The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Episode 191: 5 Keys to Long Term Success in Endurance Training, with Alex Hutchinson, PhD

April 10, 2024 • CTS • Season 4 • Episode 191

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In Episode 191 of The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast, Outside Magazine's Sweatscience columnist Alex Hutchinson joins Host Adam Pulford to discuss the keys to long term success as an athlete. In particular, they draw on skills acquisition research from Mark Williams of the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition in Florida and Nicola Hodges of the University of British Columbia. 

5 Keys to Long Term Success in Endurance Training:

  1. Balancing Performance with Learning
  2. Choosing Quality over Quantity
  3. Fostering Autonomy
  4. Being Specific
  5. Respect Individual Differences

Resources:

Guest: Alex Hutchinson, PhD
Alex Hutchinson is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist and Outside’s Sweat Science columnist, covering the latest research on endurance and outdoor sports. His most recent book is the New York Times bestseller Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. Before becoming a journalist, he completed a PhD in physics at the University of Cambridge and worked as a researcher in the National Security Agency’s Quantum Computing group. He also competed for the Canadian national team in track, cross-country, road, and mountain running. He lives (and runs) in Toronto.

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Host
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more than 14 years and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Speaker 1:

From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now on to our show Starting in 3, 2, 1. Welcome back, time Crunch fans.

Speaker 1:

I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford. I'm here alongside renowned author and national award-winning journalist, alex Hutchinson. Alex, welcome back to the show. Thanks, adam. So training for long-term success. It's applicable for junior athletes as well as master athletes. I think once you put the fundamentals in place, it can really lead to a rich experience of learning, increased fitness, increased performance and maximizing the fun factor of the sport which is basically, I think, why we're all here, Right?

Speaker 2:

So would you agree with that, Alex? Yeah, look I. I'm 48 years old and if, if I wasn't interested in long-term, the long-term development of my abilities, I wouldn't be interested in continuing the sport I'm still. I'm still hoping to be building over a long period of time, and that's when I think about my training. It's not just about how's it going to make me feel today, but what's it going to do for me in six months or in six years, or whatever the case may be.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, and I think, like all of our listeners here, all of you, the reason why you're here is for that exact same concept. You're not. You're not here just to crush the 10 K that you have in three months. If you are, that's great. My, my overarching goal would be for you to catch the bug and go for a PR in three years from now as well, and that's really what I want to talk about today. Is that long-term successful training plan.

Speaker 1:

Anyone's eyes here, including Alex, because I'm simply borrowing some of his organized way of thinking and frameworks on long-term training success from an article that he wrote in the sweat science column from outside magazine. So if you don't, if you haven't read anything from Alex including this book that's behind me, uh, called endure, which is one of my all-time favorite books, highly suggested but definitely for the shorter reads go over to Outside Magazine, check out Sweat Science or follow him on Instagram at Sweat Science, and you'll catch just a ton of information about the latest research. In all things, endurance, sporting comes from a running background. So, with that said, alex, are you cool with us just basically borrowing, slash, stealing from these five fundamentals, as I call them, for long-term training success?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, with the caveat that I will say that I borrowed them from an article I read in the Journal of Sports Sciences. A couple of researchers, mark Williams and Nicola Hodges they are motor science, uh researchers, uh, or motor learning researchers, and they, they wrote, you know, they've been writing about the application of motor motor learning research to sport for you know a couple decades now, and just last fall they, they put together a big review paper that tried to summarize. It's like we've got the motor learning community, we've got the coaching community, sports coaching community what are the some things that that we don't understand about each other? And they came up with five principles where that that they thought, uh, where they thought motor learning research had something really important to say that coaches should, should, be aware of, and so, um, so yeah, so let's, let's, let's use their ideas, but I won't pretend that I, I came up with them either.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. And for all those motor learning nerds out there that are really getting excited this, this podcast, is for you, Uh and for those who are learning, this is not like how to change your oil right.

