The Perfect Balance Between Hard & Easy Training

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, Gerard Donnelly. Are you guilty of training too hard or too easy? Or have you been able to find the right balance with hard and easy training? And is there a perfect balance? If there is, where is it? We've heard of 8020 training, we've heard of polarized training, we've heard of pyramidal training, maybe just doing two hard sessions a week or three hard sessions a week or even more. And today we're going to talk about all the factors that contribute to getting this balance right. First dad, welcome to the episode. Let's start with gratitudes. What are you grateful for this week?

Thanks, Jordan. I'm looking forward to this episode as usual. Look, a journey that we've been on with our first granddaughter, Eden, who happens to live up in the Sunshine coast in Coolum. Her second birthday was on the weekend and we got surprise visit from them for a week which was absolutely brilliant. And shared her second birthday with her and her mum and dad and it was a great week to have her here. And why is that special? Why am I grateful for that? Well, she was born deaf and certainly it has not brought her any, you know, she doesn't know any different. She, she has been given cochlear implants and she can hear incredibly well and she's got great verbal ability already as a two year old. It's quite intriguing. She pulls her ears off, we call her cochlear, her ears, she pulls them off regularly and when she doesn't want to hear the world. So it's been interesting watching her evolve as a deaf baby child. She's happy and content and knows no different. And when she gets ready for a bath, she throws her ears off because she knows she can't get them wet and therefore she's sitting in the bath with no sound because she can't hear anything without the cochlear implants. So we're very grateful that she's been given this gift of cochlear implants to enable her to function pretty normally in the world. So yeah, that's my gratitude.

Yeah, that's a really good one. I was having a conversation with one of our brothers and my gratitude is that we grew up learning how to train properly and how to run train and that seems like a little bit of a weird one. But there's a reason behind it. And we were like, we're grateful that even though we didn't always enjoy it, you had us doing intervals from a very early age. You had us doing kind of proper running training and you knew the value in it. And to be fair to you, you were never pushy, forcing us into anything, but you were definitely strongly encouraging that this is what we're going to do and this is how to train. And we just can't believe the amount of life lessons that come from that. You learn straight away from an early age. You learn discipline, you learn hard work, you learn mental toughness, you learn how to push through pain and pain tolerance. You learn how to do things when you don't feel like it. You learn that you don't get an immediate reward, you know, from the training sessions. It's, it's learning how to do something in the short term, short term pain for a reward later on, which is, I think, a really important lesson. And I've always been fascinated by how much training, whether it's running training or swim training or any kind of sport, training is such a great metaphor for life because it just, it just represents everything that, that you need to do in order to be successful in something. It's, it's consistency, it's, it's hard work now for reward later, even if you're not getting rewarded straight away. And we were just laughing about how grateful that we feel like we have an advantage in life because we've learned that at a young age and we're really stoked with that.

I love that one. George, that's unbelievable to hear you say that. And it's always a bit of a challenge as a parent looking after their children in sport as to, you know, not put your expectations on your children. And that was a tough one because you're so excited to see them getting into all sports. And that was one of the things that my dad taught me was, you know, have a crack at everything when you're young and then you can decide which one you like. And if you've just narrowed your vision into one sport or two sports, you haven't really experienced anything. And, you know, we were in badminton competition for, you know, years. We were playing table tennis competitions. You know, we did little ass, we did cricket, we did soccer, we did football, we did cross country running, you know, we did swim squad. We just had a crack at everything. And, and, you know, some of the sports I wished I'd had to go at weren't available to us in Our country town. You know, I love hockey, but. But, you know, we just didn't have any hockey competition in our town, so. But yeah, that, that's really good to hear that. And, and, you know, one of the things that I think you would really love is that you've been able to experience that, you know, you. You really good at touch football and, you know, things that, that really, you feel that you want to do, you can put your hand to and have a crack at and not be too narrow with your. With your choices in your sport. And I think it's never too late to change, and it's always great. I see some people who've started marathon running at 60, you know, haven't run their whole lives, and yet here they are, you know, starting at 60, and, you know, the probably the only benefit is they've got no injuries from training, so difficulty that puts stress on your body, so they're kind of coming into it fresh. So, yeah, that's really great gratitude.

And yeah, like I said, you did get the balance right, because I loved running, so always enjoyed that, even if sometimes you didn't feel like training or you wanted to go play with your friends when you had a training session. But one thing I didn't like, and I still don't like that much, is swimming. And I just, I. I asked you to. If I could stop swinging when I was about 12, around the age of 12, because I just really didn't enjoy it. And you said, sure. And that was. I really. I wasn't sure if you're going to say yes or not, but, you know, because Liam and Matt were good swimmers and Matt kept swimming, but I just hated it. I hated every session. I didn't enjoy it at all. And yeah, you said, sure, which is. Which is great. Moving on into our. What has caught our attention and a few things recently that we want to quickly touch on before we get into the topic. And what was yours?

I was listening with real interest hearing Cam Wurf talk, and it's always intrigued me, him as an athlete. He's such an exceptionally different athlete, and that was what caught my attention. What's exceptionally different about him? Well, he's a World Tour cyclist who can compete in the Tour de France and the spring classics, and he can do the Ironman, and he does them at an elite level as a triathlete. You know, he's come fifth in Kona, he's won Ironman races, he's been on podiums, and he's doing it together. It's not like he stopped one and started the other. He is available for ineos as a World Tour rider and if there's no races that they need him for, he's off competing in an Ironman. I just find that unbelievably outstanding. And I always say to a lot of athletes who come to me who want to be, say for example, there's a race in, in Australia, in Melbourne. Well, not in Melbourne, but In Victoria, the Three Peaks event, which is an 8 hour to 12 hour endurance ride over 4000 meters of climbing. And you know, I will stop you.

There and say that if, if anyone listens to our podcast, they will have heard us talk about three picks, maybe 200 times. I really hope they know the event by now. And if there's any interstate or international people, I think by now you should probably come down and do it because we talk about it so much.

We do, but that's, but that's an example of a specific event where you need to ride your bike in mountains. And I've got athletes who to do half Ironmans and Ironmans and still train for the Three Peaks. So, you know, I always say to them that is something that will make you less successful at both. You'll be okay at it, but you'll be average. But if you concentrate on one of them, you'll be really good at it. And, and then do that properly and then set your sights on, say you pick three pegs, do that properly and then train for Ironman and do that properly. You'll get better outcomes. Whereas Cam Wirth is absolutely making that a joke. He's exceptional at both. And I just find that that's grabbed my attention. That was, you know, the stuff that he's doing as a triathlete. And then he can, you know, he doesn't ride his time trial bike that much and yet he can still time trial as one of the best elite triathlete riders in the, you know, it's not the peloton, but in triathlon, I often wonder if he actually concentrated a little bit more on his time trial bike, whether he'd be better at it. But yeah, just that thought of spreading yourself too thinly. It doesn't work yet. Here's an example, an exception that it does.

And we'd probably say he's an outlier. We probably say that he is showing that it can work, but he's definitely an outlier. And when we had Dr. Mitch Anderson on the podcast, he made a really good point that he said it is great to model the pros where we can, but you've got to remember that they're the top 0.01% of the population. And so you might want to model certain things that work, but also understand that some of the things that they do, we just can't replicate. So I'm not saying it's impossible what Camworth's doing, but he's definitely an outlier. And I would say most of the time, your rule of trying to do both will just end up in multiple average results. Correct.

Correct. And look, taking that point on board, I totally agree with you. Look, the everyday, average, you know, listener who's listening to this podcast is an age grouper who probably doesn't have that ability that, you know, Cam is exceptional. And on that point, I. He's lining up for Kona this year and I just can't wait to see how he goes because he's, he's really. His attention to detail about his training is. Is pretty good and he really lacks in his running ability. That's what he admitted and he needs to work on that. And, you know, he is an elite swimmer and rider, and he's still a fantastic runner, but doesn't spend a lot of time running because he doesn't have time to do that whilst he's training with ineos as a bike rider, as a. As a World Tour rider. So. So he's running often gets left behind. So if he gets an opportunity in the next 10 weeks to train, you know, properly and he's running, I can't wait to see how well he can go against, you know, the best of the best at, at the World Championships in Kona. It's going to be. There's going to be plenty of other good races in that race, so it'll be fantastic to see how it all pans out. I can't wait.

The last thing that's caught my attention is just the dominance of Jakob Ingebritzen, the Norwegian superstar track runner. We speak about him a lot. We spoke a few episodes ago about the fact that he lost, surprisingly, 1500 meters, and he came back with a vengeance at the world champs and absolutely dominated the 5,000 meters. He made sure he won that. And I think that loss in the 1500 was. Has sparked a bit of a fire in the belly. I don't think we'll see him losing too many more races again after that, which is. And he's still so young. He's 21 or 22, and he's just backed it up by doing the double at the European Championship. So he's European now, European champion at 1500 and 5000 and he won them both in pretty emphatic fashion. He just ran the legs off them all. And it was, it's, we just mentioned him because it's truly inspiring to see. But we just love his race tactics and the way he goes about all races. He, he's still the only one that goes to the back at the start of every race. He doesn't run the first 100 meters as a flat out sprint. He runs at his pace and then once they all slow down between 100 and 200 and 300 meters, he just keeps his pace going and brings himself to the front. Maybe around the 300, 400 mark in the heats he was even more aggressive with that strategy. And by aggressive I mean he sat at the back for three and a bit laps, which can be risky because in a 1500 people could trip over. But he was conserving energy. He knew he didn't need to work too hard and he could just dominate them in the last lap, which is what he did. And yeah, it was pretty, pretty impressive to see.

It was, wasn't it? And you're right, he learned a lot from a mistake that he made at the world title, 1500 meters. And you know that's probably the, the biggest learning curve you're going to get is when you make errors and you know it'll be as you say, it could be a long time. You know, there's plenty of great 1500 meter runners around so the, the possibility of him winning every event from this point on, you know, is pretty slim. But, but he will be putting himself in a better position every time because of the mistake he made at the event that counted the most to him. He wanted that 1500 meter world title and he didn't get it. And you know that's going to burn, you know, until next year's world title where I guarantee if he's in the same form and you know, you never know what's going to happen. He could get injured and have a horrible period and never be the same runner again. So you know, you've got to take your opportunities when they come and, and that was one that's come and gone and I think he's really learned a lot from it.

We also love his flexibility as an athlete because in the final of the 1500, it was literally a day or two ago, he went to the back in the first 150 meters and it was a championship final and they all were jogging. It was pedestrian Pace and straight away he went, I'm not going to do, deal with this, I'm the best runner here. And he went straight to the front, put the hammer down and basically time trialled the whole thing and just run the legs off them. And that to us, just showed that he's not robotic. He's, he's smart about his tactics, he's willing to change straight away. He's concentrating. He was watching what was happening the first 150 meters and they ended up running a really fast time, even though the first 150 meters was extremely slow compared to world standards. And again, we just love seeing that.

I was, I didn't know the result and I was watching it live and I was watching the replay live, sorry. And so I didn't actually know who won. And I, and I almost yelled at the telly. Whoa, here he goes. And it was literally up the front straight. He took the lead and, you know, that only ran literally 200 meters and he just poured the pressure on. And even with an easy 150, 200 meter start, they still ran 55 seconds for the first 400. And I think it was a 152 for the 800. So he just piled the pressure on, not, not, you know, running over the top, but just turning the screws and kept that pressure on the pace. And they were single file. And when you see a 1500 meter race, single file, you know, the pacemaker is actually, and Ingebritzman was doing it like a pacemaker would. You know, in any of those Diamond League events, they have a pacemaker who sets the pace. And normally it's single file strung out because they're trying to run a fast time. But here he was sitting on the front from basically Go to Woe, which is a really tough way to run when everybody's sitting on you. But he strung them out so much that there was literally, you know, a meter gap between every runner, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. And as they got closer to him, he just strung it out again. And then I thought, what's going to happen here? 400 to go. Can he hold on? And boy, he put 20 meters into them by the end. It was impressive running. And I know we talk about him a lot, but there's a lot to learn about race tactics and knowing what your strengths are. This is the reason why we continue to bring up, because every time he does something, you know, I'm sure he's learning heaps, but we're learning heaps watching. So, you know, you still have to have the fitness and ability to do that. But, you know, if someone else tried that, it would backfire. And we've talked about a lot of the Australian girls running above their level and backfiring badly because they don't have the ability or the fitness. And that's what this podcast is about, is teaching you to measure your efforts according to your current ability and level of fitness that you have right now.

It seems like one other athlete specifically is learning, because we asked the question a while ago when we really pointed out that Ingerbergson does this every race. He goes to the back. Why are other athletes letting the best runner in the world sit at the back? If I was in that race, I would just sit on him. And again, you have to have the ability to go with him when he does turn the screws. But Spanish athlete Mo Kitia, who is one of the world's best runners as well, did that in the 1500 meter final. He went straight to the back behind Ingritzon and just sat on him. And he's the first runner I've seen do it. He's the first top runner I've seen do it. And just stuck on him for the whole final and then came third. He couldn't, he couldn't get around him or Whiteman in the last 200. But what a brilliant tactic that got him, you know, bronze medal at the world champs. I thought that was really exceptional. Great. Well, let's get into the topic of balance. And there's a few factors here that we want to walk through and impact your ability to get this balance right. Because there is no black and white rule. We cannot sit here and say that 80, 20 works for athletes and everyone should be doing that, or polarized training is going to work for you. And we've even had sports scientists, exercise scientists come on here and say that, you know, the polarized thing is a general guide in itself. Because what if someone was doing, you know, 81% easy, 29% hard, or 84% easy, 16 hard? You know, do the those few percentage make a real difference? Like, does it have to be exactly 80, 20? And when you get into the nitty gritty like that, you're asking pretty poor questions. Instead, it's about your situation. And we want to go through now the factors that actually impact your specific situation. And the first one we want to discuss is how much time do you actually have available to train? Because that will determine your intensity.

That's a great starting point. And I think it's a really helped summarize you know, are we training too hard or are we training too easy? And your time that you have available will, I've said to many people over the journey who asked for help in their, you know, for me to come and coach them. My first question is, well, how much time do you have available? And the reason I'm asking that is because if you're trying to do an ironman and you tell me you have five hours of training available to you, then I'll definitely say this is probably not the event you should be trying to do. So it really does, you know, it doesn't matter how hard or easy you train. If you've only got five hours, you have to actually select an event that's appropriate to the time you have available. It's not to say you can't do it, but, you know, therefore the hard, the hot, the high intensity or not high intensity training, you know, I sort of think is there four hours or five hours is the minimum? If you've only got three, four, five hours available to train and you want to do maybe a 70.3 triathlon or an ironman, then you know, you're gonna have to train reasonably hard with intensity in those sessions because you don't have the time for the endurance training, you know, you don't have the time to do recovery. You don't have the time to do sweet spot or tempo, you know, or zone two. You just need to try to keep some fitness. And the best way to do that, from all the research I've read and from all the athletes I've coached, is you can function and probably not improve, but stay at the same level. And that's probably what an athlete who's only got five hours available to him, he can't really expect to be a better athlete than he was if he had 10 or 12 hours available to him because it's just too hard and asked. The balance isn't there from all the sessions you need. So that's an example of how time will dictate the intensity. So the less amount of time you have, that means you're going to discard some of those other added sessions that you would put in. So therefore, if you've only got three bike sessions, you know, and you're a cyclist available to you, you would probably need to do two of them pretty damn hard, you know, to make sure that you're getting the bang for your buck and you know, the other session needs to be some sort of endurance ride. But how do you know if you're Doing two one hour high intensity sessions, you've only got two hours left for endurance. So there's your endurance ride and that probably needs to have a really good warm up, a period of high intensity in that ride and a longer warm down. And therefore you will maintain some, some level of fitness that will, that will not project you as a better athlete than you've been before, but it won't, it won't make you worse. And so that's an example of, you know, someone who's got short amount of time, someone's got 20 hours to 25 hours. You know, this is where, you know, the balance has to be really good. Not saying under five hours, you don't have to have the right balance, but if you over train with 20 to 25 hours, you're going to be in the same situation as someone who trains for five hours. You're going to not improve because you're going to be that fatigued from training too much that you're not allowing yourself to recover, get rid of the fatigue and improve your performance through fitness. So the time, you know, for the general athlete that, you know, the everyday athlete that we're kind of talking to here is not the professional who has 20 to 30 hours and it's probably not the person who's got under four, it's probably that person who's got between six and 12 hours. And you know, anywhere between six and 12 hours is a really good opportunity for you to introduce as many variations into your program as possible and get the balance right. Where you have some intensity, you have some endurance, you have some zone two and you're enabling yourself to recover. So that is why the time available is a question that I ask every person when they ask to be coached.

