Pick your side & show your work: is consistency or variety more important for long-term growth?
@tim cronk and I had an offline chat on the sciencey bike things he's been doing, and he hammered a secondary point that gave me pause . So I'll in turn bait the team with the question:
For someone who has been in it and wants to remain in it for the long-haul,* is an approach of being consistent year after year, or an approach of mixing it up every year, more likely to result in the best possible long-course triathlon outcomes?
Why?
(*let's call that 5 years -plus of long distance endurance events)
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I have a bias, a belief, and data, but I don't know how to use the latter
My bias going into becoming a triathlon geek (Jan 1, 1999) was that being a dilettante was more my style than being monomaniacal. Dillitante in the sense that being pretty good at a lot of things feels better to me than being totally awesome at just one. I could tell my life story through that lens, but we don't have time or space for that here.
My belief is that mixing up training/exercise/workout patterns and foci works better than doing the same thing year after year. "Consistency", though, is imperative, meaning, always be doing *something*. But be doing different things, or the same things in different ways. This fits with advice given nowadays to parents who want their kids to go on to uber athletic success by their late 20s - don't specialize at too early an age, try all different sports until at least mid-teens. This will build different neuromuscular patterns, open the mind to different pathways to success, etc.
So all that is on a very macro level, a life-long pattern. It certainly made things better and easier for me to have in my background: AG and scholastic swimming ages 11-21, and then recreationally on and off the rest of my life; downhill skiing from age 17 onwards; back-packing and hiking; a life-long habit of weight training focussed on improving for the sports I wanted to do, not on pure body-building; bike riding of all sorts from age 10 onwards, culminating in mountain biking, commuting, multi-day tours (including a two-month trip across the USA), and finally triathlon; and then adding running when I needed to. Basically, I was following the example of my father, who after being a classic (base, basket, and football) three-sport letterman in HS & college, took up golf when he was 35, figure skating when he was 45, downhill skiing @ 55, and then various mountain sports when he moved to Aspen @ 62.
When it comes to the "shorter" term, say a five or ten year triathlon career, the same bias/belief has guided me. For the first ten years of my career, I did not fixate on any one distance. I did Xterras, Sprints& Olys, Halfs, and full IMs, and felt good about all of them. My success and interest started to wane when I found myself narrowing the focus to IM primarily. Once I re-broadened my activity , I found joy again.
Which brings us to the definition of "the best possible long-course triathlon outcomes?" in the OP. What are you shooting for: fastest possible time? highest possible place (not necessarily the same thing)? Most possible fun? Highest feeling of fulfillment? It's obviously an individual choice, and it may be that - like me - someone is trying to go for a combination of all four of those things.
Then there's the issue of one's attitude towards numbers and analysis. While I collect data on every workout, and every race, and will take deep dives into them on both a macro and micro level, I am not fundamentally a numbers guy, not an engineer mindset. I'm in it for fun, which I define as a combination of those items above. And for me, I get that result when I mix up what I'm doing, training-wise and racing-wise every 4-26 weeks. The longer I do this, the more I find myself just making it up as I go along, using the tools I get from EN as a foundation, but modifying workouts and race strategies on a constant basis.
Agree with @Al Truscott - IMO consistently changing up your routine will better stimulate your neuro muscular (is that even a term or did I just make that up?) foundation for whatever your long term plan might be when outside of that 8 week window leading up your "A" race. Approaching your "A" race, race specificity trumps all other work and should leverage the fitness base gained/acquired to that point.
This notion is backed up by analyzing the routines of many top athletes including elite KONA champions, AG KQ'rs as well as other top athletes across different sports.
So, in short, I don't think this is something to be thought of as having to choose between one or the other, i.e., Consistency or Variety, but a change in mindset of Consistently incorporating a Variety of work in your long term cycle(s).
Well the correct answer is of course C. All of the Above
If I had to only choose one it would be Consistency.
A. Consistency - is the most important
B. Variety - comes into play when we have been at this a while- think the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results...
While its hard to break from patterns that have worked in past at some point we NEED variety to stimulate different systems, physically and mentally, and that could lead toward longer term success.