The "Single Sport Block" Thread
So...
This is idea has been bounced around a lot in the forums over the last few months but we've never really consolidated everything into once place. I'd like to do that now and eventually turn it into a wiki article that we can all reference to tweak the EN plans, etc to better suit us.
Background:
In 2010 I registered for the Everest Challenge, a 2 day bike race in California with 30k of gain in two days. I "think" it's the Cal state climbing championships? Hardest thing I've ever done on a bike, period. Anyway, I didn't run at all from ~March through September 2010, with the goal of getting crazy strong on the bike, then rolling to a running-only block from ~Nov 2010 through about March 2011, then pick up the bike, blah, blah. All of that came to naught when the day after Everest I jumped about an 18" gap from the roof of my trailer to the roof of my garage and rolled my ankle very, very badly. I rolled it again on a lowside motorcycle sorta crash about 6-7wks later. The net is that I really couldn't start running, consistently, until about Feb or March of 2011.
My notes from the cycling block:
- It's amazing how hard and how frequently you can ride when all you do is ride a bike
. - That said, I found 4x hard rides per week was ideal. At 5x things started to bump into each other.
- So my schedule was, more or less, Tues/Thurs intervals (climbing intervals) + 3-4hrs climbing on Saturday and Sunday, each.
- I was able to push my FTP up to 315-320w vs a ~300w plateau I've been stuck at for years. I made these gains with a good bit of travel through the summer which always throw me for a loop, training-wise.
As I see it, the 364 day WTC Ironman registration requirement creates an opportunity for some of us (more below) to make significant gains and potentially bust through some plateau's. Here is how I would recommend someone structure a full year's worth of training:
- 1mo transition at the end of your current season.
- 4mo single sport focus on your worse sport. Your stronger sport is either in total maintenance only mode (2x/wk cycing, or 3x/wk running)...or just let it go completely. More below.
- 3mo "pick your strong sport back up" mode, with your sport above now in sorta-maintence mode (see below)
- 3-4mo triathlon season: drop into your A-race plan for your A-race and become a triathlete again.
Single sport blocks, by sport:
Bike: 4x/wk, as:
- 2 x ~90 interval sessions.
- 2 x semi-long rides: 3hr total hammer ride + 2hr total hammer ride. When in doubt, thing shorter and harder vs longer. Resist the temptation to think that "cycling focus" = a focus on cycling volume. It's not. Your objective is to push your FTP up higher and higher and the method you use is to ride as hard as you can, as frequently as you can (4x), using three days off per week as your primary get faster tool.
- Run during this cycling block: that said...I'd be reluctant to tell anyone, even a strong runner, to not run at all for 4mo. As I said, I didn't have an opportunity to go from crazy strong cycling + not running a step for 6mo to running again because I basically broke my ankle less than 24hrs after finishing Everest. But I would recommend 3x runs per week. Call it 5' WU, 5-10x strides, 1 mile tempo, done. About 25-30', max, with the intent of maintaining (sorta) your lower leg durable vs going completely non-weight bearing.
Run: 5-6x/wk but I see at least two categories of runners, each warranting their own approach:
The Durable but Not Fast Runner
That is, you've proven an ability to run a lot, and long (think typical EN IM training plan) and not get injured...but you're just not a fast runner. You'd like to dramatically boost your VDot:
- Run 4-5x/wk thinking like a straight up 5-10k runner. Your key to getting faster is to structure a run training week that has you running very fast, frequently, but with enough recovery between the fast sessions to let you absorb the get-faster goodness.
The Not Durable but Fast (or not so fast) Runner
That is, durability is your limiter more than your speed.
- 5-6+ runs/wk. Just "run, Forest, run," mixing in whatever intensity you can given your objective is to just run, a lot, and frequently
- In my experience, simple Strides and doing 3-5 x 1mi @ Tempo spread across your week are big bang for your buck opportunities.
Cycling during the running block:
In my experience, you can sorta-maintain your FTP-flavor fitness with 2x very, very hard rides per week. But...it's also VERY easy to get your bike fitness back when you need to, there are no concerns about losing durability, and even 2x rides per week come at a recovery cost within the context of that running block guidance above. In short, I'd be much more comfortable telling someone to not ride a bike, at all, for several months.
In fact, since my bike(s) are still both disassembled post IMWI and today is my 2nd run in a row...maybe I'll just run my ass off and not ride at all until Feb or March...see what happens .
Comments? Suggestions?
Comments
I like the way you think!