Yeah, it's almost like the reverse. The five hour person is kind of training 80% hard and 20% easy, whereas the 20 hour person would be training 20% hard and 80% easy. I saw a really good graph that represented, you know, the total stress accumulation of a training load throughout a week. And you know, when you think about it, you're basically trying to give your body the max amount of stress that it can handle because we know that stressing the body produces that plus recovery produces that fitness effect. So you're trying to get as much stress as it can handle that so much, but finding that limit, that threshold where you're not over training, you're not over fatiguing, you can recover, you can do all the sessions quality and you can do it for a long time, you're not just doing that for two weeks, you can do it for six weeks or 12 weeks or 24 weeks. But this graph gave a really good representation of the fact that when you're thinking about the total stress of the body throughout the week, you can't just factor in hard sessions, you can't just factor in just training, you have to factor in everything else in life. And it gave this graph, it had a line of the total threshold you can hold, for example, throughout a week and then maybe your training is filling up to that line to about 60% and then work is filling up another 30% and then you've got some family stress, that's another 15% and suddenly you're at 105% of that stress threshold that you can cope with throughout the week. And then they even had in there lack of sleep, which is adding to that stress. Once you're above that threshold, that's when you're getting into dangerous zones of overtraining, over fatigue, lack of motivation, poor mood. All these things that we know are a result of being too stressed throughout the week. So, yeah, when you're thinking about your entire training week, I really like that representation of thinking about all these things in one.

What a great point you've made there, Jordan, on this exact topic that we're talking about. Because if you don't factor in other things, are you saying they don't exist? Are you saying work is not part of my absolute load through the week? You know, you could have a person who works virtually zero. It could be a 65 year old retired athlete and they've got no stresses of money, no stresses of work. The children are all grown up, you know, they've got very little to worry about except, you know, looking after themselves as compared to a 20, 28 year old who's got two young kids, you know, one and three year old, they've got a high, highly stressful job and other factors in their life are contributing to a load that's creating fatigue, like lack of sleep. And so straight away you've got two different scenarios where the load for the retired athlete is only related to their training, whereas the load to a 30 year old is totally related to many other aspects that will contribute to fatigue. And so definitely it's a really great point.

And you have to understand that throughout your training week, when we talk about the stress, we're really kind of alluding to the stress from your high intensity sessions. You know, that 15 minutes or 30 minutes of work you're doing at VO2 max or that you're doing at a really high intensity. But that's not the only stress that's happening throughout the week. Basically every session, maybe bar a zone one recovery session, but even that to a little degree, every zone two session, every zone three session, even though it's not as much, it's still creating stress and load in the body. And you have to factor that in. Our next factor which you just mentioned, which is actually age, because age does have an impact on your recovery and on your ability to train hard throughout the week. So yeah, the 65 year old retired person might be able to train more, but their body actually will inhibit them from training as much as a 30 year old. And the 30 year old might have those extra work stresses, but they can recover quicker. So there is this balance of, of age that you need to factor in with how well you can perform throughout the week.

Yeah, definitely. And from my own experience I can certainly say that I'm not recovering as quickly as I used to after the high intensity session. So I need a little bit more of easier type training. And don't forget that fatigue is not directly related to intensity. Fatigue is related to endurance as well. You have a different feeling of when you do a high intensity session, you're falling off your bike or your running session, or your swim pool session, you are barely getting to the change rooms and you're feeling overwhelmingly exhausted. And if you do a four hour zone two session, you have just as much fatigue feeling, but you haven't done any intensity. But you are very, very tired, very sleepy, very exhausted. Because it's just been a long duration session rather than a high intensity session, yet you still get fatigue from it. But it's a different fatigue, but it still contributes to the overall underlying point that we're making that how much is the balance. So don't underestimate how every session contributes to fatigue in different ways and doesn't just have to be relatable directly to the intensity of the session.

And that's what TrainingPeaks uses, the brilliant TSS, the total stress score. Because you might do a really high intensity session throughout the week, but it's kind of short. And then TrainingPeaks takes into account the duration as well what you're saying and then you'll do your endurance ride Saturday and it's got a bit of intensity thrown in there and suddenly the TSS of that session, the total stress score does actually come out higher than your midweek session. And so it's no wonder that you come home from those Sessions, maybe completely stuffed and sitting on the couch all Saturday afternoon. The next factor to think about for getting the balance right is how many sports are you actually training for? Because that really determines how hard you can actually go in sessions, especially for triathletes.

Just before I talk about triathlon, it's just always intrigued me as if we pick on our other love child, wut Van Aert or Pidcock, where they're doing cyclocross, they're doing mountain bike, they're doing gravel rides, and they're riding in the world Tour. You know, it's like four different sports. I know they're all related to pedaling, but they're completely different requirements. You know, the unbound gravel in America, the, the world championships of that was 300 kilometers, you know, so that's an event that's nine or ten hours. That's, you know, that's on the one sport, just on your bike for nine or ten hours.

Which, by the way, Ken Wurf did, did that as well.

