A New Season for a New You

With a new season comes the opportunity to set new goals for a healthier, more active, and athletic you! Whether you're a seasoned athlete or just beginning your athletic journey, here's a few training tips...

1. Set realistic expectations and goals- Clearly define what improvements you want to make and what athletic events you want to complete, the more detailed the better. Then honestly assess how much time you are willing and able to spend training to make the changes necessary to reach your goals. In doing so, take into consideration your current fitness level, the demands of your job, family, friends, relationships, and your other interests so you can plan accordingly. You can avoid disappointments and burnout if you set goals that are realistic within the context of your life.

2. Give yourself time to prepare for an event- Whether you’re training for your first 10k, marathon, triathlon, century ride, or if you're an experienced competitor taking it to the next level, allow a minimum of 6 months to prepare for your event. Your body needs time to make the necessary physiological adaptations (increased muscular strength, increased connective tissue strength, increased cardiovascular and circulatory capacity) required for competition. If you allow ample time to prepare, you’ll avoid the stress and anxiety that occurs when you miss training sessions due to other life demands, injury, or illness. You want to avoid feeling that you’re running out of time to increase your fitness for your event. Also, when you have time to prepare, you’re more likely to take a rest/recovery day when necessary. Doing so will improve your overall training experience and help reduce the risk of injury, illness, and overtraining.

3. Create a plan- Plan your training sessions on a weekly basis, monthly if possible. Schedule when, where, and what type of training you plan to do each day and put it on your calendar. Once this time is scheduled to train, don’t change it. The hardest part of training is showing up. So plan it, schedule it, do it.

4. Tailor your training to your event- Training specificity is vital to your success in athletic endeavours. We perfect what we practice. While cross training is beneficial to prevent overuse injuries, as your event nears your training should mimic the demands of your event as much as possible. Also, how much you train depends on the distance of your event. For example, triathlon training will differ for sprint, olympic, half-ironman, and ironman distances. Typically, you should expect to train 6-10 hours/week for sprint distances, 7-15 hours/week for olympic and half-ironman, and 8-16 hours/week for ironman. These are very general guidelines and will vary for each individual. Most importantly, avoid the temptation of following another person’s plan since it may not be appropriate for your fitness level and event distance.

5. Increase your training incrementally-As your fitness improves change your training load first by increasing frequency (train more days per week), then increase duration (lengthen training sessions, increase distances), and lastly increase intensity (intervals, speed skills, timed efforts). Following this progression will help you increase the workload appropriately in relation to your fitness level.

6. Schedule recovery days- Actively plan days to rest from training. Use these days to recover physically and mentally, just rest. Physically you need to rest so your body can regenerate. You’ll have more energy to train after a rest day so make these your harder days. Mentally you need a break on a regular basis so you can stay focused and motivated to get the most out of your training sessions.

Lastly, enjoy the process of improving yourself and achieving new levels of fitness.