But which focus do I want to have? I am doing several 13.1's this winter and spring before I start my IM Canada build, so a run focus would be in order. But I have a decent Vdot (51) and I want to see a big FTP bump for my IMC training. Can you focus on bike and run together or is this just called the "OS".
I know what you mean about the "At 5x things started to bump into each other." I rode hard for 4 days in Aspen this fall and on the 5th day I did one last ride by myself and it didn't feel nearly as comfortable as the previous 4. After downloading my rides into WKO I found my TSB in the -45range.
If I was to create a wish list for my training year for IMC right now it would include: a Vdot of 54 (13.1- 1:25:00) and an FTP of 330 (3.9 w/kg) currently my FTP is 298. Would the standard OS give me those kinds of gains or would I be better off doing a single sport focus?
Great questions. I think it depends on the individual but is not so much a function of fitness but rather lifestyle. Specifically, are you someone who:
It seems like your second block, the pick up your second sport block, seems to coincide when most would be in the OS no?
Notwithstanding my own idiosycratic s/b/r current fitness and how I have been responding to the OS intensity, I have been thinking about these issues at the moment.
The main thing that struck me with Coach R's prescriptions was how they were coming from the same place as the "focusfying our OS".
The thing being you can do 4 bikes a week but 5 are just a little hard — and with the focusfying suggestions which occurs during the VO2 max block, you bag the second run interval set on Wed and do 4 bikes (or 3 run intervals with 2 bikes) — and so Rich's suggestions were similar but a more extreme example of that type of emphasis.
As Rich says and implies, the real constraints are what happens to the non-focus sport(s) and is that a problem — Rich says absolutely no problem from doing nothing on the bike (because your bike fitness comes back quickly without any durability issues, but with the run, duability issues suggest you should do some when you are in a bike focus.
So Rich's suggestions here are just a bit more of an extreme version of focusfying our OS — As an observation, if an athlete has come from "old-school" training background, 2 or 3 years of EN style training will still probably be the optimum flavour for most of these peeps. After this type of period with EN standard approach, it is only then I would have thought that the focused approach would give better results than standard.
So my takeaway is this — as a self trained athlete, I can vary my focus on different sports providing I remember about running durability and the need to continue to do enough of that to make sure that when I start to prepare for the season, I will be able to do enough.
Cheers
Peter
Sarah,
More from me later but just wanted to catch you before your flight -- DV is fookin' awesome! I've done a lot of dirt biking out there, and will be out there camping off the bike in two weeks, riding out from LA with some friends. It's a very special place, you're going to have an awesome time! Make sure you stand outside at night, away from any lights. Fookin' crazy stars!!
I second Tucker's query about a swim focus. With Rich's swim background, this is often off your radar, but there are SOME people who's overall tri performance could best be helped by a single sport focus in the pool. This year, I am one of them, so I started this thread to kick start my work there.
On the subject above of 5x5k swimming a week, it works and it works rather fast and furious and if mixed in with other strokes produces some long lasting results. It does not have to be that exact 5k every time, but limit to 2 hours repeatedly and I gurantee that anyone would become a swimmer. Jan, Feb 2010 was forced to do swim bike only, it was only 20k swimming/ week, 5x and I have been screaming thorugh the water for me offcourse, nothing like some real swimmers here.
Ulitmately, fast folks here that are struggling with swimming, in order to become strong all around will have to comit to that.
I'm looking for a swim focus plan too. 20K a week seems like a huge amount of swimming. I'm willing to try as I've really got this on my radar this year. With that much swimming was there any big risks of injury (poor swimmer + bad technique = injury) or just long miles of bad form = no real gains?
-You might want to have athletes align SSB with the seasons. While you can look out the door and expect 100% sunny and clear year round, Northern hemisphere folks have to play the cards they're dealt. In my early and still-developing thinking about SSBs, I might do my running emphasis in mid-March / April , if only to be assured that the track will be cleared of ice, and I won't be dodging piles of snow on the road at Interval Pace.
-The 'train like a 5-10k runner' will make you faster, but this probably poses the greatest risk for injury of any of the selections. However, that's fine ... it's a risk / reward thing, and the risk can certainly be managed or mitigated. My early thinking: I want to include this in my OS, but I want to park it somewhere that is so far out from the start of the in-season that if I have a catastrophic achilles blowup (or whatever), I can still flip back to the bike or totally heal without any risk of reinjury or performance impairment once things flip to "Game On."
