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End of Season Improvement
By Joe Friel
UltraFit.com
Getting close to the end of the season means it's increasingly difficult to improve on fitness, especially if training has been consistent over the past several months. The reason, of course, is that you've approached your potential as determined by genetic, training and lifestyle constraints.
Continuing to push the fitness envelope, especially in the same old training categories for the last few weeks of the season, will yield little if any performance benefit.
If you've been doing pretty much the same workouts for the last eight weeks or so you've probably gotten as much benefit out of them as you can. By continuing with this training pattern you are pretty much in a maintenance program.
What's left to work on?
The fitness areas now least likely to show any measurable improvement, assuming there has been steady training on a broad scale for several weeks, are aerobic endurance, hill climbing, race-related skills, muscular endurance and aerobic capacity. These are the areas that endurance athletes tend to stress regularly throughout the season, so they may already be near peak levels.
The best possibilities for fitness enhancement will now more than likely come from improved acid tolerance and muscular power training.
There may, however, be little need for these types of fitness, especially if you're training for a long, season-ending event such as Ironman triathlon or other ultra-endurance race. For these events, continue to emphasize the base fitness abilities previously listed and focus on pacing and in-race nutrition. The other side of the coin is that the shorter the race, the more likely you are to benefit from the training I propose here.
There are two types of workouts I sometimes use with athletes at this time of year: acid reps and power reps.
Acid reps
During exercise the muscles burn carbohydrate to produce energy and in the process lactic acid is formed. As it seeps out of the muscles into the blood stream, hydrogen ions are released and the result is an increasing acidity in your body fluids. If enough hydrogen ions enter the blood, acidity rises to levels that eventually force you to stop exercising.
With proper training the body not only becomes more tolerant of acidity, but also improves its ability to quickly remove acid from the body. The idea of such training is to create high levels of acidity for just a few minutes and then allow it to dissipate before repeating the process. These workouts aren't fun -- unless you're a masochist. Here's an example of one such workout.
After a good warm up, do three to six reps of 40 seconds duration recovering after each by loafing for 20 seconds. Yes, just 20 seconds. This ensures that you attain high levels of acid in your body to stress it and force adaptation.
After the last rep, recover for about four minutes. Repeat the entire set one or two more times within the workout. Do no more than 12 minutes of total high-intensity time within a lactate rep session. The first time you attempt this, do only six minutes of such efforts. That would be nine such reps. Should form begin to break down, stop the workout. Don't get sloppy.
The workout progression would go something like this:
Workout/week #1: 3 sets of 3 x 40 seconds
Workout/week #2: 3 sets of 4 x 40 seconds
Workout/week #3: 3 sets of 4 x 40 seconds
Workout/week #4: 3 sets of 5 x 40 seconds
Workout/week #5: 3 sets of 5 x 40 seconds
Workout/week #6: 3 sets of 6 x 40 seconds
Runners should look for a soft surface for this workout, such as grass, a track or dirt. Never do reps on concrete or asphalt.
Heart rate is not a good indicator of intensity for this workout; perceived exertion is better. The effort for each 40-second rep is near maximal. It may help to have a training partner to keep you going. Allow two days for recovery after this session and do only one of these in a week of training. After six weeks of these workouts, avoid them for at least another six weeks.
Do this workout only when you are fresh and highly motivated. Consider it one of the highest risk (injury, overtraining, burnout, illness) workouts that you do and treat it accordingly -- with caution. As with all workouts that are high risk, it also has the potential to produce a great benefit.
Power reps
These are short workout sessions similar to acid reps. The major differences are that the durations are somewhat shorter with power reps, and the recoveries after each rep are quite long. The purpose is to maximize power, which may be expressed as:
power = force distance time
Force is the amount of pressure that can be applied to the pedal (bike), ground (run) or water (swim). Distance is gear size, stride length or stroke length. Time is how quickly the force is applied -- cadence, or strides/strokes per minute.
By increasing force or distance, or decreasing time, power improves. The purpose of the power reps workout is to achieve such an improvement. The variable you should change is the one that seems to yield the best results for you. If unsure what to concentrate on, I'd suggest time for cycling and running (higher cadences) or distance for swimming (longer stroke). But this is largely an individual matter; do what gives you the best results now.
In a power reps session, do one to three sets of six to eight reps with each rep being 10 to 20 seconds long. Each rep begins from a full stop. These may be done on a hill, flat road or track. Runners should avoid hard surfaces. The effort is maximum -- heart rate monitors are of no value here, either. Rely on perception of intensity or power (bike).
Recover after each rep for three to five minutes with light activity in order to prevent any acid buildup. After each set fully recover for eight to 12 minutes with light and easy movement. This workout is intended to stress the muscle-tendon mechanism and nervous system -- not the aerobic/anaerobic systems.
Six weeks of power reps should produce heightened levels of power and greater performances. You may do two of these sessions in a week so long as they're separated from each other and from other high-intensity training by at least 48 hours. The progression may look something like this:
Week #1: 1 set of 8 x 10-20 seconds
Week #2: 2 sets of 6 x 10-20 seconds
Week #3: 2 sets of 7 x 10-20 seconds
Week #4: 3 sets of 6 x 10-20 seconds
Week #5: 3 sets of 7 x 10-20 seconds
Week #6: 3 sets of 8 x 10-20 seconds
You must be fully rested before doing this workout in order to avoid damaging a muscle or tendon. The day following this session allow for recovery.
There you have it: two workouts that will peak your already high fitness for season-ending races. Both may be done in the same week so long as they are well spaced. They're especially stressful so if there's any question at all about your cardiovascular health or muscle-bone soundness, or even a hint of burnout or overtraining, don't attempt them. But if you do them successfully for a few weeks you can expect another jump in your season's fitness.