Tag Archives: dynamic loading

Sunday Summary 13 November 2022

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Endurance Training Tips

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Why You Are Overcomplicating Training Load

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Following on from Monday’s blog on How Much To Exercise…

With the hype around

You could be forgiven for feeling a little confused.

I’m going to make it simple for you.

What matters?

Well, that depends on your goals.

  • Longevity
  • Metabolic Health & Fat Loss
  • Mood Management

Lock in a Basic Week and repeat.

The Basic Week Approach is what I call low-standard deviation training.

It works for champion athletes

and

It works when I had a house filled with little ones

  • Something every morning
  • Mix our mornings between cardio and strength
  • Do a little more when our schedule permits

With a young family, exercise was for stress reduction, not performance.

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Health & Longevity – I am always amazed at how much health benefit we get from a bit of cardio and strength.

A bit of working out combined with frequent ‘moving around.’

If you want a deeper dive then read Howard’s book on Longevity, link is to Dr Luks’ site.

Metabolic Health & Fat Loss – don’t trap yourself on the hamster wheel of chasing volume so you can eat more. Even experienced athletes make this error, I did this summer.

It’s a game we NEVER win.

Keep stress down and focus on your core nutrition.

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Mood Management – My mood responds best when I stop before I’m tired.

As I wrote on Monday, we want a small disruption we can repeat over time.

If I feel “disrupted” during a workout… I blew it and recovery is going to take a while.

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Suppose you have ambitious athletic goals.

What then?

You will need to figure out how to manage larger “disruptions.”

Before you add training load, reduce life stress. I had to wait for the pandemic to end, and my kids to grow up.

There are seasons to what we can handle – these cycles are based on invisible rhythms and total life stress.

Three month view, below, to illustrate

  • The grey bars are daily disruptions
  • The calm blue “sea” is long term load – 7 weeks
  • The red “waves” are short term load – weekly peaks

Spring and Summer are a time for bigger waves of load.

Fall is a time for slowing down, and long-term projects.

***Keep it simple and persist***

If you are interested in how I’ve been managing my “waves” then I pulled together a thread of resources for you (below).

Where to start?

Heart Rate Variability – tracking my HRV showed me how much fatigue I was carrying around. Here’s an FAQ and here’s the app I use.

The graphic above is from hrv4t.com and is another representation of daily loading.

The color represents how my metrics looked that morning.

What I like about this chart: even when things are going well, there’s a lot of recovery required.

Depending on how you slice it, 2-4 recovery days per week.

Loading is the easy part, what’s your Recovery Strategy?

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Let’s end with a favorite quote about humility

When different protocols produce similar results, the mechanism isn’t the protocol

The process you enjoy is the one you’ll be able to sustain.

Consistency is the mechanism underlying all progress.

Linked In This Article

  1. How Much Should I Train?
  2. Optimized Training Protocols for Doctors, and other busy professionals
  3. Dead-Simple Nutrition
  4. Eliminating Weight-Gain While Exercising
  5. The Dynamic Loading Thread
  6. FAQ on Heart Rate Variability

Three Tips For How Much Exercise You Should Target

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I got a lot of things right during my elite career.

Optimized loading was not one of them!

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Let’s start with the purpose of load, paraphrased from Øyvind Sandbakk,

A good enough disruption in physiology that can be repeated over long time horizons

As a returning athlete, most my errors come from targeting too large a disruption…

…that delays my ability to repeat (and hopefully progress) the disruption.

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How do we tip the scales in our favor?

One: Know YOUR Sustainable Average

  • Not where you want to be.
  • Not what a friend is doing.
  • Not what was suggested on the internet
  • Not the biggest week you ever survived

On my first call with an athlete:

  1. What did you get done last month?
  2. What was your average volume last winter?

That’s your HIGH and LOW range for sustainable volume.

It’s much easier to move up the bottom of the range.

Remove the causes of “missing tomorrow.”

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Two: Know What Tips YOU Over The Edge

We each have a level of load that causes our lives to gradually fall apart.

