How to Customize your Own Training Plan for Optimal Performance

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To each his own, for everyone’s body responds optimally to different volumes, and different intensities.  For endurance training, having a customized training plan is an absolute must.  Unfortunately, not everyone can afford or has access to endurance coaching.  The following rules are guidelines to creating your own customized training plan. 

Finish Line of Age-Group Nationals!

Rule #1 – Know Your Goals!

Know your goals, and have a vision.  You need to take the time to sit down and map out your previous race performances and benchmarks.  From these benchmarks, set your seasonal goals and aspirations.  After you have a good set of seasonal goals, look to your training cycles.  You need to set, not only seasonal, but short term goals as well.  The combination of long term and short term goals allows for an overall vision to be crafted.  Take the time, rack your brain, and see your vision!

Rule #2 – Know your Objectives!

Just knowing your goals is not enough, for you’ll need guidelines to achieve each one of those goals.  Writing down a set of two to three objectives for each goal will allow for you to achieve the highest performance. 

Short Term Goal :

• ·       Swim 45 seconds faster this year than last year at same race.

Objective :

• ·       Swim 15% more volume (on average) during training
• ·       Incorporate two more efficiency drills into every session
• ·       Increase overall body strength by 12%

Rule #3 – Reach for the moon, Not for the Stars!

Mankind has set foot on the moon, but he has yet to reach the nearest, distant star.  Using the same concept, look over your own goals and objectives and make sure that they are realistic.  Is it POSSIBLE that you can you achieve them this season.  Use the SMART method to analyze your Goals and Objectives.

• ·       S – Specific
• ·       M – Measurable
• ·       A – Achievable  
• ·       R - Realistic
• ·       T – Timely

Rule #4 – Schedule Rest AND Recovery!

Rest and recovery is a severely neglected part of most training plans out there today.  Try to schedule at least one recovery aspect for every two workouts scheduled (Ratio 1:2).  If possible you may strive for a ratio of 1:1.  Below is a list of recovery techniques to include in your plan.  Just remember as your hard workouts get harder, your easier ones should get easier. 

• Ice Bath
• Compression Equipment (socks)
• Self-Massage
• Full Body Stretching
• Contrast Hydrotherapy (Hot tub 5 minutes, Cool Tub 3 minutes, repeat)
• Breathing Exercise Routine
• Rest Day

  

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Rule #5 – Make a Plan, but Don’t be Made by that Plan

Plan your year into cycles.  Your schedule should gradually increase in intensity and decrease in volume as the months progress.  Write down your anticipated training volumes and pacing zones for the months and weeks to come.  As time advances, you are going to have to revisit your training volumes and pacing zones to re-evaluate whether they are still on the same performance path.  It is extremely important to have a plan to follow, but don’t be stubborn not to deviate from the plan when change arises.  Listen to your body! (Rule #5½!)

On a Side Note: I would like to give my regards to Lance Armstrong who was stripped of his 7-Tour-de-France Titles.  Regardless is he cheated or not, he is an incredible athlete who has helped progress mankind in not only sports, but in all inspirations of life. 

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Eating Healthy is LAME! : Nutritional Series

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Nutrition, like exercise, is considered by many as a lifestyle, not a task to an end.  What’s great about, Lifestyle is it can shift, but only in small increments.  The human body craves nutritious and healthy food and good quality exercise.  Yet because the way we have evolved, it is easy to be self-destructive with the foods and activity patterns of modern society.  I would like you as the reader, not to be defensive towards the ideas listed here.  Read them, learn them, and even apply them if you wish.  

I have been living a low sugar/carb, natural diet for a few years now.  I stay away from most processed and high sugar foods.  Though last week I visited my Aunt’s house in long island and fell away from my normal diet.  She makes the Greatest chocolate chip cookies known to man and just like Crack-Cocaine, the high of getting one, is all about getting more.  After eating about 12 cookies, I became nauseous (like I usually do) and felt sluggish for the next 2 days.  It's easy to realize how un-healthy certain things are when you don’t have them often.  But how can you move to a healthier lifestyle?  It’s not as easy as a magical transformation or going cold turkey from all un-healthy foods… It’s about small lifestyle changes.  

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Below is a screen shot of a healthy lifestyle presentation I made for increasing athletic performance.  The graph stresses the importance of taking small steps to change your lifestyle.  While, you will notice you become stressed when your lifestyle shifts to an “un-healthier” state, you also become stressed (temporarily) when your lifestyle shifts to a healthier state.  Only when this new stress disappates and becomes part of your normal lifestyle should you include another healthy habit and stress the lifestyle again.  (Athletes, does this sound familiar?  Stress the body, rest, stress the body, rest)

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How to: Try using the following steps to make small lifestyle changes healthier and happier living!