Speaker 2:

This is. This is how we, how we learn skills, how we, how we acquire physical skills in the world.

Speaker 1:

Oh wait, really yeah.

Speaker 2:

So sorry about your car, but we'll deal with that later.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Okay. So the five principles, or the five fundamentals. I'll just name them real quick and then we'll swing back to number one, alex, and I'll let you take it from there. So number one is balance performance with learning. Second one is choose quality over quantity. Number three is foster autonomy. Number four be specific. And then number five is respect the individual differences. And when I read all those, when I read the article, I was like this is perfect. This is exactly like how we coach, or how we should coach and how we should practice as an athlete. So, alex, to you, what do you mean by balanced performance with learning, from the motor learning perspectives as well as the actual application?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, the simplest way to think about it, I think, is are you trying to win the workout or are you trying to win the race? And so if I show up at a workout, am I doing everything I can to maximize my performance in that workout, or am I seeing it as a tool to some future outcome? And so let's say we would all agree that it wouldn't make a lot of sense if I tapered for every workout, if I was like, okay, I need to make sure I'm fully rested, so I'm going to take three days off before this workout so I can really nail the workout. And we'd say, well, okay, you're going to, your workout is going to be a little better, but but you're losing a bunch of training by not by, by tapering. And so you, you should be focused on long-term performance, go into this workout a little bit tired.

Speaker 2:

So that's that's one simple uh. That that's the general philosophy, that that the workout is a means to an end, not an end in itself. And then from there you can say, well, what are the ways, what are the things we do that might shift our focus? You know, either towards performance in the workout or performance in the race exactly what to do, giving them super specific guidance on how to execute this workout. They might have a better workout, but they've lost an opportunity. You know, what the motor learning literature shows is that you're not setting them up as well to get lasting, to learn the lessons you're trying to teach them, because you're basically holding their hand through the workout You're leading them through, instead of having them learn how to get through whatever task it is you've set themselves.

Speaker 1:

I like that because, like in the article, you talked about the detailed instruction versus open instruction and spoiler alert. You ended the article with what I thought to be a pretty good open instruction, um sort of uh application from your coach, where he you were doing whatever workout and he told you to take the wristwatch off and throw it in the grass.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, so this is I. I I trained for a while with Matt Centrowood senior, a former American record holder, who's a um, a very old school and sort of intuitive based coach, and I, as a science guy, we, we, we didn't always like see eye to eye on how, how training should work, and it took me a long time to sort of understand the, the, the merits of some of his approaches, and one of them was, you know, we would I'd be doing these workouts with, with a pretty high power group where we'd be taking turns on the lead. And you know, when he told you to run, if this mile isn't going to be in 440, that meant you should be doing each lap in 70, 70, 70 and each half lap, 35, 35, like he wanted you to be able to dial in the pace, because that's an important thing as a as a racer. So I would get super stressed about it and I would. I got to the point where I was checking my splits, like I 100 if I was leading a rep, I'd check 100 meters in, I'd check 200 meters and I'd check 300 meters and I'd check 400.

Speaker 2:

