Rate of loading – even a slow jog has faster loading than many traditional gym movements
Lower leg loading across the footstrike – often as the arch collapses
Hamstring loading as the leg swings forward
The challenges are addressed by the plyometric component of the program.
Drop load when you add plyometrics AND always add plyometrics gradually. They are strong medicine.
The suggestions split themselves into three categories
Post-Run
Daily Mobility Routine
Self-Massage
Vibration Gun
Strength Routine
Unweighted Single-leg Deadlifts
Reverse Lunges (torso over hip)
Front Squats (heels elevated, vertical torso)
Hinge Lift
Plyometric Routine
Foot-elevated calf raises
Double Leg Pogos
Mini-Blasters
Most of us will need to split the strength routine away from the plyometric routine. When I combine, I find the fatigue is a bit like 2+2=5.
Where to start depends on what you’ve been doing for the last six weeks. I’ve been slowly developing overuse injuries…
If you haven’t been strength training then you’ll need to come in very gently.
With the mini-blasters, each cycle takes a minute and I take a minute between cycles. Five rounds, when combined with the rest of my program, proved more than I could handle!
Here’s my plan:
1-2 sets of each exercise
Split Strength Away from Plyometrics
Do each program once every ~10 days
Repeat for ~60 days
With every intervention, the first “little bit” has the highest return. This is particularly important with respect to mobility work.
Finally, powerwalk the first ten minutes of every single run workout.
The “programer” is not aware of my background load:
I scale the sessions (downwards) to fit into my strength allocation for the week
I spread the sessions out to avoid too much load in a week
The benefit of using someone else’s program is variety. For me, the only way to make that happen is someone else designing the program.
Your personal tolerance for strength will vary over time. The 10% guideline is a minimum. Many athletes will tolerate, and benefit from, a greater emphasis on strength (particularly in the winter).
I score traditional strength at 1 TSS point per minute and plyometric/work capacity sessions at 2 TSS points per minute. These scores include rest periods.
When resting between work sets, do mobility work!
So that leaves us with Endurance Training
80% Stamina
6% Tempo
3% Threshold
1% VO2 & VO2+
I titled this piece with intent.
The Ambitious Athlete’s Guide
I am assuming you truly want to see what’s possible with regard to endurance sport.
I’m assuming you want long term gains rather than whatever payoff you’re receiving from your current approach.
To see what’s possible, you’re going to have to overcome certain aspects of your Human Operating System and past habits.
One of these aspects is what I call “training like an age grouper” => instead of the 9% allocation to Tempo/Threshold we often have a burning desire to get that number closer to 90%!
Tempo/Threshold is what we expect exercise to feel like. Our breathing rate is up, we’re sweating, the work rate is high… we think it’s more beneficial.
Well, it is and it isn’t.
The ability to benefit from “work rate” training is linked to our capacity to do, and recover from, work.
Stamina is our endurance capacity over time and fully developing this capacity takes years.
In the Steep Gullies of A-Basin, teaching my son how to lead men
In your 50s and 60s, you’re going to have the money to do neat stuff.
Are you going to have the body?
I propose three goals to guide your training:
Burn fat
Add muscle mass
Maintain sexual function
If you’re still into race performance then bookmark me and come back in a few years.
Why?
Because you might be screwing up all three by leaving sustained tempo in your program.
🙂
The ability to do fun stuff with those I love. A form of wealth.
Now, you’re probably thinking that it’s impossible for an older person to add muscle mass.
You might have even resigned yourself to a long, slow decline in personal function.
That’s certainly the way aging was taught to me (by members of your profession).
Are you sure?
An elder surgeon confided in me that “half the stuff I learned in med school, turned out to be false.”
Perhaps a shift in approach could get you a better outcome?
Besides, there is little downside from shifting your program, away from endurance fatigue, towards doing what it takes to add functional strength.
My son’s definition of heaven. Bit of a survival ski for me.
So how might we do that?
During the pandemic, I learned this protocol by accident.
I was locked in my house, with three high-energy kids, and I needed a way to chill out before endless days of Home School.
I turned to weights, a lot of them.
I worked my way through Rob Shaul’s SF45 program. The full program was eight modules and took me 60 weeks to complete.
Total body transformation.
Not only did it transform my body, my wife started having fire fighter fantasies. 😉
I became much better at moving through the mountains.
