Conditioning Simplified
I just had my initial assessment session with a new athlete today. He is 62 years old, an adventurous skier, with a long list of previous injuries, surgeries, and rehabs. He asked for two conditioning workouts he could do before seeing me again on Friday. During our evaluation he said last winter was the first time his wife was beating him down the mountain and he was beating her to the lodge. Meaning he was slower, couldn’t recover quick enough between runs to keep up on the next one, and couldn’t ski the whole day anymore. He wants to finish this ski season being able to go faster, with more runs, for the whole day, for multiple days in a row.
The way he described what he experienced last year and what he wants to experience this year is similar to the majority of athletes I work with. They aren’t asking to improve their V02max, lactate threshold, or aerobic threshold. They aren’t speaking in scientist/coach language, they are speaking in athlete language. 90% of my athletes don’t care about their heart rate zones, VO2max, lactate threshold, aerobic threshold, or anything other conditioning number or nomenclature. They primarily care about 3 things:
How can I do X for longer?
How can I do X faster?
How can I recover quicker so I can do X more often?
The Evergreen Athlete wants to be able to perform the actions of their sport faster, more often, and for longer. This is “conditioning simplified.”
So how do we build a program for:
Faster actions
More Often
And for Longer?
Faster
Faster = Power x Efficiency.
Power
Power = Force x Velocity. We improve power by increasing maximal strength (the amount of force our muscles can produce). We also increase power by improving how quickly we can exert that force. Factors like fiber type composition, motor unit synchronization, and rate coding influence how quickly we can apply that force and they are trainable. So is the stretch shortening cycle aka the ability of our muscles and tendons to store elastic energy when stretched and used to increase the rate of contraction when shortened.
Efficiency
While efficiency of a sport specific action is outside the realm of the strength and performance coach, general movement quality is. When looking at the demands of an athletes sport mapped against their movement assessement I look for these 4 things:
Do they have access to all ranges of motion necessary to complete their sport specific actions?
Do they have coordination through those ranges of motion?
Do they have stability through those ranges of motion?
Do they have control through those ranges of motion?
*I wrote an article on the frame work for movement quality here
In order to get faster the program is going to include (but not limited to):
Maximal Strength Training (force)
Sub-maximal Strength Training (force)
Sprint Training (velocity)
Jump & Plyometric Training (velocity)
Mobility (efficiency)
More Often
More Often = Go Pretty Fast x Don’t Get Winded
Go Pretty Fast
If fast = sprint, then “pretty fast” = run, and slow would equal “jog".” You can apply that speed continuum to whatever your sport specific context is. We want to sustain a pretty fast effort for a longer period of time (think getting down the slope quicker). This is going to primarily require our anaerobic metabolism to provide the energy for these sustained, higher power efforts. We do this by improving our lactate transport system (and another way i’ll talk about in the ‘for longer’ section). And we stimulate this by interval training at “pretty fast” speeds, with limited recovery time. What in coach/science speak we would refer to as “lactate threshold training.”
Don’t Get Winded
“I don’t want to get winded.” A common way every day people and athletes will communicate they want to recover quicker so they can keep going. You breath hard because your aerobic metabolism needs oxygen to keep making energy. It needs to make energy because your anaerobic metabolism can’t provide enough energy to sustain that “pretty fast” effort for as long as you want. Interval training stimulates the both metabolic pathways to work together in order to replenish energy quickly.
In order repeat your sport specific actions with more power, more often the training program may include:
Short Intervals: work efforts of 30 seconds - 4 minutes, with a work to rest ratios in the 2:1 - 1:2 range
Medium Intervals: work efforts of 4-10 minutes, with work to rest ratios in the 1:1 - 2:1 range
Long Intervals: work efforts of 10-20 minutes, with work to rest ratios in the 1:1 - 2:1 range
For Longer
Longer = For as long as your sport demands
Come January I will start training for the High Cascades 100, a 100 mile mountain bike race. This will likely take me somewhere between 10-12 hours to complete. In order to supply the energy necessary for continuously riding a bike on varied terrain for that long I need a well developed aerobic metabolism. A well developed aerobic system acts like a vacuum. Moving “pretty fast” comes at a cost, production of lactate and pyruvate. Which eventually leads to conditions in the muscle that inhibit its ability to keep producing forceful contractions. A well developed aerobic system will clear lactate and pyruvate and use them to help produce more energy.
In order to develop your aerobic metabolism (create a bigger vacuum) so you can repeat your sport specific actions with more power, more often, for longer: you need to accumulate a lot of time (time & distance) at slow to moderate speeds. Therefore your training program will include:
Long repetitive (jog, cycle, paddle, etc) efforts at a slow to moderate pace for 30+ minutes at a time
Cardiac Output Circuit: multiple exercise circuit with light loads maintain a heart rate around 60-70% of max
Unless my athlete wants to learn about the science behind what we are doing, I don’t bring it up. I communicate their conditioning work in a way that speaks directly to how they are going to experience it. When this athlete comes back from their first ski trip i’ll be able to ask: did you beat your wife down the mountain? did you feel as strong on last few runs as you did on the first few? How did you feel on day 4 verse day 1?
If you are tired of trying to figure out what zones, thresholds, etc mean for your training and you want a conditoning plan communicated in a way thats effective and easy to understand then let me know! I’m happy to build one specific to your objectives: alex@evergreen-peformance.com