The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Scribble Outside the Lines: How Imperfect Training Makes Faster Cyclists (#274)
OVERVIEW
Following a training plan is better than training haphazardly, but how closely do you need to follow the letter of the plan? In Episode 274 of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast", Coach Adam Pulford discusses the benefits and necessity of not following the plan to a T, when that’s ok, when it’s not, and how to adjust daily training sessions based on how you're feeling while still sticking to the vision and progression of a bigger plan.
TOPICS COVERED
- What flexibility means in endurance training
- Examples: hard day planned and don't feel great
- Example: easy day planned and feel great
- Example: had day planned and feel great
- Should you push through a hard workout if you don't feel good?
- How to modify your workouts on any given day
- Autonomy of training
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RESOURCES
- Rigid vs Flexible Training:
- Planned vs Self Select:
- Time in Zone vs Just HIIT:
- Specific vs General Training Programs:
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades 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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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 yours job 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. Because there are times when it really matters to hit the right training on the right day. And then there's times where doing the work is just what matters most. I'm your host, Coach Adam Pulford, and today I'm going to encourage you to scribble outside the lines when it comes to your training program. First, what the heck does that mean? Well, it just means be flexible. And you want to be flexible because the way endurance training works is you need to do a bunch of it now or in some given time period in order to have some sort of adaptation later when you specifically need it most. That's for the race, the key event, or some key time period where you'll be testing your limits. But for the majority of the time, it's the broader strokes that matter more than the thin, precise details. Athletes' lives are dynamic and can be chaotic, especially for all of you listening, time-crunched athletes. Y'all have jobs, family, relationships, and you have your performance goals. Most of everyone listening could likely benefit from allowing themselves a bit more flexibility in their lives when it comes to training because of this. Having a dynamic training plan, one that can change a bit day to day or week to week within reason, is far better than a static one or a static mindset that can bog athletes down, thinking they need to hit these intervals on this day, otherwise, they've failed. So that brings us back to the question of you know, why follow a training program at all if you're not gonna hit the hard days when they're prescribed, right? Well, a good program is the big picture that keeps us on the road toward accomplishing our goals. Following a plan versus not following a plan delivers better results time and time again. I've linked to several studies on this in our show notes to illustrate the point. I'm not gonna go into a ton of details there, but that is a definitely a known thing. But like I said, many athletes think they need to perfectly hit each workout as planned to accomplish the goal, but that's a misconception. There's a time and place for that. And one of the most important times is six to eight weeks out from a main event. Then the details start to matter a lot more. But that's specificity of training, and that's a principle of training that shouldn't be overlooked in any good program. For all my athletes, I encourage them to add a little bit more or a little less on any given day based on how they feel, so long as it fits the goals of the current phase that we're in and keeps us heading toward that big picture goal. Let's look at some examples. Hard day planned and don't feel great. Use the warm-up rule, then adjust as needed. I've gone over what the warm-up rule is on this uh uh podcast before, but basically you ride easy, then endurance, a couple openers, and then you decide whether you uh hit the main set or if you change to something different. So if you if you continue on with the main set, determine that, yeah, I guess I'm not as bad as I thought. What you want to do is probably just hug the low end of the range on the prescribed workout intervals and get through it, you know, because typically after a good warm-up, I find that most people, it's like, oh yeah, I do feel uh better than anticipated. I'm gonna carry on. Or what you could do is skip the main set altogether because you don't feel great. You've confirmed that with a good warm-up. Maybe just ride some endurance and head home, saving that key workout for another day when you do feel better. Another example is an easy day plan, but you feel great. What should you do then? Uh my advice to my athletes is go hit a hard group ride, or uh maybe there's a hard workout scheduled for later in the week. Let's just knock that out of the park today and let's not waste good legs. Just make sure that that hard workout fits within the current plan, meaning if if we're trying to increase FTP in some form or fashion, you do a threshold workout and not a sprint workout, something like that. Another and third scenario is you have a hard day planned and you feel great. Well, that's that's awesome. You know, the stars have aligned. But on that day, you can still adjust, you can still scribble outside the lines and see if you can go a little bit more, right? So on that, you want to hug the upper end of the prescribed range if you're feeling good. And if the goal is to increase the time and zone, maybe you add a little bit more time per interval, or maybe you add a whole other interval altogether. If the goal is to intensify training or add more power, then I would add five to ten while it's on and and try to see where that limit is. Again, don't waste the good legs if you got it. Play outside the lines and get the full benefit on that session. So, what about pushing through a hard workout when you don't feel as good? Isn't there any value in that? Yeah, there is, but there's greater value in learning how to adjust for your needs on that day. I'm not saying skip every workout if you don't feel great or perfect. Rather, be open and aware of yourself and don't push through when you feel terrible. Learn that even like shifting the day or two, that's not going to ruin anything. It will likely only help. The day will come for sure when you have to push through, you know, a hard day or a race or a group ride because not all the stars have aligned. But learning to read yourself will actually help predict good sensations and performances as you go. More on that in a minute. But here's a little how-to of how to scribble outside the lines within reason on any given day. General rule of thumb for me is on the on the volume aspect, be within 10 to 20 percent of the prescribed. So, for example, if there's a long ride uh being prescribed and say it's three hours