SERIOUS TRAINING 29

Time Crunched—Train Harder? (Part 2 of 2)

In last week’s Part 1, I told you about my friend who has limited time to train—about 6 hours per week. His first race, a B-priority event is only 8 weeks away. He is in poor shape after several weeks of little or no training due to family and career responsibilities. His plan to make up for the setback was to eliminate easy, Low-intensity training (LIT) workouts and do only hard, high-intensity training (HIT). He believed that would get him fit quickly.

Sounds logical. On the surface. Dig a little deeper and there several problems appear.

I tried to talk him out of it by telling him about a self-coached professional athlete who had the same idea. He ended up missing most of a season and retiring shortly afterward. He developed an overtraining syndrome. My friend could wind up in a similar situation. Overtraining is much worse than most athletes imagine. Many think it means being somewhat tired. It’s more like having a disabling illness for which there is no cure other than complete rest for weeks or even months. I seem to have convinced him that high-intensity training all the time is not a good option.

I also told him about the many benefits of LIT that can’t be fully replaced by HIT. LIT builds the foundation on which race readiness is constructed. You can’t achieve high race fitness without easy training sessions that physiologically prepare the body for race-like workouts.

My concern was that his upcoming race season was at risk. I wanted to see him do well, but I knew his train-hard-all-the-time plan was unlikely to produce the results he wanted. The risk of breakdown from overtraining—or even injury—was high, while the likelihood of having successful season was quite low. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

He was setting himself up for a disappointing season. I knew he could still race well, even with limited training time, if we made a few adjustments to his previous approach. The biggest change, of course, was having less time available for training, which meant he had to get the most benefit possible from every workout he could squeeze into his schedule.

I’ll tell you what I suggested. It includes both LIT and HIT—in a unique way.