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Over the years I have been involved with many
endurance sports: ice and inline speedskating, mountain and road cycling,
rowing, cross-country skiing, running, and triathlon. The one topic that
continually emerges through discussions with the athletes of all these
sports is training. Throw a handful of weekend-warrior type athletes
together and sooner or later they'll be talking about interval workouts,
heart rate training, sprint drills, VO2max, lactic acid, overtraining and
a whole slew of related topics. As a sport scientist, what continues to
interest me is the wide range of training methods and variables being used
by athletes today.
It seems many athletes struggle to find a
balance between three key variables. For starters, there is the almost
obsessive-compulsive need to train daily that many athletes exhibit. More
is not always better, and from my experience many athletes employ
needlessly high volume. The second variable relates to how closely an
athletes training regimen matches the specific physiologic demands of the
sport/event in question. Many athletes seem to be way off the mark in
terms of prioritizing the training for each energy system and physical
attribute. And lastly, many athletes seem to be recklessly unaware of the
importance of recognizing and integrating rest and recovery as an
necessary component of the overall training equation.
Based on
these observations, the objective of this article is to provide a handful
of generalized, sport-specific recommendations for helping you to improve
the degree of specialized adaptation that occurs as a direct result of
your training. Keep in mind that not all of these will directly apply to
you. There are many skaters out there who are doing things right. Even so,
it's valuable to occasionally reassess what you're doing, and hopefully
this article will help keep you on track.
Step 1: Look Carefully at Training
Volume
Stop for a minute and
consider the demands of the sport you are training for. Most inline races
are 10km, which may take anywhere from 17 minutes or less (for
advance/elite skaters) to close to 30 minutes for novice competitors.
Given this fact, why is it that many skaters go out and skate 20-30 km's
four or five days a week? Unless you're training specifically for longer
races, it is my opinion that this is not necessary. You may be developing
great muscular endurance, and the mileage is undoubtedly helpful for
burning calories and maintaining aerobic fitness. But if your objective is
to skate 10 km fast, then this is not an effective way to invest your
training hours.
So how much is enough and at what point should you
begin to cut back? First off, you've got to keep in mind that mileage is
heavily dependant on the time of year and the phase of training you are in
(off-season, preparatory, in-season). Logging miles is a focus in the
early season, but once you've laid the necessary foundation you have to
switch from a distance approach to a "speed philosophy". It is impossible
for me to prescribe definitive mileage guidelines, but suffice to say that
once you have built a base you can easily get by on 30-50km a week. If
you're doing more than that, just be sure its because you love skating,
and not because you think that logging so many miles is going to improve
your 10k time.
Step 2: Emphasize fartlek training
In this issue's Ask the Expert column there is a
question/response that deals with Fartlek training. A fartlek workout is a
method of training that is characterized by random intervals of varying
intensity and no fixed duration or rest periods. Because if its highly
variable nature, a fartlek workout targets virtually every important
component of physical preparation for the sport of inline racing. The
continuous nature of the session provides the same benefits as a
steady-state endurance skate, while the intervals of varying speed and
duration develop lactic acid tolerance and sustainable power. Varying the
rest periods is beneficial for improving your ability to recover from an
intense burst of speed, and then prepare for the subsequent one. In other
words, a fartlek is like a race, and there is no better way to train for
racing than to race often.
Just like any other workout,
fartlek sessions can be low, medium, or high intensity. Furthermore, the
intensity rating may reflect the average speed of the workout, or the
intensity of the surges/sprints that take place within the fartlek. For
example, consider a 30 minute fartlek session which is low in overall
intensity/speed. However, it may be comprised of a series of short but
highly intense sprints. Conversely, consider a fartlek of similar duration
(30 minutes) where the average pace is markedly higher but the surges are
only slightly faster than the average speed. The subjective rating of two
the workouts would be quite different, and specific to each individual.
