going to be helpful to the overall goal of what we're trying to do, which is, you know, reduce fatigue both physically and mentally from the rigors in everyday structure and routine of having to get up at a certain time and do a certain session and do certain power number and certain certain swimming pace and running pace is need a break. And for the people who are everyday triathlete cyclists who are not trying to win races, why am I talking to them differently? Well, because it's a lifestyle for them and they want to keep their fitness going. They don't want to have a period where they're detraining and losing fitness and having to get it back. So we have an easier period which is still loosely structured, but it's all easy. It's all zone one and two with no intensity and smelling the roses, sun on your back, you know, just enjoying. I've got an easy session today. I look forward to an easy session. I know I'm not going to hurt myself. So they go through this period, they still go through this period, but it's subtly different. They're going to lose minimal fitness. We're going to try and hold our fitness so that they're not going backwards at any stage. So we have periods where they improve and they have periods where they like the staircase approach. You know, you might spend three months at the one level and then we start training hard and then all of a sudden you go up 10% and then we have another two weeks where we might have an easier period and then we go hard again and the improvement goes up another percentage. So that's kind of what we're trying to do with the everyday person who's not trying to win their age group or qualify for nationals or be a semi professional type of athlete.

And that's an example where you would almost encourage someone to ride with their mates on, you know, they've ridden easy all week or you know, if it's a triathlete, they've swam, run or written, ridden easy all week. But then Saturday is the big bunch ride and you just, you say go nuts, have fun, have a really high intensity day. You've had an easy week, it's not going to go into effect you next week. It's not going to make you exhausted once we come back.

Yeah. So the, the, the point of difference is the, the really top of the age group, they need to not do that. They really should be the mature athlete there and be disciplined. And here I am telling them to be disciplined in their off period. Disciplined in the opposite way, disciplined so that they don't overexert themselves. Whereas the other type of athlete, yeah, that's the fun period where you know, you've just had such an easy period, you know, one or two sessions here or there. We'll do exactly what the research tells us, which is it will keep your fitness at a steady state until we're ready to re go again for the next process program towards your next day race.

And lastly, I mean to come full circle and finish off with, you know, the reason that you actually do prescribe it slightly differently to different athletes. You, you end up having a bit of a different conversation because you know the types of responses you can get. You can say to a motivated athlete, have two weeks of full recovery. And when a, a, a mature motivated athlete will hear you and their next two weeks will look really easy. You look on training peaks and it'll be 14 easy rides, easy runs, whatever, whatever it is. And it's, and they've stuck to it, to it. Whereas some athletes, you say that and they go off the rails and you look back over two weeks and they've done three sessions and because they didn't have any structure to follow. And that's why sometimes you need a different conversation.

And the two examples you're giving are spot on. But there's a third one, the guy who goes with his bunch every day and he's actually more tired than he was before he came off a structure. So we have to know who the people are before we can say, you can fend for yourself. You need to still be doing these sessions or you'll be fine. So the point about the worrying factor for most athletes is I've worked so hard to get this fitness level. Why are you allowing me to lose some fitness? And the easy answer is, and I've got a hundred thousand examples of people who have had an illness or an injury or some catastrophe that's prevented them from having maybe two or three weeks of training, yet they've come out two or three weeks later and performed close to their best, which doesn't make sense, but it does make sense if you think about it this way. You may have trained on a structured program for three months and if you had two or three weeks off, you probably won't reach your PB in two or three weeks. Why? Why? Because you've got a really small amount of fitness in your bank. And we talk about the fitness bank a lot. If you've been doing this for two years or a year or four years, your bank is just overflowing with fitness. So for you to have two or three weeks, it's like taking $1,000 out of your bank when your bank's got 10 million in it. But if you've only been training for two or three months, your bank's only got $2,000 in it. If you take out a thousand dozen, you've lost half your fitness. It's to do with what your background is in your previous historical fitness levels are. And that's a really. It's a really good point for people to hear because it gives them that relaxation thought that, you know, I'll be fine. It's not the end of the world that I'm going to actually take this period off. And it really does play on their mind. And once I explain that to them, it's, oh, okay, that makes sense. And I've just. I've just had three weeks off the bike myself and just did a time trial after two weeks of training. I could not, as you, as I told everybody at the nationals on our podcast that we talked about, I could not hit 290 watts to save myself. I was hovering around 280, 282 in January and, you know, November, December, January, and that continued in February, February, March. I had three weeks off, and then I rode last Sunday. 290 watts. Well, that doesn't make sense because I basically didn't train for the last four weeks. I had three weeks of no training and one week of training. Yet I've improved. And, you know, there's a great example of allowing fatigue to be shed. I've got this massive bank of fitness built up, and lo and behold, you perform well. So have that in your mind that this is actually good for me and it will help me, not hinder me. And as long as you can understand that, you can relax and enjoy that.