Rob’s redone the modules and now splits them by age (40, 50, 55 and 60). You can find them under General Fitness Plan Packets on his website.
I’ve taken what I’ve learned from Rob and interpreted into my life as a coach to kids, adults and elders. I use pieces of Rob’s protocols to address specific concerns (balance, fall risk, muscle activation, injury prevention and rehab). I tweet about these on Wednesdays.
I use Rob’s stuff for creating a valuable form of stress on my 53 yo body.
Gaining functional strength
To do neat stuff
Outside
With the people I love
For as long as possible
My training schedule is built around placing my key days (my strength-focused days).
I never skip a strength day but… I do delay it when I know it would be counter-productive to stress myself further.
Can you spot the gully entry above my son? Me neither. We had to billy-goat a bit.
So how to place those key days?
That was my central problem across 2021.
I kept getting run down, I felt old, my mood was crap, I was worried that I was “done” as an athlete.
To be sick of sickness is the only cure
– The Tao Te Ching
Eventually, I committed to do whatever it took to get my recovery on track. If that meant “getting old” then I’d just have to deal with the consequences.
It wasn’t all that complicated. My Garmin watch had be collecting resting heart rate data for years. Data that I had been ignoring because I was scared to recover properly!
To my resting HR data, I added heart rate variability from an Oura Ring. Recently, I added HRV4Training to better see the differences between my acute and chronic movements.
I don’t use the Readiness Scores because I don’t need precision (and have doubts that any of us can predict outcome on a complex system, like the human body).
All I am seeking is a signal from the raw data.
Red – you’d better dial it down
Yellow – no surges, just aerobic maintenance (ie fat burning)
Green – Go For It, Bro!
Feb 20 (red) – chronic (shaded) and acute are low Feb 11 (yellow) – chronic is in normal range, acute a bit below Feb 8th (green) – chronic and acute both high – I went big at altitude, we see the impact on Feb 9thSimilar info in the resting HR data, which seems to be more sensitive to the elevation where I’m sleeping. During the upward trend in HR, I was sleeping at ~8,500 ft.
So when I’m at home, it’s a simple choice each morning.
Strength or Cardio
Strength is whatever plan I’m using from Rob.
Cardio is a bike workout, usually with a 130 bpm cap.
If I’m not “green” for a strength day, then I dial it down, or delay.
If I’m “red” then I spin easy on the bike (HR < 120) and schedule a neighborhood walk for the afternoon.
ZERO anaerobic load on a “red” day.
By waiting for a green signal, I avoid putting myself into a hole, that takes days to clear.
I’d been running this system (morning strength or cardio) for most of the pandemic (2020 & 2021) but was not paying attention to my HR, and didn’t have the HRV data.
With the HRV data, and guidance from Dr Jeff Shilt, I am able to better place the days that make me tired. Doc J shared his traffic light system, which let me create this article I’m offering you.
This season saw me hand over the title of lead-skier to my son. With recognition comes responsibility.
As we age, how best to define “getting better”?
My proposal…
We will work towards improving the self-confidence that you’ll be able to continue to share outdoor activities with those you love.
We will use a training approach that builds a large physical reserve against the fears we hear from our elders.
Confidence that, while absolute performance is declining, we continue to enjoy the physical side of life.
Confidence that, while we’re all going to “get old” eventually, we will be able to live independently for as long as possible.
This is going to require a shift in focus from “athletic performance” to maintaining “functional performance.”
The very good news is this approach is time efficient.
Yes, the strength days will kick your butt BUT, when they are placed wisely, you will bounce back and end up with more energy across your week.
Tacos del Gnar in Ridgeway, CO On the way to Telluride, worth the stop
Last week, I was in Telluride with my buddy, Mark. He asked me a question, very much on point…
Aren’t you afraid you’ll gain weight?
Why yes, I am terrified!
The context was my current “far less than I used to” training program. Sure, I was scared, and that’s why I kept the volume rolling for so many years.
However, like so many fear-based quirks in my life, my fears proved groundless.
Further, creating a lifestyle catered to misplaced fear crowds out a lot of useful work!
Telluride
Get Off the Wheel of Sugar
AC has been crushing with a series of threads encouraging athletes to improve their stamina and fat burning. The lessons run much, much deeper. Creativity, cognition, and metabolic health – all benefit from working on the low-end of our fitness.