long, add 20%, that's about three and a half hours or so, and that keeps things on track. You can go a little bit more, but then definitely either communicate with the coach or maybe you uh change on the back side of things if it ends up being like some epic ride. But again, uh within 10 to 20 percent, that's within reason. Also, if you're a training peaks user and you see that some days are green, some days are uh yellow, some days are orange, that plays into the color coordination side of things. If you're within, I think 25% on the prescribed volume or TSS, it's gonna be a green day. So that's a little bit of how to gauge that um from a training standpoint uh with scribbling outside the lines. Now, training ranges for intervals, we have a high and a low end for each interval. And these ranges, they have highs and low ends for a reason. Okay. Our physiology, it's not super precise, but if we stay within those high and low limits, we're still gonna hit the marks for the day. Not every day has to be at the very top. Please hear me on that. I think all of my athletes need to hear that uh time and time again, and you likely do too. So you can hug the middle or the low end and still reap the benefits of tempo or threshold or VO2. Uh it's that's why ranges are there. Now you can also read the description uh from the coach because typically, if if a coach is making a workout, they're also going to tell you of how you should feel or maybe how to adjust on the given day, and maybe there's a little wiggle room there. When you're feeling good, don't waste good legs. I've said that before. Pick a hard workout that may be down the road, and so long as it fits into the big picture, nail it. And that's also going to kind of fall within that scribbling outside the lines. Just flex days, uh, flex the workouts a little bit here, a little bit there. Now, all of this leads to autonomy of training, and this is very important because it gives you ownership of getting it done. It also increases engagement and communication with you and your coach, or just that engagement to the program itself. Because that engagement of determining what went well and what didn't, and should I do this workout on this day based on how I feel helps you to change things next time or change things over time. This increases awareness. And this is probably the most important aspect, actually, of this flexibility of training or scribbling outside the lines. Knowing how and when to shift the workouts to bring yourself into a key day really helps you and the coach learn what you need to freshen up to have a great day. Now, this is critical during a taper phase or being fresh for a big key day. And sometimes you won't learn this unless you have the autonomy to change some workouts around. So being flexible can not only help lead you into better key days, but it can also help to minimize bad days, making performance more predictable. And that is the art of coaching. Which again swings back a little bit to what I said about pushing through a hard day when you don't feel great. My point here is like if you learn how to bring yourself into a you know a key day or hard day or a race, you will likely deal with having to push through a bad day much less frequently. So even those listening who you know they live a life where it's fully dialed and you can normally just generally hit every workout as planned, that's great. Keep that up. And I've even encouraged you to go a little off script sometimes because on those long days or hard days, uh, maybe you can get a little bit more out of yourself if you push a little bit more and find your limit. And then additionally to that, play around with how you actually like taper or freshen up best because that can definitely help bring out a peak performance when you want it. So a quick recap on how and when to scribble and follow. When to scribble. That's the majority of the year, actually. Okay. Base, build, prep phases. I have my athletes being flexible throughout all those time periods. It's more about getting the work done within a week or a month rather than a specific day. Now, there are some key days that need to be hit within those time periods. Don't miss those, but it can be flexible on timing. When to follow, this is your specific race prep, generally referred to as a specialization phase, six to eight weeks out from competition. This is also in the taper phase as well. You want to hit the workouts on the given day. There's still flexibility in there, but there's a big timing component to bringing out the sharpness when needed. So I would generally stick to the guns there. If you do a good job though, with the base build prep phases and flexibility, I would say that if you're right in your own training or if your coach is paying attention, it should minimize a lot of bad days within that six to eight week time window, and everything should be pretty predictable going into the race. And like I said, that's part of the art of it. So finally, you know, do we train by a plan or by vibes, right? Uh well, those who fail to plan, plan to fail, in my opinion. Uh, those who ride by vibes, meaning you just kind of pick and choose whatever you're feeling on the given day, letting feelings be the only thing guiding you. Well, people who train like that, even though it may be fun in the moment, and there is a time and place for that, but you rarely peak for performance or stay motivated for long periods of time. This is why having a training program uh does prevail if you want results. And even if you follow a medium good plan, this is generally better than following no plan at all. Structured workouts provide a roadmap, consistency, progressive challenges, and sense of accomplishments. Randomly choosing workouts can lead to stagnation, burnout, plateaus, decreased motivation, and poor timing of peak performance. So, in summary, I'd say that the longer I coach, the more I realize that this flexibility of training is wildly important for everyone, especially time-crunched athletes whose lives are just more chaotic and dynamic than someone who may have more time to train. In either case, I encourage all of my athletes and all of you listening here to scribble outside the lines and be more flexible with your training in order to get full benefits of the training program and make your performance more predictable come race day. That's it. That's our show for today. Thanks for listening. And if you liked what you heard, please share it with a friend or a training partner, as that's the best way to grow the show and make sure you keep getting content streamed over to you like this. If this has spurred on any questions in your head, please ask away. All you need to do is head over to trainwrite.com backslash podcast, click on ask a training question, fill out the form there, and submit it over to me and our team, and we'll do our best to answer it on an upcoming episode. Thanks again for listening, and make sure to come back next week for more training tips for a Time Crunch Life. 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 trainwright.com 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.