I was like a basket case and eventually he like in the middle of a workout. He's like you know, hey, he could barely remember my name. So, hey, canadian, take off your watch, throw it in the the infield. And I was in the middle of like a very hard mile rep and I had to take off my watch and throw it into the infield and my watch was like my best friend at the time. I you know, having my watch off was terrible, um, but it really like I look back and I'm like that's the best thing he ever did for me, and he did that a few times. I he, you know he forced me to take off my watch in the middle of workouts because I was too dependent on it and that watch was making me nail the splits, or helping me nail the splits in the workout, but it wasn't helping me learn the skills that would enable me to nail my pace in a race.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a perfect example. Yeah, okay. So if we choose quality over quantity, uh, you know, my brain is like, okay, in a world obsessed with the zone two, volume right now, and that's the end, all be all. Uh, what do you have to say to those who, um, say no, no, it's, it's quantity. I need all the volume in the world, alex.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I mean, look, we had a discussion with this in our last conversation about quality, and so the key point to make here is that maybe zone two is for some person, in some context, is a higher quality workout. Maybe a workout that keeps it easy is the highest quality workout, because quality is not synonymous with intensity. But the point is are you doing the right workout? Are you? Are you doing the workout that is most appropriate for your long-term goals at this, at this point? And, uh, personally, I think some, some of those workouts are going to be very hard workouts, not just the easy workouts, but the the. The point is not to conflate am I going hard enough? Or, you know, I want a higher quality workout, so I'm going to push harder. Sometimes high quality means pushing hard, sometimes it means holding yourself in a specific zone, if you will.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and for any listener who is jumping in and and um, just catching this podcast before our previous one, we talk all about training quality and what. What is high quality training versus, uh, not high quality training? What's a good training plan? What's what's not definitely like? Just go back, listen to that, cause that's going to bring a lot of context. But another thing that pops up in my head when I'm saying, you know, choose quality and be kind of intentional, is one of my favorite authors, andreas Erikson, who coined the term deliberate practice. Alex, can you talk about what deliberate practice is and how that filters into a training program and high quality training?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I mean, in some ways, the best way to define deliberate practice is by what it's not, which is not. It is not repetition, it is not just just sort of accumulating reps. The hallmark of deliberate practice is that you have some feedback mechanism to know how well you're you're doing, to evaluate like, did I do it right and, if not, can I do it better. It's usually challenging, so, uh, you're not just lying on the sofa hitting a ping pong paddle or whatever. You're doing something that requires your attention, even even if it's maybe not. It doesn't necessarily have to be like physically demanding, but it has to be cognitively like you're trying to do something there, there is a right way of a better way of doing it, and you're evaluating how close you come to that right way. Now, applying deliberate practice to to endurance sports is a controversial topic Like. There have been studies over the years that I was. Actually I was a subject in a study probably 20 years ago where a researcher, a guy named Brad Young, who's at the University of Ottawa. He collected training diaries from a whole bunch of regional, local, regional and national and international level runners in Canada like 10 years of training diaries like and, and coded them in terms of, like, deliberate practice, to try to understand what. What is, what is deliberate practice for an endurance athlete and does it correlate with performance level? And the results were a little mixed, like it's.

Speaker 2:

It's it's hard to know what qualifies as deliberate practice and the way for an endurance athlete. But again, I, you go back to this idea of like are you trying to do something that's more than just real repetition? So going for an endurance athlete? But again, I, you go back to this idea of like, are you trying to do something that's more than just real repetition? So going for an easy run? It's, it's hard to qualify that as deliberate practice, but there are elements of it because are are you, are you doing what?

Speaker 2:

Going back to this idea of trading quality are you doing what you set out to do? Are you, you're, you're keeping track of your pace and you're making sure that you're not going too fast. That in itself is a kind of deliberate practice-esque thing. But then you know, when you get into like, working on form, working on technique, working on tactics, all these things start to bring in more of a cognitive element. So sorry, I'm rambling a little here, but I think that the key point is that it's not just mindless training, it's not just accumulating volume for the sake of having a big number in your training log. It's it's having a, it's training with intent and then evaluating how well you're you're living up to that intent.

Speaker 1:

Prime example in the world of cycling is the group ride, right? Everybody's like the group ride. Did you win the group ride, right? Thinking that that's a thing, it's a thing, but it's nothing and but. But I think the way I use it as a training, as a training tool, is you boil it down to the very specifics. A lot of people just think group ride Okay, the goal is hard. Nah, not necessarily. Let's talk. Let's talk about what you need to work on, what you need to improve.

Speaker 1:

For some athletes that are greener, it's drafting right. So I'll just say find the draft, get on the wheel, stay out of the wind the whole time, don't even get on the front, just stay in the draft. And so you work on, and that's deliberate practice. So I'm actually going to conserve the intensity. Might be hard, but it's whatever you need to do to get on the wheel, right? That's like one example, yeah, one example.