Period to a degree. Because the final caveat would be that just because you have great fitness in the bank does not mean you're invincible. And you will still suffer the effects of detraining if you let it get out of hand. And that's probably one last frustration that you have had with some athletes over the years is that they've done so much work building up that fitness bank and then they take too long off, and that does actually undo the work.

So a good example of that, it's a good one to finish on, is I've got a few athletes who regularly take probably six, eight, ten weeks off. And I'm okay with whatever people want to do, but I always say to them, you left the program at this level and you've now taken this period off the program. And I've looked at all your training and it's spasmodic at best and you come back. So you leave the program at 100% of your ability, you've come back at 60. It's going to take me 10 weeks to get you back to 100. And then you get to your a race four weeks later or 10 weeks later, I've got you at 105, 110% of the where you, where you were when you left the program. The athlete who stays with the structure at 100% drops back to 95, 90, and then he starts his program, he's at 125, 130%. Whereas the guy who keeps coming on and off, he's not going that, he's not advancing himself or herself. They're going a couple of steps forward and then a massive 100 meters backwards, backwards and then catching up to where they were before and then adding a little bit. Whereas the person who's more consistent, and we talk about that a lot, you can be consistent in whether it's high intensity or medium intensity or low intensity, you just gotta be consistent. And that's what I've experienced a lot with people who come on and off a lot is they actually don't do anything that's worthwhile in their off period. And we spend a lot of time getting them back to where they were before, they can actually improve. And, and I don't think a lot of them actually don't get what I'm saying. They're not understanding that the more time you actually don't concentrate on improving yourself. And if your goal is to be a better triathlete or a better cyclist or a better marathon runner, the more times you do that to yourself, the more frustrated you'll get because you won't actually improve that much. You'll get your A race similar to what you would were previous A races. Whereas the person who's kind of had two or three years of consistency, and I always say to people, it's amazing after the third year how many people start blowing their PBS apart. They are all of a sudden mid packers to now, you know, examples we've got of winning national individual time trials from a three year consistent program where they just didn't go backwards, they just continued to improve from where they were when they first joined and it, you know, it takes about that long to be at the top of your level in any sport you're in. You just can't pick it up and be there in six weeks. You know, I've got that many examples of people, it took two years, three years, four years, but they got there and now they're elite athletes in their age group at national level. And they weren't that level before. They were damn good athletes but never succeeding at that level. So it is an interesting way of looking at it and if you can think about that, you can make better decisions.

Yeah, it's interesting because it is a common misunderstanding we get with a lot of people thinking tribal adjust coach elite athletes. Which we always want to remind people, we don't, we want to coach anyone that wants to improve. That is that goal. No matter what level you're at, if you want to improve, as long as you want to enjoy the process. And that's our goal. But secondly, that these are elite athletes. We're always elite athletes, you know, and we're talking about elite. We're, we're not talking, when we say elite, we're talking about elite in their age group. We're not talking about professional paid athletes, we're talking about the elite in their 50 to 55 category being national champions for 50 to 55 age group, for example. But like you said, the misconception is that we're always at that. But no, one year ago, two years ago, three years ago, they were mid pack in their age group, they were coming 5th, 10th, 15th and after all the work, now they're winning. And that is a result of their training, their consistency in training.

Yeah. And going a step further, we've got people who come to us who are coming 120th, who then in their first year became a hundredth and then you know, 80th, 50th, 30th and now in the top 20. And that gives us more joy than someone who's going from fifth to first to fourth to third. Still fun to have the guys on the top of the podium, but boy do I enjoy seeing someone come from that far back back just by being consistent and you know, they're continuing on the program over that two, three year period is enable them to do that. And that's why you have to really consider how much time you take off because you are putting yourself at a distinct disadvantage for your overall improvement over the journey. And let's face it, we've said many times that you're doing this because you enjoy it. And it's possibly to do with health and fitness for the majority of our athletes we coach and it's a small percentage who are at the pointy end, let's get that clear. The majority of athletes we coach are beginners or mid packers and they're getting huge improvements obviously. And they're the ones who understand that consistency is going to actually get them there in the end. And you know, at the end of the day that's all I want the listeners to kind of grasp with this topic is that no matter whether you're a professional full time paid athlete or a top age grouper or someone who just wants to improve, you do need to have some period where you have downtime.

That's a good place to finish really. To summarize, you want to take an effective break without detraining. That was the whole purpose of this topic. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next time. Sam.