Many of us use training protocol as a way to justify our food choices. With the best intentions, we remove a food group, and end up replacing it with sugar.
OR
Starting to train, we shift our nutrition towards “sports nutrition.”
My buddy, Jonas Colting, calls this getting caught in Gel Hell.
Not a win.
Removing the friction towards better choices
Two tips work here:
Aim to eat more veggies than my vegetarian pals.
Stay below my sugar threshold.
#1 requires a bit of effort, but not too much. My main gig is salads and stir-frys.
#2 can be scary – it implies less total duration, less intensity.
Both these changes nudge us towards sustainable choices and, as we age, reduce the risk of ruin from following a Chronic Endurance lifestyle.
More Telluride
Get Strong
Back in the day, folks used to debate the utility of strength training for endurance athletes. Do y’all still do that?
I’m not into debating, I’d rather use something that works.
Strength Training Works.
There is a conscious, and unconscious, attraction to people who move powerfully – moving well, is attractive.
You want to be more attractive, trust me (see below).
Being attractive improves our self-image, which sets up a virtuous circle in our larger lives.
Door #1 was fast, but I’ll go out on a limb and predict my wife would prefer Door #3
Remove One
Trying to change everything at once leaves me feeling scattered and distracted.
It doesn’t work.
Again, here’s what works:
One person, one habit, one pattern, one choice…
Each of us has a habit, relationship or pattern that we can eliminate, for gains.
2 beers before bed
A basket of bread with lunch and dinner
Cheese
Bread + cheese = pizza 😉
French fries
Soft drinks
A friend who’s a feeder
Don’t try to do everything.
Don’t think you need to change “forever”.
Simply take a break for 30 days and pay attention.
With all this stuff, letting go of my fears seems daunting.
No way, I’ll be able to pull that off.
You don’t have to.
Try it out for 30 days and pay attention.
Iterate towards better.
Where do you go that makes you feel at peace? For me, it’s the mountains.
Let’s close the week with some athletic advice (to myself mainly).
Paradox of Stress => if you want to do something difficult then you will need to reduce other forms of stress to achieve it.
Athletically, in the winter, this usually means considering two opposing goals => reducing fat (vanity) vs increasing lean body mass (victory).
Personally, there’s no contest => as a mountain athlete, constrained by COVID, my big wins will come from improving functional strength and increasing lean body mass.
That said, it’s emotionally challenging to absorb this reality. I carry with me an enduring bias towards weight loss. My internal bias is reinforced by my peers and community.
Missing the opportunity to maintain strength has a cost we don’t see until far into the future. In terms of return on investment, strength training is powerful medicine. I can’t think of many things that work as well with a time investment of only 2-3 hours per week.
What’s your long term goal?
Some quick tips.
Gain Five Pounds – let your weight rise a little, naturally. Adding 3% to my body weight does wonders for my ability to recover.
If you’ve overshot on the weight gain then reduce stress below the point you crave sugar. My cravings, and sleep patterns, are my early-warning system (of impending doom).
How might you reduce unnecessary athletic stress?
1/. Cut your power/pace zones unilaterally and don’t test until spring => I knocked 20% off my bike power zones and reset my season bests effective Nov 1st, 2020. This change did wonders for my mental state.
2/. Ditch the sustained tempo => I wear my HRM to cap my efforts. If you want to challenge yourself then do something useful… commit to a quality winter strength program.
Long term success is all about the streak – there are 3,275 days between today and my 60th birthday.
Next week’s posts will explain how I used the pandemic to carve an extra 10,000 hours out of those days.
Despite an irregular year, my fitness followed a typical pattern with a clear peak around the end of August.
Because of COVID it’s going to be tempting to change things up this winter. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. The earliest I can see a return to racing (other than super-spreader events in soon-to-be-personal-freedom-loving-hotspots) is Q3-2021.
You want to be thinking about multiple base cycles. This season, more than ever, early base is really early… …we’re way out from when you’re going to want to perform.
Here’s some ideas that might help you avoid common pitfalls.
Drop your zones – I spent the last 7 weeks pushing one-rep maxes and climbing mountains. I was either sore or exhausted, and had many days where all I could manage was easy spinning.
The reduced bike load had the effect of drawing down my aerobic bank account. I got my money’s worth and am satisfied with my COVID-summer. Coming back to “real” bike training…
1/ I put in place a 130 bpm HR cap – for this first cycle of the 2021 season. This is just under the top of my “steady” HR zone when I’m fit.
