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Building Your Base: A Different Approach
By Coach Al Lyman, CSCS
12/14/2007 |
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Raise Your Ultimate Speed Potential With This Novel Approach
As most endurance athletes know, you need to build a deep level of aerobic fitness if you are going to reach your potential in your most important events. For most of us in the northern hemisphere, this is the time of year traditionally known as the “base” period is when we are focused on starting to build that aerobic fitness that is so important for success.
Traditional thinking states building a “base” is accomplished by gradually increasing mileage while maintaining a relatively low intensity. At first glance, this thinking makes sense, because after all, you have to “put up the foundation” before you can build the house, right? Proponents of this conventional approach believe that this modest buildup (based largely upon heart rate) is the best way to prepare for more challenging training to come, and that “fast” training is too anaerobic to develop aerobic capacity or expand endurance and puts too much strain on tendons and ligaments. As you enter 2008 and begin to plan so that you show up at your most important events ready to reach your goals, are you confident that accumulating easy miles in lieu of other types of training is the optimal way to train during the base period? Is there another, better, way?
For pure novice athletes who are at the very early stages of learning to train as endurance athletes, this approach might work well. But for the great majority who have some experience and want to improve, it is time to come out of the dark ages! Covering gradually longer distances at a relatively slow pace early in the training season isn’t the optimal way to prepare yourself for more challenging training to come. If that’s all you do, you will surely leave this base period with a smaller V02max, fewer capillaries, lower overall strength, and a smaller lactate threshold.
What I am talking about as a “new” and different approach, isn’t really new at all. Well known South African researcher Tim Noakes may have started this “new” way of thinking way back in 1988 with a landmark investigation. The bottom line: it isn’t enough to cover more miles and to worry ONLY about your aerobic development during base. To train smarter and better during this off season and during your “base” training, you need to do a certain amount of training that is designed to help you develop and improve your coordination and neuromuscular/functional strength and proprioceptive abilities, also sometimes thought of in a negative context as being “anaerobic.” Training this way will have you mixing in short periodic bouts of very fast movement speeds, proprioceptive and functional strength work, and approach it all with a renewed focus on skill and technique improvement that is based more upon neuromuscular rather than aerobic characteristics.
Before some of you jump up and start screaming about Lydiard or about training too hard, too soon, my point isn’t to downplay the importance of aerobic fitness OR to have you training “hard” or excessively all year long. “Fast, quick, and well-coordinated” are words many of us wrongly associate with hard. In my experience many of our traditional ways of thinking about how to efficiently and effectively achieve more endurance, stamina, and speed, are based upon myths, and we all know myths die hard! For example:
MYTH: Carrying out “lots” of training makes us more economical because the body “adapts” to this larger volume, making us more efficient.
FACT: A major study found that running volume isn’t connected with economy at all. It is negatively correlated with age: the longer an athlete has run, the less economical he or she becomes!
MYTH: Higher mileage and volume is the best way to boost your VO2max, fat burning ability, and Lactate Threshold.
FACT: The latest research indicates that higher intensity efforts work better at improving all three of these components of endurance fitness. In fact, one of the greatest improvements in V02max in a scientific study actually links an increase in V02max with a decrease in mileage!
MYTH: Lactic Acid is a waste product that produces muscle soreness.
FACT: It’s a key muscle fuel that is not responsible for the soreness you feel after “hard” efforts (that soreness is likely due to microscopic cell damage).
MYTH: Strength training is “anaerobic” and will make us “big” and slow us down.
FACT: The right kinds of strength training produce major upswings in aerobic capacity, and will improve coordination and enhance economy, helping to improve our performance and making us more resilient and fatigue resistant.
MYTH: Training volume is the most accurate predictor of performance for endurance athletes.
FACT: Economy (defined as the oxygen cost of moving along at a specific speed) and Lactate Threshold are much better predictors of potential performance.
MYTH: If you train fast, you are working the “fast twitch” fibers, which are good for sprinting, and if you train slowly, you are working the “slow twitch” fibers, which are good for endurance.
FACT: Sprint type training can elevate V02max and many other oxidative characteristics in a more time efficient and effective manner, and even if all of your muscles are slow twitchers, you can still train very fast!
I think we would all agree that developing your aerobic endurance is absolutely essential for success, and in fact, improving your aerobic endurance and stamina is a primary goal for every endurance athlete’s training, NOT just during the off-season, but throughout the entire training year. The point is that while a certain percentage of your training should be easy to moderate in intensity and will vary depending upon the events you are training for, perhaps long and slow isn’t ALL you should be doing during your “base” to prepare yourself for faster and more challenging training to come.