Speaker 1:

And then, from the tactic standpoint, you know, once you say you're a seasoned rider, you deploy some like race winning tactics, then all of a sudden you can, you know, have some fun, go for the sprint or a lead out or an attack and break away and it gets into. I mean, it's a very complicated mixture of training intensities, uh, deployment of tactics, how and when to use it. But this is exactly what andres erickson is talking about with his deliberate practice. It's just being okay. I'm going to go into the group ride. It might be hard, it may not, depending on what I'm trying to achieve. And then did what am I trying to achieve? Then I went and did it. Did it match up with what we and that's what we talked about in our quality training?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so an example from running would be like change of pace workouts, so you know the standard interval workouts for a runner would be you know a certain you know a certain certain number of a certain distance at a certain pace.

Speaker 2:

But if, okay, you know. Now what we're going to work on is you're going to run five. You know a bunch of 500 meter reps and you're going to go 300 meters hard and then 200 meters all out like you can. So you're going to work on that. The sudden change of pace. Now you're working on something specific, a skill that you're going to deploy in the race and you're evaluating not just again, it's not just how fast the goal, because you could probably go faster in the interval by going at an even pace, but you're deliberately not, because you're working on something specific and you're evaluating how well you were able to do that change of pace, which is a race winning, uh, or you know a key race defining tactic in in tactical, you know, in middle distance racing. So there's things that go beyond how fast you're going to how well you're executing the thing that you're working on, like what you were talking about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so as we talk about like the third principle or the fundamental aspect of long-term training success, you talk about fostering autonomy and one key phrase that you put there is not every session needs to be precise. What do you mean by autonomy? And what do you mean by hey, not everything has to be super precise, even though we just talked about like metrics and tactics and deliberate practice.

Speaker 2:

If you think of a, you know a, a typical example. You've got a coach and an athlete, and not always, but in in general, the coach knows more than the athlete. Right, the coach, let's say the coach has. I'm not trying to flatter you here, I'm just saying that in general, that's, that's that look if you're watching on youtube, that was yeah, eh.

Speaker 1:

I don't know about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, look, I mean, the Olympic world record holders have coaches and sometimes you could say that maybe that athlete knows more than the coach, but in general, the relationship is the coach has some knowledge, especially when you're dealing with, say, novice athletes. The coach knows a lot and the coach there's a tendency to be like oh man, I know so much. I want to convey this to you. I'm going to tell you exactly how to do this workout. Let me tell you, I've got I've got these 27 pieces of advice for you that's going to help you understand and you know, when you get to the 47th kilometer, this is how you're going to feel. But this is what you should think in order to avoid falling into this trap. But if you, you know this could have blah, blah, blah. Right, you can. There's a ton of information and it's like it's all well-meaning. You, you, you know it's harder knowledge that you're trying to pass on. What the motor learning literature suggests is that, um, and what common sense suggests and what intuition suggests is that, uh, lessons that you learn yourself are learned more effectively, and so what the coach really should be trying to do is provide, set up situations that allows the athlete to learn this lesson, because then you're going to, the athlete will learn the lesson and you won't have to sit there holding the athlete's hand. So if you want the athlete to to run a progression run where they get 10, you know, 10 seconds per mile faster with each mile, you can get on a bike and bike beside them and yell at them every time they speed up too much or speed up too little. But then you're going to have to get on the bike beside them every progression run for the rest of their lives and probably in their races, because they're never going to learn what it's like to.