-I'll have to think more about the block duration. Again, in my case, I will be able to do a total 8'ish weeks in each, with a 4 week 'blend' somewhere. One one hand, I have this 8-week block, but on the other, I (we?) have the experience that after about 6 weeks, the gains from a certain type of training are maximized (and I might have to switch the flavour from, for example, FTP to vo2). How do I fit these 6week square pegs into 8week round holes?
-The bike block is awesome. Pat had developed something exactly like that when I had busted a toe and had 8 weeks to an IM. Made me a much stronger. Because I live in an urban area, we set it up as:
-Tues- FTP on trainer
-Thurs- FTP / v02 trainer
-Sat - 3h ABP / 85% outdoors
-Sun - 1.5h ABP / 85% outdoors
That said, the Sat and sun could easily be trainer time if the seasons don't align.
Interested to hear your thoughts about continued use of the Thursday session above. If you'd like, I can dig up our workout progression and shoot these to you offline.
You have to be with sound biomechanics for that for sure, but you can work yourself in there.It is very reasonable to achieve, providing you are at peace with overhead cost of it. It is easy for me as my wife is an employed professional and also a recreational runner, kids are both swimmers......I have a blank check as to how much I want to train when at home and a lot of my training is done around family. Wife runs with me almost all of my easy runs, all track work....Just swam with both of my kids in Tempe leading to Soma.
I am more concerned if you have the support of family and time for that than biomechanics. You will have to lay the technique foundation for sure, that happens along in the volume/frequency process build up. You can apply 10% rule as you do with running, works great.
It is really important you are not crossing over and over rotating your shoulder insted of hips.....,.
@ Tom - "50 miles in 50 days" is a number I just pulled out of the air, and 5 x 5k per week is equally arbitrary, I suspect. In the past, when I have re-started swimming at the start of a training year, I have often developed twinges in this shoulder or that elbow or the other wrist. I'm hoping that by just continuing my level of swimming from the 12 weeks leading into IM AZ, I can get my volume to, say, 12-15,000 yards per week for a couple of months and find those last few minutes in my IM swim that I lost after my spinal cord injury last year.
Your issue is totally different from mine. I am a life-long swimmer, on AG, HS, and college teams (but very bad at that level.) You probably have a number of body position and timing issues which will only resolve with an expert's eye helping you, and a lot of slow, focused stroke work. Volume is less important then getting the mechanics right. Until your speed is good enough to go better than 75 minutes in an IM, half or more of your time should be spent just perfecting your form. But you probably know this already.
Even so, frequency (5-6 times a week) will be your friend.
I just finished 10week run only block. I chose my strongest
sport because it's the most fun and logistically easier.
I have three seasons of very similar IM performances,
so needed to break out of mold.
The 10weeks were very helpful, but agree that 16-20weeks
Would be ideal.
Gh
I live in Iowa, where winter sucks. Hard. (OK, maybe not as hard as Canada, Dave.)
Ironically, because I have access to a good indoor track, it would be easier to train like a 5K-10K runner over the winter than train like a biker... Basically, in a matter of weeks it will become virtually impossible to ride seriously outside for the next several months. (I did virtually all my Boston marathon training indoors adn was putting up 70 mile weeks at peak a few years ago.)
So, if I were to go this direction, would you be telling me to do 3 hour trainer rides? Or would it make sense to do 2 hour trainer rides at higher intensity? I confess that 3 hours on a trainer doesn't sound very fun. But maybe it's what I gotta do.
Maybe this is a macro thread question... but if I'm looking at KS 70.3 as a first A race (HIM focus next year), I could do 16 weeks bike, ending in Mid Feb... 8 weeks run focus, followed by 8 weeks HIM plan... (would probably want to put a week "off" in there somewhere) Is that a plan? Or am I just not quite at the pointy enough end to do this and I should just stick with a normal OS? (Today's FTP test 257 on road bike, sub 150 lbs. 53 VDOT a couple of months ago, undoubtedly lower now)
Thanks for the great thoughts.
First of all William, I think your are definitely pointy enough to be looking into this. My guess would be that you would not be doing 3 hour trainer rides, more like 2 hours tops. Very interested in what the workouts would look like. I foresee a lot of 40+ minutes of FTP intervals in your not so distant future.
Rich,
This is something I am doing with my OS program that I started this month and would be interested in your thoughts on what I am doing. I fall into the category of "The Not Durable but also not so Fast Runner"
My thought is run 6 days a week 4 miles a day for Nov & in Dec. probably move most of the runs to 5 miles a day. I will also look to have a longer run on Sunday between 8-10 miles. Do this for November & December, then just follow the running plan laid out for the OS beginning in Jan.
