There is no magic training intensity
Podcast by Steve Magness and Jonathon Marcus
Last week’s podcast went down well from some of your feedback – many of you enjoying the presentation of information and the banter between the two coaches. This being the case, we are providing another one of their podcast episodes for you to listen to this week.
This episode follows on nicely from last week where you listened to them describe how sports development takes time and cannot be rushed (there are no shortcuts!), this episode covers training intensities, more specifically, “There is no magic training intensity”.
This podcast discusses training intensities, and especially middle ground training that is well known to cause more injuries, illnesses and burn out – and we covered in a blog last year!
With various magazines, YouTubers, training apps, tools, classes pushing HIIT/HIT, “threshold”, “lactate”, “sweet spot”, “race pace” etc session you have all questioned at some point why we don’t include / emphasis the MEDIUM effort range.
As you all know, MEDIUM effort is our classification of “race pace” – the upper effort you can safely maintain in a race. Push your body up to MEDIUM and you will finish your races fast and consistently, not needing to slow down to recover at any point. You should feel comfortably uncomfortable – equally uncomfortable feelings in your muscles and heart rate/breathing rate.
We train your aerobic system (EASY effort) and your muscular skeletal and neuromuscular system (HARD efforts but still at aerobic levels). Triathlons is an aerobic sport, that requires muscular and neural strength for movement replication – muscular endurance.
Training EASY and HARD trains your MEDIUM level too – indirectly, but directly!
Bonus material, another Ted-Ed video covering another topic we see too much of and know causes aches and pains in some of you! Most of you know “the hidden risks of sitting”, but here is a reminder of why you should try to spend less time sitting:
