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TRAINING BREAKDOWN

“The devil is in the dosage.”

By Emma O’Toole

Hello,

This week’s newsletter unpicks 2 of the biggest training errors runners and cyclists make with their strength training. It’ll help you understand why you, like so many other runners and cyclists, may not continue strength training throughout the year. And, it’ll give you guidance on how to overcome those 2 mistakes.

Lets get into it:

Strength training error #1 : Doing too much

I want you to walk out of your strength session feeling good; feeling as if you’ve challenged your body, not broken it. Legs are feeling worked and strong, not shaking as your putting your weights away.

Why? Because I want you to be able to run/ride 4-6 hours later or the next day.

So many athletes try to replicate what a run/ride feels like in their strength sessions. This often presents as these 4 methods:

• HIIT circuit sessions: the more sweat on the floor, the higher your heart rate, the better.

• High-rep bodyweight work: hundreds of reps, using only your bodyweight.

• 10/10 effort level on every set: you could not do one more rep.

• Continually adding: be this extra sets, more weight, more reps in every set… strength sessions become longer and longer.

Each of these methods replicate what we get from our running/riding:

• HIIT circuit sessions = mixed paces/power style sessions.

• High-rep bodyweight work = any run or ride. A 30 minute ride at 90rpm = 2,700 pedal strokes. A 30 minute run at 170spm = 5,100 strides per minute.

• 10/10 effort level on every set = top end interval training, think 12 second all out maximum effort sprint.

• Continually adding = increasing running/riding distance and/or duration week on week.

It’s understandable that we would take this approach into our strength training and to think that similar training effect would equal better results for our running/riding.

However, more often that not following any, or a combination, of the 4 methods above leaves us:

• too sore to run/ride in our next session.

• too tired to run/ride in our next session.

• too sore/tired to hit our target pace/power/heart rate output in our next session.

And all this then feeds into the mentality, that strength training is “just a winter” or “off-season” thing to do.

How to overcome error #1:

The truth is you get better at running by running.

You get better at cycling by cycling.

You also get better at running and riding through strength training, but strength training for runners and cyclists. 

What I mean by that is we’re not looking to replicate our endurance training sessions in our strength work, nor following any old gym/strength routine. Instead, we need to give the body a different stimulus, one that it is not getting from the miles we’re clocking up pounding the pavement or slicking over the trails, and a stimulus that directly crosses over to enhanced endurance performance.

The devil is in the dosage; what can singlehandedly undermine your strength training is doing too much.

Here are my 3 top tips on how to avoid doing too much:

1. Avoid soreness.

Use the reps in reserve scale to help guide your weight choices in every session. Your weight choices will likely fluctuate, but that is normal and takes into account your training. Just as we do recovery runs/rides and train at different intensities throughout our week to reflect our training, so should our strength training. (If you'd like a copy of the exact scale I use with my athletes, please reply to this email).

2. Avoid tiredness.

Train smarter, not harder. How beneficial a session is does not depend on how long it is. Similar to our interval training in the sense that it is quality over quantity: it’s better to hit 4x intervals at your target pace/power rather than do 6 missing out on the mark.

Your set and rep choice will depend upon what strength adaptation you are seeking. A good rule of thumb is to stick between 2-4 sets of an exercise and in the 5-10 rep range.

3. Embrace the change.

Strength training is a different kettle of fish to what it feels like to run/ride. Embrace the difference between the sessions and stay focused on the benefits it is giving to your training.

(You can get a free strength program made for runners and cyclists at the end of this newsletter).

Strength training error #2: Endlessly keeping sessions the same

If you continue to follow the same strength training plan week on week, your progress will flatline and may even decrease. This is the Law of Accommodation, a biological law: the body will adapt to repeated workouts, ultimately making them less effective over time. For instance, if you lifted the same 15KG weight each day, what initially seemed heavy would soon become easier and easier to lift.

Similarly, if we only ever run/ride the same route using the same gear in the same weather conditions, we’ll be really familiar and adept with that route but will struggle on different routes.

It can also be pretty boring, your body and mind are bored. For us runners and cyclists who often prefer to be outside doing the sports we love over a strength session anyway, ensuring development and seeing progress in our training is a sure fire way to help us to stay motivated with our strength training and not let it fall by the wayside.

How to overcome error #2:

It’s more than just changing an exercise. We’re meticulous with our running and cycling, especially when we have an event/race coming up, we need that level of detail to get the most out of our strength training to make us better runners and riders. This is where those I coach see such great results and return on their time investment because their strength training is planned around their running/riding with the goal of supporting it always at the forefront.

In practice, this is where periodization and programming come into play. We can avoid, or reduce the negative influence of accommodation through changing our strength training plan, just as we do with our running/riding training plans.

Here are several variables that can be changed in your strength training program:

• The exercise type: Think reverse lunge vs side lunge vs front lunge.

• The movement type: does your strength session include all of the super six 6 movement patterns? - hinge/squat/push/pull/press/rotary stability.

• The order of your sessions: does core work always come at the end? do plyometrics always come at the start of your sessions when your most fresh?

• The intensity: what weights are you using? what speed/tempo are you moving those weights?

• The number of sets and reps: closely linked to intensity, how many sets and reps you do is reflective of the strength training adaptation you’re after.

• The rest period: Again closely tied into the intensity and training adaptation you’re searching for, the difference between resting for 60 seconds after an exercise vs 3 minutes will affect how your body responds to that set and your ability to perform in the next set.

Important! 

We need to make sure we are not changing everything all at once and overloading your body with new stimulus as this can increase your risk of injury and open you up to the risk of overtraining. Similar to if we suddenly started running on trails when we’re used to running on pavement, included hill reps when we haven’t done those before and added and extra 20 minutes to each run. We’d feel pretty beaten up by the end of the week.

So many runners and cyclists accept training plateaus and think that it is what it is. They blame the lack of hours in their training week, getting older and life’s circumstances.

If you avoid these 2 errors with your strength training, your running and cycling will improve. Guaranteed.

And to help you avoid these errors…

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