Y that's a good point. But so doing a variety of activities, no matter the time of the activity, short or long, it is going to contribute to whether you can train harder or easier. The example we're going to talk about is the difference between one sport and multiple sports. And you could just be a cyclist, and I've just said as an example, you could have four different types of cycling. As a triathlete, you've got to be a good swimmer, you've got to be a good runner, and you've got to be a good rider or you've got to be capable. We've got plenty of people who can't swim at all, but still can compete in a triathlon. They just get themselves around. They may be shocking bike riders and great swimmers and good runners, but they get themselves around and they may be a shocking runner and good swimmer and biker and they still get themselves around. So it is possible to train for multiple sports. You know, I often think of the biathlon in the winter sports where they're having to shoot at a target whilst doing a cross country ski event. You know, to control your heart rate, to keep your target, you know, you're breathing so still that you can hit a target when you're shooting six shots or five shots. Whatever they do, you know, you have to train for two things like breathing control and your fitness as a cross country skier. So there's lots of things that come into play and, and how do you measure how hard to train in those events? That's the question we're asking. So let's just take for example, a triathlon, which is the easiest one to talk about. So you've got swimming, riding and running. Should you be doing high intensity sessions in the pool, on the bike and as a runner? And that's a fair enough question that I do get asked, and I've got my own philosophy on that. And that may be right or wrong. And why do I say that? Because I've got examples of people who do well with hardly any high intensity running, yet they perform brilliantly in triathlon. I've got other examples of people who don't perform that well unless they do have some high intensity in their running. So there's no right or wrong answer here. But generally you can't expect, if you're doing three swims, four rides and three runs, as a general rule, that they all have got high intensity. Because if you're just a swimmer, you would do probably two or three hard swim sessions with lots of endurance. If you're a cyclist, solely as a cyclist, you would do two or three hard bike sessions with the rest of it in zone two, zone three, recovery. If you're a runner, you would do one or two hard sessions and the rest of it endurance and maybe some strength work. So for a triathlete to expect to do two or three hard swim sessions, you know, two or three hard bike sessions and two or three hard running sessions, that's just asking for trouble. And logic says that you will, you know, dig a big hole for yourself and bury yourself in that and you won't improve. So our feeling is that in a triathlon program you should be using your bike sessions. If you're only doing three, two of them should be extremely hard with high intensity. And therefore that will give you a cardiovascular system, the stimulus that it's required. And there's a crossover. Of course there is a crossover. Cardiovascular doesn't distinguish between whether you're on the bike or whether you're running. It just knows that you're working hard. So you don't need to risk the opportunity where you have to run fast in training, getting on the Track and doing 6 by 400, where you've already done that on the, on the bike. And I know the muscular strength and stability of your running action is important, but you can get that from running up and down hills without actually risking running fast. So the intensity as a triathlete can't be in every single three disciplines. One of them has to have a section where it's not about the Intensity. And for me, and there would be many people who could have exceptions to this, but for me as a coach and for our trivalo business, we know that the most successful age groupers are the ones who don't do intervals until maybe two or three weeks out from a race where we ask them to do some fartlek or some speed sessions. But up until then, we're just building their strength and resilience as a runner and trying not to injure them. So that's an example of you don't need to do high intensity in a multifaceted event like triathlon. And you do get a lot of huffing and puffing in the water. If you're doing, you know, 8, 8 by 50 meter sprints, your cardiovascular system is getting stressed as well as it is on a bike. So we don't need to keep repeating that over and over again because too much of that stress we know is actually detrimental to your improvement. So be, be, be happy that, you know, great. I don't actually have to run my, my backside off as a runner, and yet I'm still confident that I'll improve as a runner.

It's just this constant balance, isn't it? And we had a great chat last week with Ryan about the balance between sports science, what the science says and what the coaching says. And we know that running faster will dramatically improve your running ability, dramatically improve your overall fitness. But just as a coach, you are so rarely willing to do that to athletes because you just know the outcome is so often injury. And there are smart ways to go it out, to go about it, to build, to build up that strength in the legs, to do gym work, to get, get yourself to a point where you can handle that. But for a lot of athletes, you know, they're not, they're not professionals that can spend that with the required amount of time to really get their body in that position straight away. Which is why towards the end of the program, a lot of them can handle it, which is what you mentioned. But at the start of a program, you're just not willing to risk that just throwing them straight into intervals that you know scientifically will get them faster. But this is where you're managing the coaching risk. And you have to factor, this is why we're going through these principles. You have to factor these things in when you're thinking about where am I putting my high intensity throughout the week and where am I staying a little bit easier.

I just had a, you know, one of the athletes that we coached this week who's just come onto the program. And, you know, when I interview the athletes, I'm really asking them to trust the process and ask as many questions about why we're doing each particular session, so they're really informed about, they're on board together with me about why we're doing these specific type of running sessions where we're staying away from intensity. And just so happened that he was meant to do a bike session. He only had an hour, and it turned out that he was training outside and he had a rear puncture and it was too big to repair. And he, by the time he would have gone home and changed tires because no matter what tube he had, it was not going to work. He had to change tires. He didn't have enough time for the session. So he just thought, right, I'll just go running and I'll run. It was meant to be a high intensity bike session, so I'll just do a high intensity run session instead. And, you know, generally you would think that would be okay. But in week one of a new program, I was horrified. I was like, oh, my goodness, I hope this doesn't come back and you're injured from this. And, you know, he, he tried to do the right thing by just getting the same principle of what the session was about, but doing it as a run. But my fear is that that could have injured him straight away. And I'm spending all this time, maybe six to eight weeks, staying away from intensity running. And yet in week one is an example of someone who thought they were doing the right thing, but it could backfire. And so far it hasn't. But that's an example of how panicky I was with someone actually, you know, taking a really good idea and putting it to what they thought would work well, but potentially it could have actually put them out for four weeks, five weeks with a torn calf or hamstring or shin splints for all we know. So, you know, these things are really, you know, it's all very well to talk about the perfect program and what you should be doing. 80% and 20% or 80%, every athlete needs to be understanding where they are at a particular time in their, in their year, week and month and day.

And that, you know, that leads us exactly into the next factor, which is the history of the athlete. Because you as a coach, if they do that in week one, maybe someone that's come from a strong background of running and they can handle that, you wouldn't be as afraid of them doing that. Week one, whereas an athlete that's coming from a bit more of a beginner background. You are, like you said, absolutely staying away from intensity for at least the first six to eight weeks, maybe more, while you get those first two principles of frequency of training and volume of training up. So the history of where you are as an athlete completely depicts how much intensity you can do throughout a week and getting this balance right.