My A race this past year was Wisconsin and here are my splits 1:04, 5:48, 4:56. I have not done much running since the race and thought this might be a good way of getting my run fitness back before I try and knock out Interval runs.
Last year starting in December I did the following
Dec-3 miles a day 6 days a week.
Jan-4 miles a day 6 days a week
Feb-5 miles a day 6 days a week
March-Transitioned over to more balanced training
April-raced IM NOLA 70.3 and ran a 1:49 off a 2:25 bike which was a PR for me. Ran 2:07 in 2010.
May, Tore my calf
May is where things went bad, a week before the Kansas City Triathlon, probably the biggest local Tri in KC I tore my calf. Looking back I had logged a lot of volume and had not done much in the way of down time. From Christmas until about March 15th, I never took a day off from training. I was doing the running, swimming 10k a week, a biking probably 3-4 times a week. I think the training load just finally broke me.
This year I want to see another nice running improvement, but want to go about it in a way where I don't end up injured. My "A" race for 2012 is IMKS 70.3. Does starting out with the Run block, then going to OS run training in Jan. sound like a good plan? Currently I still follow the OS biking plan and swim 1 or 2 times a week.
Thoughts?
Hiya, I'll jump in on this one. New member here at EN, but I'm a Masters swim coach.
Ramping up the mileage doesn't apply to swimming like it does to other sports. Swimming 20k a week without getting the technique dialed in sounds like an big potential for injury with little potential for gain. IMHO, swimming is 85% technique, 10% physique (flexibility/joint mobility, body composition, etc.), and 5% conditioning.
So to get better at swimming, I would create a swim-focus block where you find a good coach and work technique and drills heavily., Or if that's not available, pursue a book/DVD/website/swimming method to the best of your ability to improve technique. Swimming frequency can play a big part in improvement (it's very difficult to improve on less than 3x a week) but that works best with a technique focus.
The swimmers I see who make incredible gains in the pool have three things in common:
1) They work on their technique constantly, employing every means possible. They're the ones who ask me to stay after practice to critique their form more closely, or hire me for 1-on-1s. They watch videos of good swimmers on Youtube, they go through the Masters swim magazine technique articles with a fine tooth comb, they bring back lots of questions, they do drills every swim session and they really concentrate on them. They THINK when they swim, constantly.
2) They have good brain-body coordination. In my mind, swimming is closer to martial arts or dance then it is to biking or running. You have to think about what one specific body part is doing at a precise moment in time in your stroke and be able to change it. That requires that you have a good feedback loop between your brain and your body, good body awareness, and the ability to change what you're doing. People come with hugely varying degrees of this ability. However, it is somewhat malleable and can be improved with work.
2) With good form, these swimmers do focused intervals. They never ever swim crap yards. When their technique starts going downhill due to fatigue, they will even stop in the middle of a set and re-set their form.
I really like to use descending sets with swimmers who are looking to improve their times. So swim 100 slow (focus on technique), 100 medium (focus on technique, add in some power in the arms), 100 fast (focus on technique, add power, bring in the kick). Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Can be used with all distances. My fave IM training set is 3 x (3 x 500, descending). These sets allow for a reboot of good technique each time through.
Another good set: 50 technique, 100 swim, 50 technique, 200 swim, 50 technique, 300 swim, etc.
-Robin-
@robin, thanks for this post re swimming. As with almost everything where skills and fitness require building, we recommend frequency over intensity or duration as a primary means of building proficiency. In addition to your tips on missing drills / intensity into most sets, a regular swimming regimen with an emphasis on technique can help (say, the two week transition from the OutSeason into a regular training plan).
A further thought on SSB sequencing. Given that:
-I (we) tend to pork out after the end of the season, and I (we) then spend some of the OS trying to get back to a happy training weight; and
-it seems that run training on a light body would be of a higher quality, or faster, or would have less wear and tear between the heaviest and lightest versions of an OS body;
The idea of riding yourself skinny, and then running on that lighter frame might be the optimal order of operations, at least for those of us who are spending that time on a trainer and not riding up the sides of mountains. I'm happy to jump on the bike at 170 and ride myself to a 155, with no real performance difference aside from the w/kg measure. However, at 170, I'm a very different runner, with a different level of quality, than at 155.
**I know ... the answer is "don't pork out." But I make a deal with my body sometime during race season that it has lots of treats in store if I continue to push it, and that's the contract that keeps us going year after year.