The Ten Commandments of Endurance Sports Training For Athlete's

Endurance training and the ideas behind it can get very complex. Does it confuse you?

You're Not Alone!

The below 10 commandments of endurance training willl help with the structuring your cycling workouts, running training and triathlon workouts in future.

As an endurance athlete it is important to pay attention to how your body is feeling while exercising and at rest. Learn to pick up on subtle differences in how you are feeling and you can then adjust your training accordingly.

Everyone has limits to endurance, strength, speed and muscular power. You don't need to reach to limits of your endurance every workout that you perform. It is acceptable to finish your cycling training session or run feeling like you could have done more.

Make your endurance training sessions a regular part of your life and the consistancy will lead to an improved endurance sports performance. The body thrives on routine so develop a training plan which stays consistent from week to week with minor changes in line with your periodization of training to promote endurance performance development in your cycling, running and triathlon performance

If you miss workouts your performance will suffer. It is acceptable to miss the occassional workout however try not to force yourself to do more than you have planned as this will put your body and immune system under excess stress and lead to burn out thus requiring an additional period of recovery and loss of fitness.

Your body recovers and adapts to the stresses of training while you rest. Without recovery you will not be able to improve your endurance performance and progress your endurance training sessions.

Make rest a scheduled part of your diary.

After long workouts a nap can often be utilised to add to your daily dose of rest and recovery time.

Everyone needs to have plans. Whether in their sports training regime, home life or working environment.

Your training year should always work on the principle of periodisation. Your training should be addressed at the start of the training year to identify key sporting events and competitions to aim to peak for.

When you feel you are strong at a particular performance aspect you tend to spend alot of time working on that aspect because you want to keep it a strength. However every rider has weaknesses that they can address to improve their performance.

If you're not sure what your weaknesses are- ask team mates and training partners as they will usually have an idea. A cyclist can be a great sprinter- however if they struggle to get over the mountain and gets dropped from the lead group before the sprint finish they will be nowhere to be seen. If they had worked on their climbing it may have been possible for them to be with the leaders for the sprint.

Have a SMART set of goals in place

SPECIFIC,

MEASUREABLE,

ATTAINABLE,

REALISTIC and

With a TIMESCALE

There is often a fear in many athletes that they haven't trained enough or their endurance training program has not been hard enough. Therefore athletes often panic and try to overload their training during the weeks before a key competition. This does not allow the body sufficient recover time and can lead to immunosuppression and a long term risk of overtraining.

Taper your training before key events to ensure you are fully recovered.

Group rides and runs are great to avoid the monotony that can bore you to distraction during individual training sessions and makes training time go much faster. Training in a group can also improve a cyclists' handling skills and mental alertness.

However there are a number of negative aspects to be aware of;

• Group rides are often unfocused towards your personal training goals
• A group run/ bicycle ride might be too fast or long distance compared to your own personal periodized training program.
• Group training sessions have a tendency to turn into races
• Winter stars often have year round fitness and push up the pace of winter training sessions when you might be better served by more steady pace training.

Melbourne Commonwealth Games Triathlon Photo Jimmyharris on Flickr

Lausanne Marathon Derbon on Flickr