2/ Tested my low-end aerobic fitness (around 120 bpm for me), saw my power had fallen by ~40 watts so pulled 40w out of my FTP estimate and re-calculated my zones.
My 2021 season-opener zones. Best 20-minutes this past season was 265w.
I could train much more intensely but what would the extra effort buy me?
1/ Know when you want to be fit and the type of fitness you require. My required fitness is sustained endurance, with pack, to guide my family on trails and snow.
At 51, my true goal is pushing out the start of old-age, which implies a large functional strength reserve at 60 years old, and a body in orthopedic shape to use it.
The best choice I made in my athletic career was to avoid choices that would jeopardize this overriding goal for my future self.
2/ Closing out 2020, building mojo gets you more than building fitness. We are going to need a lot of mojo to get ourselves from January to Easter.
The lower zones are a wonderful break from having to get psyched for sustained tempo and generating KJs when tired. If ever there was a good time to let go of chronic endurance then now is that time!
3/ Leave space for COVID disruptions. It could be a hectic winter with random quarantines due to positives at my kids schools.
I’m a lot more patient with my kids, my spouse and the reality of my COVID-life… when I’m a little under-done with my training.
Freshness is a good trade for an improved life experience.
At the back of my mind, I’m remembering that my first “COVID winter” started on March 13th. That’s 20 weeks from now!
Yesterday afternoon at the Casa del Gordo
Waking up with a foot of snow on the ground (October 26th) I think caution with pacing my season is warranted.
Hope this helps,
G
PS:
Two big 1RM achievements for me in 2020. 135# overhead and 200# bench.
Earlier in the block, I had missed on 205# and found myself pinned under the bar, in my basement, solo, at 5:30am. Eventually, I rolled out and was fine.
I spent yesterday wandering around bogs, scree and talus. Good times!
Something I do well is back-fit a future goal on top of my present reality. It helps me stay the course.
As you age, what’s it going to be like? I have coached some very special older folks, and paid attention. Here’s what I’m expecting.
More time but less energy — the energy “step down” from 45 onwards was a surprise — the fact that it was happening before I saw it, is something I remind myself as I head towards 60.
You are going to want to delay the inevitable physical decline — there is a lot of good news here — if you start building your physical reserve then you can push the decline WAY WAY out. I’ve been fortunate to watch athletes manage themselves from 60 to 70 and beyond.
The key recommendation for you, if you plan to live past 60 then start strength training now, just a little.
When I was a speedy young man, there was a controversy about strength training. As a coach, I’d be asked “where I stood on the topic.” Sitting here a couple decades down the track, it makes no sense that smart people argued passionately against strength training.
There is a guaranteed large future payoff when you create a strength reserve – against aging, against illness and against injury => aging, illness, injury => unless you’re taken out in an accident, these events are absolutely certain for your future self.
That’s the physical.
For the mental, I see two components:
Humility & Patience – a useful combination if one desires to be seen as a wise old man!
Kindness (towards the ugly) – consider it self-love for my future self 😉
I have a vision for what I’d like to be doing. My daily writing project during the first 20 weeks of COVID was a test run. It went well.
By the way, you can create a personal niche, while learning about favorite topics. The game plan: one classic book per week and choose the best idea inside. Cap yourself at ~450 words for a summary that includes three personal examples. Do that every week for two years. ~45,000 words across 100 good ideas.
A friend sent me Stray Reflections, which gave me the above idea and reminded me… don’t be put off by a lack of experience, rather, make a daily habit of doing what it takes.
How will I know I’ve succeeded? Well, success doesn’t matter.
Freedom matters. Not being owned matters. Personal safety matters. Being engaged in working towards mastery, matters.
I’ve done so much and it’s all in the past. None of my success has stuck with me. If you are a striver then I’m a voice from your future. What stands out in memory are my setbacks and errors. They motivate me to avoid repeating mistakes and iterate towards better. A feeling of moving towards better matters.
That said, via Stray Reflections, I came across an article that resonated. The author shared that success is what lasts beyond the grave.
Beyond the grave is a sentiment I felt strongly immediately after our third child was born. In 2012, I spent a month writing my kids a book. Now that they are older, I give my kids myself, rather than my work.
In sharing myself, I offer an ethical framework through which my kids can navigate the world.
Feel The Byrn 
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