The LAME Method

Limit – Every 2-3 weeks, Limit intakes of damaging nutrition.  Find one “un-healthy” staple of your diet and greatly limit your intake.  Some examples would be Soda, Fast-food, or other processed foods such as high added sugars, hydrogenated, or partially hydrogenated oils.  This goes for activity as well, possibly limit TV to two hours instead of three.

Add – Every 2-3 weeks, add intakes of healthy nutrition.  Find a healthier food to try to regularly add to your diet.  These can include fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, olive oil, eggs, or even daily goals.  Goals could be shown as “eating a fresh vegetable/fruit at every meal,” or eating a healthy non-sugar/carb breakfast every day.  You can devote to add a 15-30 minute slow walk around the neighborhood after meals.  These smalls decisions will add up over the weeks and months and slowly develop your lifestyle without stress.

Maintain – After 2-3 weeks ends and a new cycle begins, try to continue with the small lifestyle changes you had made recently and try to incorporate another cycles of changes with those.  If you haven’t become completely accustomed to the new changes that were made, don’t incorporate anything new but take another week or two and get used to what you changed.  It’s not perfect, but what lifestyle is? 

Enjoy – You may find that over time you can’t imagine how you lived without the new changes.  Your changes hopefully become routine and easy to remember over time.  Just remember, it’s just a series of small, slow steps to healthier living.  But the most important factor is to ENJOY what you are doing.  If you don’t like tofu, try eggs, if you don’t like zucchini, try a cucumber instead.  Tastes, preferences, and abilities all vary and there are endless possibilities to living healthy!  Eat, Exercise, Enjoy!

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Recovery Schedule

I've been focusing on recovery in the past few weeks. So what should i do? More hard workouts? Run Intervals? Swimming should be at the top of the top of the list. On Monday I start with the high school team (actually last Monday, but I transposed this late.) They're going to kick my ass back in swimming form. I'm at a much better place than I was a year ago. I've been swimming a lot so... I'll be swimming magnificently by Burlington. I need to continue to focus on cycling strength, very important... Those hills will suck the life out of you. I need to be much lighter for worlds in November. Breaking 150 would be ideal. Obviously I need to start a nutritional schedule. 500-700 calories less per day. Now that means strict dieting but I have to figure out what my body can do per day. Basic Metabolism, insulin spikes, efficient use of vitamins. Life water should help w/ the fact that vitamins and such. 30-40-30 on some days and 10-70-20 on others (give or take). These are either side of the spectrum. The day should fall in the middle of it using my "daily food" routines and also using things like grains, veggies, fruit, maltose sugars, HFCS sugars, and malodextrin carbs. Also need to pay attention to the GI index which plays a role. Proteins in the morning, Low GI foods in the evening, High HI foods after workouts. Other recovery methods are a must and are very important and must be utilized. Like self-massage, full massage, stretching, icing, heat, contrast hydrotherapy, anti-inflamatory drugs, insulin spikes, recovery workouts with quick recovery drinks, elevation therapy (gravity boots), lung (respiratory) stretching, capacity work, and hypoxic training. All these things need to work in conjunction and need to be evaluated as to how often? How Much? How cold? How hot? Don't forget compression therapy! Almost forgot that one. Zenzah's. Water (Lifewater) is the engine of all processes. Meditation could be another form of recovery, though this is closer to mental than physical recovery (which I believe have very close ties, so take it as you may).

Time for the GMATS

It's Wednesday. I'm on a 2 hour easy ride right now but I'm going down to Long Island in a couple of hours. Liz is going to take me in before I take my GMATs tomorrow. They should be fun. They're like a puzzle, as all business is. We'll see how it goes. It'll be good.




Today's Workout

2 hour ride easy

4x25 pushups
4x25 V-Ups
4x100 Flutter Kicks
4x25 Dips

Full Body Stretch

Nutrition
Bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios (dry, we ran out of milk today, it was sad)
Eggs with mushrooms, potato, and cheese
Yogurt with Apples and Banana and peacans and raisans
Whole Grain English Muffins
Life Water
Pancakes w/ Syrup

Chocolate Milk as Recovery - Beginner Triathlete Forum

**There were several other threads in the forum...

mrheathen - 2011-02-11 12:39 PM There have been similar threads in the past, and I think they can be summed up thusly:

I like using ovaltine instead of plain old syrup, because I can fool myself into thinking it has some more nutrients in it.

Gawors:
Wonderful! It tastes amazing and does have more nutrients :-) I feel it mixes in with the milk better than syrup. I tried the chocolate malt one day and it was alright, though I prefer their chocolate mix.

I do enjoy recovery drinks (especially Endurox R4 Lemon Lime). I feel they work really well with the body because its something different the body doesn't usually see. I only have it once a week so my body doesn't get used to it too much that it becomes ineffective. (I found that with Heed, I started using it during workouts and felt AMAZING and so used it all the time and started noticing the effects weren't as potent so I started using it just once or twice a week and during races.) So all my other workouts are great with a pour of the milk jug, especially if I cannot find an Orange or other piece of fruit.