Your comfort zone is holding you back.

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TRAINING BREAKDOWN

“Welcome to your Fitness Growth Zone.”

By Emma O’Toole

Hello,

This week’s newsletter unravels your training safety blanket. It’ll help you understand why so many runners and cyclists feel like they’re not improving: they’re not able to cover more distance, they’re not getting faster, that annoying niggle will not go away! And importantly, it’ll explore what you can do about it to step outside of your comfort zone in a sensible way without opening yourself up to a heightened risk of injury.

What is “comfort zone” in training?

Your comfort zone could present in several ways:

• Never exceeding the distance you always run/ride.

• Never going beyond a certain pace.

• Not signing up for different events/races.

• Not increasing the weight you lift.

• Not decreasing your number of repetitions.

• Not pushing your weekly volume.

• Not taking a week off/deload week.

The problem with this is that we get stuck.

Take Chris, a 10km runner.

Chris used to train for 5 hours per week. He covered 25-30 miles. He had one interval session per week which he hadn’t changed nor updated his target pace for that session in 4 months. He hadn’t had a rest week since May. And finally, he hadn’t changed his strength program since June.

Chris was stuck.

He desperately wanted to improve his 10km time, but it just was not happening.

Remember last week we saw the SAID Principle: Specific adaptation to imposed demand? Chris had nothing to adapt to, there was no new or imposed demand that required adapting to.

He was firmly rooted in his comfort zone and that was holding him back.

However Chris, and so many of us, don’t realize that our comfort zones are holding us back because: they’re familiar, they’re predictable, there’s less risk, there is less anxiety. Our training is routine and it feels safe.

When we step outside of our comfort zone, we learn:

• More about what we are capable of.

• How we can control risk.

• How to be more self-efficient.

Plus, we reduce anxiety levels surrounding our training because we’ve pushed our boundaries in the past and know what it feels like to come out the other side. Compare your first park run to how you feel now. Or your first triathlon to your 5th. There will still likely be pre-race nerves and anxiety there, but it’ll be about something different to those present in your first race/event, because through your training and racing you have stepped outside of your comfort zone and know what you are capable of.

There is no right or wrong answer here and every scenario could end differently for a plethora of reasons. However, if you have never stepped outside of your comfort zone in your training, you’ll likely only ever go for the option 1… and never know what you could have achieved.

Welcome to your Fitness Growth Zone:

What I call your Fitness Growth Zone is adapted from educational psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). It’s a place where training periodization and the SAID principle shine; it takes us out of our comfort zone, sometimes tows the line of the danger zone, but then regresses backwards to our comfort zone through recovery and deload weeks.

Over time, what was our Fitness Growth Zone now becomes our comfort zone and we can continue to progress. For instance, our FTP has now increased from 200w to 220w, our steady Zone 2 mile pace has decreased from 9 minute miles to 8:45 min miles.

However, If we step too far, too soon, out of our comfort zone we can enter the danger zone which can feel overwhelming, scary and a place where we are not able to adapt, (Zaki et al., 2021) and for many runners and cyclists, may be the place where we get inured.

Take these examples:

• You have been consistently running 5km and decide to run 21km.

• You have not been strength training since February, (when you were regularly strength training), and now decide to go back an lift the same weight you lifted then, plus added in a few extras sets and reps.

• You ran 3 reps of 2 minute intervals at 9/10 RPE last week and now decide to do 10 reps this week.

• In the summer you rode 100km regularly as your were training consistently, you’ve not really been on the bike for the last 3 months but decide to repeat the 100km ride.

• You haven’t done intervals before and decide to do them in every session this week.

In all of these instances, we’re bypassing the Fitness Growth Zone and throwing ourselves in the deep end (eek!)… think: the imposed demand is too high for our bodies to adapt to.

How can we stay within our Fitness Growth Zone?

Ultimately it is through progressive and periodized training both in our endurance sessions and our strength sessions. However here are a few examples of how you can step outside of your comfort zone into your Fitness Growth Zone:

• If increasing the weight you are lifting for the same number of reps and sets, aim for nothing heavier than a 2.5KG increase.

• Look at your run paces: could you run 2 mins at 5s quicker for 3/5 reps?*

• Look at your cycling power: could you hit 110% FTP for 5 minutes in your 3/5 of your intervals rather than 105%?*

• Could you add 5 steady paced minutes onto your 50 minute run?

*Assuming that you have been regularly interval training.

So many runners and cyclists feel frustrated and stagnant with their training because they don’t step outside of their comfort zone. However, sometimes all it takes is a fresh pair of eyes on your training.

And in case you’re wondering, Chris has just broken his 10km time and is finally seeing the progress he deserves!

If you feel like you’re not making progress with your training, please reply to this email and I’ll give you some suggestions.

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