Yeah, we often talk about it, don't we? Fitness in the bank. How much fitness have you invested into your bank? And you know the analogy of the bank account, you know that if you are a young kid who's got a, a new bank account and you're eight years old and you know, I remember growing up, we used to put a dollar a week away into a bank account and accumulates, you know, because we weren't allowed to withdraw. That was, that was the thing you, you could withdraw the money when you're 18. So, you know, the goal was to get 200 or $300 into your bank account up until you're 18. And then here you are, you've got, you know, some small amount of money to start off with, buying whatever you want. And, and you know, that is the same with training. The more that you can actually train and keep putting time into your fitness bank, it can never be taken away from you unless no one can take the money out of the bank that you've put in unless it's robbed and your money's still secure anyway. The same with fitness. As a person who is accumulating training session after training session, you are building up an enormous bank of fitness that can never be taken away from you. No matter if you get injured or sick, you've still got that bank of three weeks, three years or 30 years, depending on where you've been. And so the longer you have been doing this fitness training for, if it's two years, you've got a really solid foundation. If it's two months, you have a really small foundation where lots of more risks and injuries are going to be higher. The percentage of things going wrong if you push the intensity too much greater earlier. When your fitness bank is small, you know, a guy who's been running or doing triathlon for 10 years, who swaps coaches and comes across, he doesn't need to go back to the beginning of basics of running training. He's already got this enormous base that just needs refining. So, yes, the history of your fitness bank is absolutely key in determining, you know, how hard or how easy to train at any given moment during a season.

So I hope you can see how all these factors really play into each other. Because your history as an athlete determines how many high intensity sessions you can do. And that's tied in with, you know, your history in the sport. You might have been a really good cyclist and had a strong history in cycling, but if you're switching to dry flaw and you haven't had much history running, that's what we're talking about before, with the specific specificity of the sport required, all these factors play in and then the next one that ties into all of it, once you understand all these things is recovery and you think that recovery sessions are recovery sessions, you should be able to fit in as many as you can per week. But that's not true either because if you're not used to the frequency of training, if you haven't got a strong history, if you're training for multiple sports, sometimes doing a recovery session can still be too much if your fatigue levels are too high.

Yes, it's a very controversial topic. And look, there isn't a lot of fantastic scientific data to tell us that recovery is advantageous or not. I think it's a very individual thing. But if you're trying to build your fitness bank up, I'm a firm believer in if you can get more frequency of training into you, as long as you're controlling your fatigue levels, then I think the recovery rides are valuable. The recovery rides for some athletes really help with the blood flow and repairing the damage to the working muscles that the hard sessions have done. And just by sitting around doesn't seem to enable them to train that well on the next day or the day after. But having said that, if you've got a really good warm up routine, then you will probably feel quite good after an extended warm up. Warm up more if you've taken a day off. So I'm in both camps, I feel if you've got a good fitness bank and you've been training for a long time and you're older, so I'm putting a whole lot of things in there, you could take days off, more days off than you would have if you're very new to the sport and you need to build your fitness up. But at the same time, if you're new to the sport and need to build your fitness up, you need more recovery because your body can't absorb the load. No one best fit here. So you know, you've got to understand yourself, how you're feeling at any given point during any phase of the program that you're in. If you're in the base phase and you've just started a new program, then you need to give yourself some more recovery. And that doesn't mean training recovery. It means resting recovery. So, you know, how much do we do that is very individual.

And as long as you understand the pros and cons and you understand the benefits and the downsides to and the reasoning behind it, you can make an informed decision. You can make a decision about, I do want to do recovery today, or I do just want to have a rest day. And that's really, really important. And that helps you be a knowledgeable athlete where you can get the most out of yourself throughout the week. And that's the whole point of this episode. And that that leads us between Zone one recovery rides into Zone two and how much Zone two do you do? Because that does give a fitness benefit. There is a real purpose to that kind of training. But obviously with, with that kind of benefit comes the fatigue and comes the added load throughout the week. And we talk all the time about where do you sit in zone two. Do you sit at the very bottom at 60% or do you sit right at, let's say that your bottom of your zone 2 is 60% or the top of your zone 2 is 75%? Where do you sit in that? And once again, it's an answer that doesn't have a black and white solution, but you can still gain the knowledge to make informed decisions for yourself.