The important point here is that like any workout, a fartlek session must
be executed in accordance with how it fits in relation to the other
workouts within a typical week of training.
My recommendation is
that you replace virtually every steady state session (even the "let's go
for a nice easy skate" outings) with a fartlek workout (at least during
the competitive season). The session doesn't have to be highly intense.
Even an easy fartlek session is going to give you the most well balanced
stimulus for improving physical adaptations. Just be sure you don't' get
too carried away with intensity day after day. The key objective is to
train your body so that it becomes high accustomed to numerous (and often
rapid) changes in pace…. both subtle and extreme.
Step 3: Work on Acceleration and Recovery
ability
Acceleration and
recovery ability go hand in hand. During a race, the paces often changes
abruptly, and skaters are forced to quickly increase speed. Usually (but
not always) the pace will slow at some point, and then pick up again. Many
skaters have trouble with this inevitable dynamic of pack sports. I have
heard some skaters contest "I'm just not good at all the accelerating",
but the reason they're not good at is because they don't train with this
aspect of racing in mind.
I once knew a skater who, even on
four wheels, could hammer away at a very high speed for a long time. In a
constant speed situation, this guy was strong! He finally upgraded to
5-wheel skates and stepped up his training. By the first big race of the
season, this guy had logged more miles and hours of training than some of
the pro's. Five kilometers into the race and he was mixing it up in the
pack. But a short while later the first major surge in speed occurred and
before he knew it he was shot out the pack. After a hard chase he managed
to catch up, but as he once found the comfort of a slipstream, another
acceleration occurred and it was game over. What went wrong? This skater
spent all his time building endurance and steady-state speed, but naively
neglected to train his ability to accelerate, recover, and then accelerate
again. What many skaters don't realize is that no amount of steady-state
skating can prepare them for the varied demands of an inline race. You've
go to develop acceleration and recovery ability as a complete and separate
entity.
The best way to train these attributes is to simulate a
situation that is similar to what happened above, and then practice it
once or twice a week. Fartlek training is a great way to improve in this
area, but interval training can be deliberately modified to best exploit
and train and energy system and lactic acid dynamics involved. It is
beyond the scope of this article to discuss the intricacies of interval
training to such a degree, but there is a sample workout included in
question #3 of this issue's Ask the Expert column. This will give you an
good generalized picture of how to train this important element of
competitive skating.
Step 4: Never Underestimate the Importance of Rest and
Recovery
I think it's safe to
say that all athletes know that rest and recovery is important. But my
feeling is that too few athletes acknowledge just how critical it is to
give your body time to recuperate from hard training sessions. Many
athletes are chronically overtrained because their idea of incorporating
rest and recovery into their training schedule is taking one day off a
week. For some skaters, this is enough, but during the competitive season
when training intensities are at their highest this simply isn't
sufficient.
To oversimplify things a little is it useful to
consider two distinct types of rest/recovery. One type, which we will call
short-term recovery, is the day or two of rest that is taken following a
string of hard workouts or a strenuous race. This down time is needed to
allow protein synthesis to rebuild damaged muscle tissue, and for glycogen
(fuel) stores to be replenished. Most serious athletes are pretty good
about ensuring that this occurs every now and again, but my feeling is
that many athletes could benefit from more regular "days off".
The
other type of recovery that many athletes are reluctant to take is that
which is more long term. By this I mean three of four days of continuous,
uninterrupted rest. The only time athletes seem to take this much rest is
when foul weather stretches for days, or when injury strikes. But the
truth is that detraining does not even begin to occur for at least 3 days.
Often times, even marginal detraining is a small price to pay for the
remarkable improvement which can result from a period of slightly
prolonged rest and inactivity. If you ever get to the point where you feel
sluggish in training for more than 4 or 5 days in a row, consider taking a
slightly prolonged break (3-4 days). Aside from the physical benefits,
taking a break is often good for rejuvenating the mind and motivation for
training.
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