A DIFFERENT APPROACH:
This different approach to base training of shifting away from only building mileage at a moderate intensity is focused around two principles:
1. The ability to go faster, longer, is partly a function of neuromuscular attributes. In other words, the ability to run, swim, and cycle better is largely about functional strength and the ability of the athlete’s nervous system to coordinate that strength and apply it with as much quickness as possible.
2. It is outmoded thinking to look at the paradigm for endurance sports as aerobic OR anaerobic, or to look at pure cardiovascular conditioning as THE most important element for success. Power, speed, and resistance to fatigue don’t fall upon endurance athletes like magic pixie dust after prolonged periods of longer slower training. They are best developed by carrying out the right kind of training sessions that maximally enhance neuromuscular coordination and build functional strength.
Now that I’ve got you thinking outside-of-the-box” a little bit, you are probably asking, what are some of the practical ways that I can apply this approach in my own base training?
SWIMMING: If you are a triathlete, you swim in the open water. To be effective and efficient in the open water requires, among other things, that you are able to put pressure on the water repeatedly without fatiguing. Rather than look at total swimming yardage at a moderate intensity as a way to be able to accomplish this, try shifting away from a mindset of accumulating yardage, to one of swimming quality yardage. It is true that skill will always set the upper limit to how far your fitness will take you, and skill is about training and re-training your nervous system! For many, the last piece of the puzzle may ultimately be training to hold a higher stroke rate for your goal race distance as well. Note that this and the recommendations below are largely about skill, coordination, and muscle contractility (the quickness and forcefulness of a muscle contraction), NOT about heart rate or pure training volume.
What you can do now:
1. Start incorporating a variety of dryland tools such as the Vasa Ergometer and Vasa-Trainer and stretch cords to effectively build the functional strength you need to apply correct technique (particularly an “early vertical forearm”) in the water.
2. Commit to improving your upper body flexibility, so that the coordination of the “correct” swimming movement patterns becomes easier and more relaxed.
3. While you need to swim with correct form, you also need to occasionally get OUT of your comfort zone and train your nervous system to turn your arms over more quickly and stroke faster! A slow front quadrant stroke isn’t always the most effective for open water.
4. Incorporate sets of “Swimming Golf” to determine whether you should be increasing or decreasing your stroke length or rate for optimal speed. Email me directly for more information on Swim Golf.
5. At the USA Triathlon Coaching Conference in March of 2006, noted swim coach and author Ernest Maglischo made a startling presentation about triathlon swim training, particularly as it relates to stroke rate and front quadrant as I alluded to in #4, as well as the Early Vertical Forearm, which are all largely neuromuscular in nature. To read my notes from his presentation, go here: www.pursuit-fitness.com
CYCLING: On the heels of Lance’s victory in seven Tours De France, much has been written about the merits of high cadence spinning as well as the merits of various modes of strength training for cyclists. In my experience, these issues are all about coordination and more specifically, velocity or speed, because after all, gains in strength and coordination are speed specific. The key question every cyclist has or is asking about this topic is, if I replace some of my riding time with strength training, will I lose my aerobic fitness and see my performance on the bike worsen?
In my experience, the right kind of strength training is not only essential for performance, it is important for your health and longevity as a cyclist, and it is true for runners too! One scientific study showed overwhelming performance gains for a group of cyclists who reduced their riding miles dramatically while employing high intensity “explosive” strength training, as compared to a control group who did more mileage but no strength work. The cyclists who rode less but trained to improve their neuromuscular coordination, functional strength, and quickness, saw major gains in efficiency, V02max, endurance, threshold, and power.
The same thing applies when discussing high cadence spinning and other skill drills designed to improve neural pathways and coordination. Incorporating skill drills and high cadence work isn’t just for winter or base training; there is benefit to performing these drills throughout the entire training year. If you can practice pedaling faster and smoother at all intensities, you will improve your ability to feel and reference all aspects of the pedal stroke (to more effectively vary muscle recruitment and spread the workload out), and sustain a higher overall cadence during rides at your goal race speed/pace. That in turn transfers more of the stress of pedaling from your muscles to your cardiovascular system, which if you are a triathlete leaves you with fresher legs for the run.
What you can do now:
1. Devote one ride each week during this “base” phase to developing your ability to sustain a higher overall cadence, and incorporate specific “skill drills” such as one leg pedaling, various float drills, and super-spins, to improve your nervous system’s ability to more quickly coordinate the appropriate muscle firing action. During most of these skill drills, resistance should be very light so use an easy gearing. The focus is ALL about quickness and smoothness, not on building strength by pushing against greater resistance.
2. On and off the bike circuit training is a time effective way combine strength training with on-the-bike pedaling skills, which are sure to boost your efficiency, coordination, and functional strength. I’ve used these sessions for years with clients, who all say that they are fun too! The idea is to structure a series of on-the-bike intervals with off-the-bike functional strength exercises. The exercises should challenge your balance and coordination and be closely related to the movements of cycling. If you would like an example of a typical circuit session for cycling, email me directly at coachal@pursuit-fitness.com, and I will be happy to reply with a session for you to try.