Speaker 2:

Oops, I sped up too much and I really screwed up this workout. Or, oops, I jogged for too long, I didn't, I didn't speed up and I didn't really get much out of this workout. They have to screw up, they have to feel what it's like to to uh, you know to understand what they're going to feel when the pace is right. But you know, and so on, and so on, and then they're going to learn the lesson more effectively. And so you have to give them enough rope to hang themselves and occasionally let them hang themselves, figuratively speaking. And so you mentioned this idea of letting the workouts be a little looser, and so you have to be willing to let workouts go wrong, even sometimes, in order for the athletes to learn how to do it right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. And I'm actually I'm not a heavy-handed coach by any means really, and probably to my detriment sometimes Because I want that open and it's probably because as an athlete or as a learner, I want open, like I want general context, and then go try and do, because that's probably how I learn more. So that's a little bit of how I coach. But to to your end again, there's a lot, of, a lot of learning that happens in try, fail, um, try again.

Speaker 1:

And I think we talked about some of this in the uh when I talked about self-determined training where I'll run scenarios on the week with the athlete. I'll type them sometimes on training peaks. Where I'll tell scenarios on the week with the athlete. I'll type them sometimes on training peaks where I'll tell them, um, in person what we're trying to achieve. So, if you feel this way, adjust that way. If you feel this way, adjust that way. And the same thing, like in a race scenario, where we just like we run scenarios of ABC one, two, three, and so you create a little bit of a mental map so that when that happens in a race, I can then deploy it.

Speaker 2:

Try it, fail, then try again, so that that autonomy really, I think, in my opinion, is the whiteboard for learning yeah, absolutely, and I think a lot of good coaches that I've read about or talked to uh, the, the, the, the sort of underlying uh philosophy is that they're essentially trying to make themselves obsolete, in the sense that they're trying to pass on the knowledge so that athletes can make the decisions. And, you know, at a certain point there's a reason world record holders and Olympians still have coaches, because there's always a value for having someone outside your head and someone with different perspectives. But, in terms of the, the nuts and bolts, if you've been in the sport or you've been training for several years and you don't know, you have no idea what you should do tomorrow if nobody tells you to me, that's kind of that's kind of weird. Like coaches shouldn't want to foster dependency in their athletes. They should want to because because the athletes are going to be better and the coach athlete is going to be relationship is going to be better if the athlete is understanding, is gradually learning more and more and understanding and being able to uh sometimes say you know, you know what I, I feel that I need this and the coach, you know.

Speaker 2:

There's been some great examples recently in running um, uh Hobbs, kessler, 1500 meter runner, who's, you know, one of the great young hopes of American running. He got interested in doing this sort of threshold type training that's become popular Norwegian style threshold training. He talked to his coach, ron Warhurst, who's a veteran coach who's taken people to the Olympic podium with, you know, a particular fairly high intensity approach. Warhurst has been around forever but he was happy to say you wanna try this? Yeah, let's give it a try, we'll make some adaptations. And so that sort of dialogue can allow people to coaches and athletes to explore different approaches. And you know what? Maybe for Kessler, he's running really well this year, but if he was running like crap, he would maybe go back and say, well, we tried this and it didn't work. But he'd have greater confidence in what he was doing for having had the freedom to try things whether they worked or not, to not just be locked into. You know, god said on Thursdays you do this workout and therefore I'm going to do that workout on Thursdays.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's it, that's it. So the fourth principle here is be specific. We already talked about this a little bit with your uh, some of the run intervals where you get a little, a little bit more surgy rather than running an even pace, and I talked about the group ride interaction, um, but anything else that you want to add to, like specificity of training and how that should be implemented into a training program?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this is an interesting one because this is the one where I think there was the most tension between what motor learning researchers think about and how endurance athletes and coaches think. So the motor learning people are like you have to practice exactly what you're going to do, um, whereas endurance athletes, endurance coaches and athletes are like, yeah, I can't go out and race a marathon three times a week to prepare for a marathon. I can't, like there's only so much race specificity I can do and I don't, and that's maybe not necessarily so. I think we have to maybe distinguish between learning skills and and and physiological adaptation. So I don't think what the message we should take from this is um, go out and you know, if you want to race a five K, just race a five K three times a week. But I do think what the point is? We, we, anything you encounter in a race, all this, all the challenges and situations, it's helpful if you can encounter them and become familiar with them in some capacity during your training, if you can break down um elements of the challenges. So, and one you know one example they give is that competition even let's like, let's say you're a basketball team and you're preparing to play basketball games. You could say well, if we want to prepare to basketball games, all we should do is play basketball games. Now there's problems inherent in that. That we can, we can all see right away but one of them is that you can scrimmage every day of the week and that's not going to truly be the same as playing a basketball game. Shooting a foul shot in an empty gym against your friends is not the same as being on the line with a bunch of people screaming at you in the game on the line.

