The Simplicity of Consistency and Progression

As always, the New Year brings lots of resolutions and for runners, lots of anticipation for the spring.  Whether it be getting ready for a marathon or taking on some local 5ks, everyone seems to come out of hibernation.  As a coach, I know that the New Year can definitely impact our moods and training habits. Unfortunately, in addition to all the excitement about getting ready for the spring running season, there is something else that I see a lot of when the New Year arrives - injury! Just because the calendar says January 1st does not mean that we can drastically increase our training volume or intensity without risk of injury. Although we are all tempted to increase our runs by a few miles each day as we get closer to spring, it is important to remember that sudden jumps in volume or intensity can be a recipe for an overuse injury.

We all know the McDonald's saying "I'm loving it." Orthopedic doctors echo this phrase! The more you overload your body too quickly and become injured, the more money they make. Don't have the fast food mentality. Just as fast food has a negative impact on health, so too does increasing your training too quickly.

With regards to training, we must understand the overload principle. Basically, this principle states that we must overload the body to make gains. When you place a certain amount of stress on the body, the body adapts by recovering and becoming stronger. After a few sessions at a particular workload your body will adapt, therefore you need to overload again. When we don't give our bodies time to adapt, overuse injuries are more likely to occur.

Skipper from Top Gun said it best: "Son, you're writing checks your body can't cash." Physiologically our bodies will make adaptations fairly quickly, but you can't forget about your muscoskeletal adaptations. You must give your muscles, tendons, and ligaments time to adapt to new training loads, and sometimes they take longer than anticipated to reach full adaptation.

Improving your endurance fitness takes many years of consistent and progressive training (not a few weeks or months). Take a look at the ages of some of the top long distance athletes in the world. Most of these athletes are in their late 20s, early- to mid-30s, and some in their 40s. The majority of these athletes have been training since they were kids! Peak fitness was not an overnight process for these athletes, but rather the result of many years of hard work.

Trial and error of increasing your workload to see what your body can take should be done slowly. There is no research to support the adage of "10% increase in training per week." The percentage of increase in an athlete's training is very individual. I coach both elite and beginner athletes that can only increase their training 1-2% every few weeks. I also have athletes that can increase by 9-21%. Increases in training load are highly dependent upon the individual.

Imagine hiking a mountain with two path choices to reach the summit. One path is the fire road. It's a direct route, but very steep. The second path is the path that weaves around the mountain. The path is three times as long, and will subsequently take you three times longer to reach the top. The fire path seems like the best approach, but the quick, steep ascent comes at the price of extremely hard work over a short period of time. The other route is not as steep and will require more moderate work over a longer period of time. Do you want to attempt to reach the summit as quickly as possible while suffering the aches and pains of a heavy workload? Or do you want to take the gradual approach and reach the top feeling fresh and ready to climb a taller mountain?

 - Coach Jason Kilderry