RUNNING: No other sport is as impacted by an approach that includes modest amounts of mileage combined with functional strength work and “speed” training as is running, and that is because there’s overwhelming scientific evidence that running well regardless of what time of year it is, is as much or more about your neuromuscular coordination and functional strength as it is about your cardiovascular conditioning. With running, the nervous system plays a critical role in enhancing economy so you can run faster using less energy, developing running specific strength so you can cover more ground with every stride, and even in injury resistance, so you can avoid frustrating breaks in your training. According to running expert and noted physiologist Owen Anderson, PhD, carrying out the right kind of neural-based training can help your nervous system “learn to activate motor units in a way which will produce not only the desired level of strength and power, but also the most energy-efficient production of strength and power.” The bottom line: Don’t exclusively just run easily while gradually building mileage. If you do, you’ll finish your base period with a smaller V02max, few capillaries, lower overall strength, lesser lactate threshold, and not nearly as much speed, as will athletes who systematically incorporate whole-body functional strength and high quality running into their base work.
What can you do now:
1. Start incorporating running-specific core and functional strength exercises into your program as soon as possible, to develop a foundation of strength that is an ideal platform for technique improvement and injury resistance. Examples are: one leg squats, step-ups, paw-back leg swings, and various hip extension exercises using a swiss ball to strengthen the hamstrings and glutes together in a running-specific way.
2. Start incorporating strides or pick-ups into nearly all of your runs. I call these strides, “form accelerations.” These are very short bouts of 20 to 30 seconds of fast running where your focus is on maintaining good running form and getting your feet UP off of the ground quickly. Strides get you out of the rut of always running slowly – of plodding, without adding undue biomechanical stress or inducing too much fatigue. Yes, it’s true: very often when you pick up the pace for short segments, you awaken your nervous system, get the blood flowing, and you feel BETTER and more lively afterward than before. And then, when its time to transition to faster more intense running as your in-season training gets, that transition is very easy to make. You will be ready!
3. Gradually begin to incorporate hopping, skipping, and bounding drills into your run training as part of a progressive warm up routine, all of which help improve your form, and enhance strength, dynamic flexibility, and the resiliency of your feet and legs, preparing your body for the quality running that may follow.
4. Like cycling, circuit training is an excellent way to strengthen your whole body and improve your coordination in a time efficient manner. The exercises you use in the circuits should force your whole body to work together efficiently as they must do when you run. The rationale for these circuits and this kind of training is that it makes your whole body more fatigue-resistant, and the strength and coordination you gain improves your running economy, so that your aerobic run pace in general, and high-quality running speeds in particular, feel easier to you. For a sample circuit training session for running, please email me directly at coachal@pursuit-fitness.com, and I’ll happily reply with a session for you to try.
Remember that employing “neuro-muscular” focused drills into your running sessions like the above can be tiring, so as always, it is very important to start conservatively and differentiate pace and intensity in all sessions. For instance, when doing strides, or any hopping or skipping drills, make sure you warm up well before doing them, and once you’ve completed a certain number of ‘reps’ and are feeling quite tired, return to your easy or aerobic pace to complete your run session.
Remember: none of what I have conveyed today means that your overall training pace or intensity should rise! Always train smart, differentiate pace and be purposeful, and keep the majority of your training aerobic so that you recover well and do not fall into a ‘gray zone’ mentality where you are training “sort of” hard all of the time.
YES, YOU CAN CHANGE! It is true that for some of you reading this, some of what I've discussed in this article involves some kind of CHANGE for you, compared to the way you have done things in the past. Yes, believe it or not, YOU CAN CHANGE!
You MUST believe that you have a powerful ability that can be extremely useful in just about any situation. You have the ability to change. It's something you do regularly, and you probably just take it for granted. Observe, learn, experiment, get out of your comfort zone, make some smart decisions, and be willing to change! That doesn't give you an excuse to abandon your self-discipline and commitments. Though you may feel stuck in one place, that is certainly not the case. Countless positive possibilities are open to you. With your time, your effort, and your commitment, you can bring those possibilities into reality, and along with it improve your skill, strength, coordination, and flexibility and become a better, stronger, and faster endurance athlete! Best of luck!
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Coach Al Lyman, CSCS, is the owner of http://Pursuit-Fitness.com, a coaching company for endurance athletes. Besides being an Ultrafit Associate and certified with USA Triathlon, USA Cycling, and the NSCA, he is the creator of Runner-CORE, a NEW fast, effective, time-saving program for triathletes and runners of all levels. For more information and tips: go to: http://Runner-CORE.com. For questions or comments, email Coach Al at: coachal@pursuit-fitness.com
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