Speaker 2:

So even just the stress of competition is something, and this is for endurance athletes. This is a crucial thing. It's like I did 20 long runs, all of them over 20 miles, and I never once had diarrhea. And then I went to the marathon and immediately I pooped my pants or whatever. Well, it's like yeah, that's because you were nervous, your digestive system shut down, because everything changes when you're in competition.

Speaker 2:

So you want to find ways of simulating different aspects of competition and like one of the examples that popped to mind when I read this is a friend who sometimes his coach like once a season or so they would be about to do a track workout, they'd do their warmup, go through their routines, go onto the track, and then the coach would say okay, everyone go sit on that bench over there, lightning delay or you know schedule delay, and you'd be like what and so, but know schedule delay and be like what and so, but whatever, they'd go and sit on the bench and they'd sit there for 10 minutes and then the coach would say or you know 15 minutes, or whatever, and then the coach would say okay first interval, let's go.

Speaker 2:

And that's kind of annoying, but anyone who's ever been in a competitive situation knows that these things happen Right, and so some people lose their mind when things go get delayed or out of schedule. Some people are just like, yeah, I'm okay for this, and so this wasn't simulating a race, but it was simulating one aspect of a race so that when you get into the race, you're less likely to freak out and you're more prepared for it. That's.

Speaker 1:

I mean that's, that's clutch, and I do the same thing, like if I'm with a group ride or if I'm on a group ride, uh, or if I'm on a group ride with an athlete and something like that happens like road construction or there's like a big car or something like that. Like this is perfect, right, because when a race gets neutralized in cycling right, every you know the pace slows. Everything kind of comes back together to make sure that the road is safe for us to proceed, right, um, people probably saw that in two France happens at the local level as well. You got to be ready for it because it can really kill the mojo. But if you can simulate in training, you can get there and mentally wrap your brain around it and then go again.

Speaker 1:

Kind of that other kind of like specificity of training. I mean it's principle of training in itself. Okay, it's something that good coaches and athletes should consider in their training programming and I think too it lends itself toward like energy system training, like how hard, what is the pacing to replicate a certain perceived effort, a certain, uh, stride rate, a certain, um, kind of repeatedly powered effort, once we get up to that training, because if you enter in the race and you haven't done this intensity, but you're, you're screwed Right. And this is where the people who think that they can just ride or run long and then turn up to the race and perform well, well, I did 40 hours of training. Well, how come I'm not going fast?

Speaker 2:

it's like you lost the specificity, but yeah, it doesn't mean you, you, you do race pace all day, every day.

Speaker 2:

But if you haven't done race pace, if you haven't gotten familiar with that, and again, we, you know, we chatted about this last in our last conversation uh, nils van der poel, the speed skater, his whole thing was like I'm gonna spend three months.