Yeah, there's so many aspects that we could talk about when we talk about Zone 2, and we've talked about Zone 2 a lot in podcasts, but not in relation to, I think, the balance of hard and easy training. And I always think Zone two changes depending on where you are in your season. Zone two, early on in the season, I would be reasonably not at my best fitness level because I should have had an easier period post my A race. And so my zone 2 post an A race might be looking like 60% for 2 hours yet when I'm getting really into the build and the race ready phase, my zone two could be four hours at 75% and my body can handle that load and I don't feel fatigued two days later. But that's what we're talking about. It depends where you are in the season, what you've just done, and what you're trying to do with your fatigue loads and how you're trying to manage them. So, you know, that is a really key thing to consider when you're wondering, you know, where should I be in Zone two? Because it's got a bit of a range to it, and that's why heart rate is really good. And, you know, I'm an avid believer in using as many different pieces of data that's available to you, not just one thing. And we often talk about power being the key thing, but in Zone two, power is what I understand at the start of my ride that is going to be the range I want to sit between. For example, I might say for myself, my range is 200 to 225 watts in zone two, you know, or 195 to 225 watts. So 60 to 75%. Wherever. Somewhere. Somewhere in that range. But if I'm riding in the Sunshine coast, where it's 25 degrees, I could be riding too hard because I'm overheating. And how do I know that? Well, my heart rate's a really good measure to determine how hard this ride is. And I've done this experiment on myself many times. If I do a zone 2 ride in the cooler temperatures of Melbourne at 200 watts, my heart rate might be 130 to 135. At 225 watts, it might be 135 to 140. But if I do that same session in the Sunshine Coast, 200 watts, my heart rate is at 135 to 40 and 145 if I'm doing 220 watts. So the same power is giving me a different outcome and my heart rate is enabling me to understand that. So the minute I go to the Sunshine Coast, I make sure my heart rate meter is. I'm looking at it for that two or three hours that I'm doing zone two. And I'm meant to be doing 225 watts because I'm extremely motivated to be at 75%. But I look down in the first hour, yep, I'm under, I'm under 135 heart rate. But then I get to an hour and a half to two hours. That 220 watts is now 136, 137. So I have to drop the power back. And that is a really good way of understanding when to ride hard and when to. And I'm not saying Zone two is hard. It is hard because it's endurance long. It's a different fatigue to intensity hard. But it's that constant pressure which the heart rate creep will show you that, you know, you, you're training too hard here. Ease up. And, you know, added to that if you have someone who's riding with you who's just half a wheel ahead of you the whole time, you know, I've been in that position many times where I've just gone, I'll see you later and push them ahead of me and said, I'm not riding at that pace anymore. I'm going to go back to where I should be after two or three minutes. And that, that takes discipline, that, that takes, you know, a lot of no ego. Like, because we're just competitive. We just want, if someone's half a wheel in front of us or 10 meters up the road, we can't help ourselves. We, we just want to go and join them. But, you know, it's not, it's detrimental to the outcome of the session. And, and you know, the best thing to say is, hey, listen, tomorrow we're doing flat out, three minute vo, two sets, come and join me then and let's half wheel each other then. And you know, make a point of this is the day where I'm doing this session and the other day I'm doing that session. And these are the things that, you know, you've got to understand in determining how hard and how easy to train is who you're training with. And that brings me to where are you? What course have you selected? You know, zone two. If you select a course that's got 4,000 meters of climbing, unless you've got a gear ratio that's like a mountain bike, you're going to be riding too hard, your heart rate will be high because the hill at 12 or 14% is impossible to ride at 200 watts. You wouldn't get up the hill unless you've got a granny gear that's enabling you to go sideways. So you can't pick a course for zone two. That's going to stop you from actually achieving the goal of keeping in the right area and not creating fatigue from making the day too hard.

It's funny because you really got to pay attention to what's happening on the day and all those factors you spoke about are just so accurate. And one other thing for me that I find all the time is that I'll go to do a Zone two run after a really hard training day before. And my zone, my zone 2 running ranges might be between 4 and 4:30 pace. And I am running 5:15 pace for the first or 5:30 pace for the first 5 minutes, 10 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes because I'm so fatigued from the day before. And that would normally be considered zone one. You know, and supposed to be a zone two effort, but I know that I'll come good. It just might take a little bit for the first session. So I'm not saying that the whole session I have to drop the pace, but just at the start when I feel like absolute crap, being willing to drop that pace and sit and hold there because your heart rate's high straight away. But once you get into the session, once you've warmed up a little bit, suddenly getting back to that zone two pace feels really good and feels really comfortable. And your heart rate is the same as it was at the start of the session, even though you're running 45 seconds faster per km. And that's a factor that you have to consider.

Yeah. Your feelings, aren't they? They're so important about, you know, doesn't matter what's scheduled on the day. If after an extended warm up, you're meant to be doing something that's hard and you can't feel that feeling, then you need to not do that session hard. You need to drop it back a percentage or scrap the intensity and just do recovery. And you know, you're not going to know that till you get after the warmup. And the confusing part is, am I being lazy? You're asking yourself this question, am I being lazy or is this because I'm exhausted? And if it's because you're being lazy, then you pursue the warm up a bit longer. But if you're exhausted, then you put the shoes or the bike, you hang it up and rest. Because these are the things. Even though you're trying to work to a model and a program, there's always exceptions and you need to be flexible. We say a lot that consistency is king, not at the detriment of fatigue. It's great to have consistency, but if it causes too much fatigue, then it's not great to have consistency. You're better off having rest days. So that balance comes back again to, how are you feeling? Like you just said, you've got to listen to how you're feeling. And if you're being coached by someone and they're asking you what happened today? Give them the real answer. I'm not lazy. I got out there. No way could I push the numbers. So I've just done this session instead. The coach will be on board with that, you know, and he will absolutely talk about what we should do the next day and the next day so that you don't create more fatigue. Because if that athlete is feeling that a good coach will then Restructure the next two days and it could be just that day that you felt bad and the next day you're good to go again. But that's the important relationship you need to have with your coach is, you know, keeping them informed as to how you're coping with, with each, each session as it, as it goes through the days and weeks.

And to finish off, we want to talk about the opposite end of the spectrum and that is the actual high intensity sessions themselves. And you know, when we talk about anything above, above that 100% intensity, and that, that is you can be riding at 100% or 105% intensity in quotation marks for a session right up to VO2 max level, which can be, you know, 115, 120% plus. Um, and the question still remains, getting really specific, how hard do you actually go in hard sessions? So we speak, we've spoken generally about easy versus hard, but when it's time to train hard, how hard do you push yourself? Is there, is there a line that's too hard? And I think the answer is there absolutely is, yes.