Make errors visible and pay attention to what tips you over.

10% less can have you feeling 100% better.

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Three: Know Your Minimum Effective Dose

My current minimums:

  • Swim 2000 meters
  • Bike 60 minutes
  • Run 5 km

Not in a row, by the way.

Get those done 3x a week, add a strength session.

I’ll be just fine until life settles down.

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Bottom-Up Fitness

  1. Use minimums to bring average load up
  2. Avoid long gaps in your favorite sports
  3. Focus on removing the choices that screw up tomorrow

Compounding Drives Returns

Sunday Summary 6 November 2022

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Top Threads

  1. Ideas for the 4hr+ Marathoner
  2. Pulled resources into a Dynamic Loading Thread
  3. Remove friction between yourself and “better”
  4. Novices Always Want to Prove Progress, I’m not immune!
  5. Asked for help on resources for making desktop videos

Endurance Training Tips

High Performance Habits

Sunday Summary 11 September 2022

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Top Threads

  1. Building a Metabolic Edge – Eat Like A Hobbit
  2. My favorite Training Zones Resources
  3. My network on Road vs TT Frames
  4. Loading Tips from my summer talking with Johan
  5. Lessons From Last Week’s Training

Endurance Training Tips

High Performance Habits

Dynamic Loading Part Two

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You can find Part One here.

Nine months along with HRV, and 15 weeks along with proper training… I wanted to update you on how I’m applying load.

Dealing with Noise

To avoid chasing my tail on a daily basis…

  • Respect the trend
  • Ensure a positive trend before starting each microcycle
Chart from HRV4T.com

Respecting The Trend

Top half of the chart:

  • Blue line – 7 day HRV average
  • Shaded range – 60 day HRV average
  • Colored Bars – how I’m trending
  1. When my “line” gets to the bottom of my shaded range…
  2. When my bar turns orange…

…it is a sign I have disregarded the trend and gone too far.

Because my primary source of overload is Moderate Domain aerobic volume, the fatigue clears in a few days.

In July (lower chart) I made an error that required a week of backing off.

My error was stacking bikes on top of hikes, same day => my muscles are learning to reload themselves and I need to metabolically challenging sessions.

Re-establish The Trend

I have been using a 5:2 loading protocol – the key part is two back-to-back recovery days each week.

Applying what I’ve learned so far:

  • Avoid stacking sessions that tank my metrics the following day
  • Take double-days off every week – tempting to skip when things are going well
  • Evening HRV Via HRV4Biofeedback – get a feel how hard the day hit me
  • Don’t go too deep across the 5-day loading cycle

My evening HRV sometimes goes through the roof on the second recovery day – not sure what to make of that, will keep watching.

Taking all of the above together… something I got from Johan

The most important assessment is how I feel on Day One

“Day One” is the first day of the new training week. Before I get back to loading…

  1. Make sure the positive trend has been re-established
  2. Resist the temptation to carry fatigue into the next microcycle

1 & 2 are tips I completely disregarded as a younger athlete.

So far, I can’t count on being able to recover while loading.

Not All Load is Created Equal

Pay attention to what makes YOU tired.

My Use-With-Caution List…

  • Downhill hiking – I’ve started tracking total elevation change to quantify
  • Loading when depleted – my July error of same-day stacking
  • Strength training – lower heart rate but higher stress
  • Running – impact forces
  • Altitude & Heat

Traditional load metrics (TSS, for example) don’t pick up the full spectrum of the fatigue we give ourselves. The metrics I outlined in Part One help.

On loading when depleted – just because I am eating doesn’t mean I am reloading! I’ve had to accept that my body isn’t well-trained to reload itself.

Sunday Summary 17 July 2022

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Top Threads

  1. Conor Harris’ active release thread for hip region tightness
  2. Additional Tips on the SART (original blog on dynamic loading)
  3. Coaching people (like me) who already know how to train
  4. My current loading hierarchy
  5. Progressive incline treadmill test with lactate

Workouts & Working Out

High-Performance Habits