My Training Philosophy
Recently I asked what you wanted to hear more about from me. The most popular question was training so I begin with answering this question here. You can watch the video or read the transcribed text below.
Hi everyone,
I am sorry it's taken a while to start answering your questions. I've been pretty busy with moving house, and then training as well. I wanted to take the time to be able to go through your questions properly and really think about the answers that I'm going to give you, so I can make sure that I'm giving you some really good and useful information.
Now, the first question that I want to address is about training because it was one of the most asked. Questions like: what are your training plans? What are you doing for training? How do you train for this race or that race? And one person even with, what are your training secrets? Tell me your secrets? Well, I'm not going to tell you my secrets, mainly because there aren't any secrets. It's just simple, hard work, and getting it right. I've been thinking about this question a bit and how I can talk to you about training because, I have a degree in engineering but I don't have a degree in physiology, biology, chemistry, sports science or anything like that. So I don't really want to talk to you about more prescriptive training and exactly what I'm doing. What I want to talk to you about is my training philosophy, and hopefully give you the toolkit that I use to work out what kind of training I should be doing. So that you can take that toolkit away and apply it to yourself. Because if I were to sort of tell you exactly what I'm doing, it's not really much use to you.
So my training philosophy, the factors,
Do the kind of training that you enjoy to do.
Do the kind of training that makes you good at the event you want to partake in.
Do the kind of training that you can do with the time and other resources you have available.
Train with consistency.
Train with specificity for the kind of events that you're going to be partaking in.
Learn to be self critical and honest.
Rest, it's the most important thing.
It's not a factor, but eight is that you need to put all of these other seven factors together, perhaps in a Venn diagram on a bit of paper, start writing it down. You've got to work out how they all interlink together for you. And that's the important thing. It's not for someone else. It's not for, down the road or in the past, it's for right now. Because they're going to change all the time, so this is something that you need to be evaluating all the time.
The first factor, do the kind of training you enjoy. What does that look like? Well, do you enjoy going out on long bike rides, that's what you should be doing. If you enjoy just doing short, hard ride, that's what you should be doing. If you enjoy running, cycling, boating, whatever hiking, you should be doing that. It's not saying don't ever do anything else. But it's saying probably the majority of your training should be stuff that you enjoy doing. There are going to be times when for an event or other reasons, you're going to need to do things that you don't necessarily enjoy doing, and that's going to sort of fit in with the other factors, once you start drawing that into a Venn diagram. For me, personally, I enjoy doing a lot of bike riding, and so that is exactly what I do. It also happens to work quite well with the other areas in my Venn diagram. But it's principally what I enjoyed doing.
The second factor is do the kind of training and makes you good. Now, if you found the kind of training you enjoy doing, but it doesn't make you good, either for what you're trying to achieve, or kind more generally, then you're going to need to perhaps give or take a bit on exactly what you're doing. So if I wanted to be a sprinter, but I enjoyed doing loads of long rides, perhaps that's not the best way to train or the way I can train all the time. It just happens so that I race really long races, and I enjoy just riding my bike a lot – what a coincidence! They fit together really well. There's other stuff within the events that I do now, sort of the mountain biking with the hike-a-bikes and things that I don't necessarily enjoy for training quite as much, but I do put time in to do those things. Today, I'm actually out on a hike, with some weights in my backpack. I enjoy going for a bit of a walk, it mixes up in a cycling a bit, and it builds some leg strength and does a few other things. Sometimes it's just nice to get off the saddle when you're doing 25 to 30 hour weeks.
The third factor is do the kind of training that you can do with the time and other resources you have available. Again, you might like going on really long rides, it might be really good for the event you're trying to train for. However, you might have a full time job and a young baby. And consequently you have about three hours a week to do training when you're not trying to catch up on some sleep. So you can't do it, and therefore, you have to work out another way to train for the event you're trying to do. Now this can be where you have to get quite ingenious and work out ways to train. And without going into specific descriptions, some of the things that I sometimes do is heavy gym work in the morning and then go out for a ride. You've tied your legs out recruited more muscles. So there are ways to get around these things, but just have to of be a bit creative.