You know, anything, anything where you're riding from threshold up to VO2, up to anaerobic, you know, zone 4, 5, 6, 7 and onwards, you know, they're all variations of extremely hard. And obviously riding threshold is, you know, is a longer effort. It could be four to eight to 12 to 15, even to 20 minute efforts at threshold. VO2 is probably four minutes, you know, two minutes to four minutes and anaerobic is more zero to one minute. So, so they're all going to give you the stimulus that you want. They are all totally relatable to whatever the event you're in. If you're doing an Ironman compared to a 800 meter, then you might not do as much anaerobic stuff in an Ironman training program, you might do more threshold, but you're still doing something above 100%. That's the key thing. Understand that first and foremost, this zone that we're talking in, whether it's zone 4, 5, 6 or 7, it's still going to give you the stimulus you need. So for you to think that I've got to go all out and this is no tomorrow for this training session, I think that's a bit of a mistake. A, we want to train to race and we just don't want to be good trainers. We want to, on race day, be at our best when it counts. It's great training. Well, we get great endorphin releases from it very Satisfied our program's going well. If it happens on race day, that all the hard training you've done and you've probably trained too hard in bits, and you still perform well on race day, well and good. But invariably you will find the people who train hard will race badly. And I'm talking about extreme here, not people who train hard properly, people who train hard to the extreme. So if I'm giving you a threshold session where you're trying to do five minute efforts, five of them, and your range is 100 to 105% or 102 to 107% of your FTP, if you continually do that at 110% or 108% because you're feeling good, one or two things is wrong here, your threshold set wrong because you shouldn't be able to do that, or you're just pushing yourself way too far and you would not do well the next day or the day after, or in three or four days time. So stick with your ranges because that's what the ranges are for, to prevent you from over fatiguing yourself so that when it comes to race day you can actually perform at your best because you're so fresh, so tapered and you have very little fatigue. There's example a discussion I had with a few people who are going over to do the Haute Route and I'm sure they won't mind me mentioning this. And one of the things we talked about was we got to the end of the campaign. The Haute Routes in it starts this weekend and by the time this podcast comes out, it already started. But the week, the two weeks leading into the Haute Route, it's stage racing for amateurs. It's, it's an incredible event. It's fantastic. It's stage racing with GC points and you know, there's thousands of people enter it and each day is between 120 and 160km over 5, 7 days. It's got time sections.

It's.

You feel like you are in a, in a Grand Tour, but for amateurs. So it's an age group thing and, and so it's a big thing to go overseas from Australia to go and do the, the Pyrenees or the Haute Route Alps. There's many Haute Route races available to everybody, as most people would know. And the point I'm trying to get to is if you're going to get to that event and not taper properly and get into the event tired, then you're not giving yourself the best opportunity after all the training you've done. So well, and I actually had to, I had to ring from Australia to France to say, what the hell are you doing? What was yesterday's ride about? It was meant to be a 1 1/2 hour easy ride, and it ended up being a 5 hour, 140k ride 7 days out from the event. And, you know, I'm not saying this is a shocking outcome, but it's just not helpful in terms of, of understanding what you're trying to do in your training. You've done all the right things, you've trained very well. You've got to this point now we need to shed the fatigue and just sharpen up with some short, sharp bursts. So come race day, you can actually execute as brilliantly as you want to. And so this is an example of how hard we should be training at different points in our program. And the example I've given you is detrimental to what this person's wanting to do in the next two weeks in a stage race, but it could prove that it's not that detrimental. Well, time will tell. So I can definitely be convinced that for that person it might be okay, but I'll only be able to make that decision post race. So, you know, we don't know. Everybody's different. And so that's another point that I kind of like to finish on with the high intensity sessions. You know, we do know that everybody will react differently and it has to be specific to you and how your performance is. And you can only gauge that by doing multiple events over years where, you know, well, this worked better for me than this tapering recovery type training lead into my big event. So to some, you know, that's sort of what I'm trying to summarize the whole podcast. What we're trying to, you know, work out is the training balance between hard and easy training and when to do it. And so the final sort of measurement is how well did you race with the training that you had leading into it. And it's not just about the 15 or 25 weeks you did. The taper week and the testing week prior are a part of that. And there's very little volume in those tapering testing weeks because you're trying to get rid of fatigue. So, so the model of periodization or polar is great, but it doesn't fit everybody. And that's the point of this podcast. You are able to have bits of everything that you have experimented with over the journey of your short or long career, that you are evolving as you go. And the balance, there is no right or Wrong answer. And that's the key message I'm trying to get across here. We do need extreme levels of training to get to a point where we're going to race well. And I don't mean extreme as in over the top where you can't actually train consistently. I mean, there has to be hard periods, there has to be easy periods, there has to be recovery periods. And if you get that balance right and you perform consistently well in your races, then you've found the key to the door. And that is the hard part for everybody is really experimenting and learning from campaigns that you've tried to do to this event and then recovered and tried the next campaign. Try things slightly different and experiment over the journey and you will get that balance. You will get that balance right. But it takes a lot of understanding of how you're feeling on any given day and whether the program is appropriate for you. And therefore, you can't just have one program that fits all. And you can't have one taper that fits all. You can't have one intensity type session that fits all. You can't go over the top on things. You can't underdo it. There's never one thing that you could say that fits everybody. So I think that would be the message that we're trying to get across today. And hopefully that's what the listeners have heard.

That's a great way to finish. I think the only thing I'd add on that is what you're talking about here. You know, you're constantly experimenting, trying to get this balance right and I think without giving advice, that's going to be unsafe. I think that it is worth pushing the limits and pushing the line to find where's too much find where's where that fatigue level where you can't cross. I think I've definitely been guilty of making the mistake of potentially training too easily for a period because I was coming from a conservative approach and I didn't actually try and push that line. And I probably wasn't getting the most out of myself. Whereas then I went through a period where I was probably over training. But it was good to see the difference in volume and intensities and go, okay, well, I was too easy before. Now I find where I can't handle and now I know I can just back it off a little bit and that seems to work for me. And so again, we don't want to. We don't want people to cross that line and get injured or do anything unsafe. But it is worth trying to find those limits. So you know what you can handle.

Yeah. And, you know, one of the key concepts of improvement is overload. And if you just train the same day in, day out, week in week out, month in month out, year in, year out, you will stay the same. So you need some aspect of overload. But what we're trying to get across here is the balance that you have. And you sure, you need every session that we've talked about. You need to think about courses and terrain and training partners, but you need overload. And without that, you will stay the same. And that would be a key takeaway as well. You still need to stress your body to a point where you are improving.

That's a great way to finish. Hope you've enjoyed this packed episode. And as always, we'll see you on the next one.

Sam.