What i’m reading…
I love reading books and articles about other coaches and influential people. My favorite book is Steve Jobs. Ruthless. Passionate. Simple. Relentless. My readings have gone in phases over the years. Earlier in my career it was text books, scientific studies, and coaching manuals. The amount of folded edges, pen marks, and posted notes could save a rain forest. What motivates me now is people. Helping and understanding people. How and why relationships start. How relationships evolve and improve. Why relationships end.
Dan Lorang is a tremendous coach. He is the long time coach of Jan Frodeno and Anne Haug. He is also the head coach of world tour cycling team Borah Hansgrophe. Dan is one of the best endurance coaches in the world. In 2019, Dan coached the Men and Women’s champion at Kona. *mic drop
When you study coaches, Dan has a certain trend with his training principles. When you look at the world’s best coaches, the qualities to look for is their execution style more than just cool training sessions and training volumes (note: those don’t really matter as much as you’d think).
Unfortunately advise from the best coaches often times leave you feeling underwhelmed. If I hear the word “consistency” one more time…where are the epic workouts? You think you found the pot of gold only to feel the need to keep looking, there has to be more! This tip from one of the world’s best may look straight out of a magazine but it truly is gold.
Dan, for triathletes, has said many times that he trains specific energy systems in phases. This can be simplified as “a training block of vo2 max” where they train specifically to improve that energy system in swim, bike, and run. This can contradict the idea of training multiple energy systems at one time. Sometimes (many times) when we try and do too many things at once only to accomplish very little things.
“We have a first phase of technique and VO2max where we increase the aerobic capacity and get them ready for the season, then a phase more focused on strength and endurance, before a third one where we focus on economisation closer to competition with race intervals. We repeat these phases 2-3 times per year and normally after a race we start them all over again, but they’d be shorter.” Dan Lorang
Personal Musing….
Is there anything worse than not improving? For years I barely saw improvement. In fact I wrote a blog post about how slow i’ve gotten “In 8 years I’ve managed to get 13 minutes slower over the same course. How could I possibly take confidence from this?”. However that has been changing. Yay. Whew. I do this sport for the feeling of grinding out my training. Enjoying the challenge. Seeing improvements. Having structure to my life. I love the feeling of fatigued legs the morning after a hard workout day.
This past week I did multiple FTP tests. I highly recommend it as it identifies strengths and weaknesses in your athlete profile. I know I don’t have great power at vo2 max, but I still like to test it. I like to see how certain training intensities influence it without actually training at it. Recently I’ve been doing sessions and volumes of intensities that intimidate me. Before each workout I warn Cindi “This is going to be brutal”. Before I even started the test I knew I had improved, I saw it in my training sessions. Wattages started to feel easier. Heart rates started to drop. This is a great feeling. During this phase I actually dropped my bike volume by 3 hours a week and cranked up the volume of intensity. IN FACT, entering this 6 week block I had come back from a two week period where i didn’t train AT ALL. Stupid IT band.
Thursday was Ramp Test and Saturday was a 5’ and 20’ Test. I increased my ramp test result 3% from November and increased 5% in my 20’ test from November. Also, i’m four pounds lighter than I was in November so that’s a bonus. I told Cindi after Saturday’s test that I need 10 more watts and 5 less pounds to feel like accomplished.
For what though?
Simple.
For me.
~Coach Steve