The fourth factor is consistency is one of the most important things. It is all good and well knocking out one long bike ride a week. But if you don't ride for the other six days of the week, it's not very good. You are much better try to ride every day, than doing one long ride a week. Good training over week to week and being able to back that up over months, and then into years. You've got to think about the long term when you start to think about consistency. Because it is the long term that will get you to where you want to be, not a one off ride. If you think about a forest of trees, which is always the analogy that's used, when you're looking at the picture, the forest is the overall picture that matters is not the individual trees, you can't even see them when you look at the bigger picture. You can think about in the same ways where you're working out. It's the overall fitness that you create by long term training rather than the individual workouts you do. Te individual workouts you do can be the problem. If you're not used to doing long rides, and you suddenly bang out 12 hour ride, you might get injured, injury or issues. And then you can’t actually ride for two weeks after that, which is disastrous. So sometimes you got to do less to do more training.
The fifth factor is specificity for the event that you're doing. Now, again, sort of come back to the point, I don't do really any sprint work, a little bit of gym, work, leg strength and things. But there's not really any need for me to do short, anaerobic intervals much, and I definitely don't enjoy doing them. So I just don't do them, perhaps if I enjoyed them, that might be reason to do it. Whereas, obviously I do long races, so doing long rides is very useful. You've got to think about that as well, because all together your factors might not quite interlock with what you enjoy doing what you can do, but you got to try and perhaps find time sometimes. So if you're really busy person, but you want to do these really long races, occasionally, it's going to be good to get out for 6, 7, 8, 9 hour ride, or perhaps two five hour rides back to back something like that and occasionally you're going to have to work out a way to make those things possible.
The sixth factor is learning to be self-critical. You might be thinking, what does that have to do with training? It's really important because if you want to be able to be the best that you can, you're going to need to be able to work out what you're not good at, when things are going wrong, when you perhaps need more rest, when you're tired, when you're not tired, and it's quite difficult to do. If you really want to be able to achieve that, being completely honest with yourself and just owning up to your faults, your weaknesses, the state of your body is extremely important. Sometimes training is not going to be going well, but you're doing the right thing. So you've got to be able to look beyond training not going well or not feeling right. To realise that you just need to keep going. Sometimes, it's not going well, you just need to take some time off away from the bike and do something else, switch things up. That can be quite a difficult call to make.
The seventh and final factor, rest. Rest is the most important thing. And it is probably the thing that I am worst at. I know that I've been honest about it, and I own it, which forces me to be better. Inherently over the years developed my body and adapted my body into being able to withstand pain and discomfort and all these other things, being able to be really tired and ride. So the thing that I'm training my body to be good at, is also the enemy of training to be better because, by being able to withstand these things, I can do more of it. But you don't necessarily want to be going to that place all the time when you're training. These days, I'm a lot better as I become more honest with myself, and now I always come down on the side of rest, over pushing a bit further. You do you have to push into overreaching sometimes to be able to get better. Which is a very fine and grey area, it's easy to overdo it, especially when you have a lot of other things going on in your life. And you can't skick your feet up on a sofa, sit there all day, because that's what rest is. So you are often a lot better coming down on the side of rest, than going too far, because it is when you're resting that you're actually getting better.
That's and overall view of my training philosophy and the things that I think are important when trying to work out what training you should be doing yourself. Hopefully it sort of gives you a toolkit that you can take away write those factors down, look at them and see how they interact with each other and work out a your training philosophy and training for yourselves. As I said at the beginning, I don't have any sort of qualifications in this or in a formal education. So take on board what you find interesting and useful, throw out what you don't. And come and question me on anything you perhaps disagree with, or think could be improved, because I'm really interested in that.
Thanks.