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna first I going to spend three months doing like 100 mile ultra runs or whatever, just like build the base, but then, in his highly periodized program, his last three months, like I want to race at 30 seconds per 400 meters. So I'm going to go five days a week and I'm going to do laps at 30 seconds per 400 meters. Um, that's probably more specific than I would want to do and certainly in a sport like running, where, where the impact forces are a real problem, you just couldn't do that. But that's the that's. The fundamental premise of interval training is that you're gonna give yourself a chance to accumulate as much time as possible and close to rain at race intensity, and the brakes are not to give you a rest there to allow you to accumulate more race specific. You, uh, you know training and feeling and and and physiology.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's it. That's it. So the fifth principle here that we talk about is respect the individual differences, and I think I think for me I mean, this is where one thing that CTS coaches do really well, because we're working one-on-one with our clients on a daily basis and, for me anyway, I really hone into that how the athlete makes their power, how the athlete holds their pace, how do they respond to high intensity, how do they respond to low intensity, high volume, and then you're always like going super deep in that way. So when you're writing the article, though, alex, when you're talking to a broad audience and maybe to a bunch of people listening on a podcast, how can we tune into the individual differences, or at least identify them, and then what to do with them when it comes to learning more about self?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I'll say is I always worry about stuff like this because in a sense it's it's kind of like a get out of jail free card. It's like everything I said about these general principles previously you can ignore them if you want, because you can just decide that, well, I'm different. Uh, and this you know. You kind of. You see this kind of thinking where when you talk to people about like supplements or various things, that where the evidence is not strong, people will will say well, I understand that on average, you know, this magical herb doesn't do anything, but I've tried it and I'm confident that for me it works. And so, that said, you have to acknowledge that people are different. And it's like you said.

Speaker 2:

I mean, over the years I found that I responded very quickly to high intensity training. Over the years I found that I responded very quickly to high intensity training, and so it's a, it's kind of a, a super like pill for me, but that it might the curve only lasts for so long. So you know, starting high intensity training six months before a race doesn't get me any farther than starting at two months before a race or whatever, and that's different. You know, I have one of my good friends who I did a lot of training with when I was younger. I was a 1500 meter runner, he was a marathoner and we just had totally different responses to like what made him fit versus what made me fit. And you know, this wasn't just in our heads, right, we had different physiologies.

Speaker 2:

I think for me, maybe the most obvious application of this is in the psychology of training and of competition, of sort of work themselves into a froth to get the most out of themselves.

Speaker 2:

And you just need to sort of it's a balance. You need to look for the things that work for you, and this requires going back to the training quality discussion that we had, the sort of looking after the training to sort of figure out the debriefing. That's what I'm the word I'm looking for to understand, so that when things go well, you understand what you were doing and what was working well, and when things don't go well, you maybe have some hypotheses as to what didn't work and try and figure out what works for you. Because ultimately it's like those formulas for average heart rate, you know, 220 minus your age or whatever. Yeah, it's a pretty good average, but a third of people are more than 10 beats off or whatever, and so that's a lot of people and that's a long way to be off. So if you're trying to optimize your performance, you need to figure out what works for you, starting with the general principles of what works for most people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's it and and and. A lot of it is just like what is the process, what is the result? And the process feeds into the result, the result feeds into the process, like we talked about in our previous discussion. And when you look at these, these five fundamentals that we talked about today, they're really nothing groundbreaking, nothing earth shattering, right For any coach or athlete who's been doing this for a while. But I do think it's easy for people, people who are looking for the cutting edge or they're looking for the next biohack, and they just they want the edge and they can overlook the basics. Right, and if you do the basics well, if you come back to the basics, you might find that you're actually not doing number four very well. So let's, let's press more into that, because I do think that these are the fundamental ingredients to a really great success over a long-term of training. Is there anything else that you want to add to that, alex?

Speaker 2:

I guess the last thing I'd say is is look great, coaches have been doing this for a long time, but that doesn't mean it's easy or that we, we know, and so so, starting to try and kind of break down, what is it that makes that coaches have been doing by intuition for a long time, then that helps more of us to to uh, to kind of uh incorporate these practices into our, into our training.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Another awesome conversation with you, alex. I really enjoyed it and I I think our listeners will as well. Okay, thanks, adam. All right, thanks, alex. I think our listeners will as well. Okay, thanks, adam, all right, thanks, alex. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.

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Adam Pulford

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