How to Effectively Moderate Your Workouts and Why

There’s an old adage in the coaching world that goes something like “you don’t get stronger from the training, you get stronger from recovering from the training.” What these words of ancient wisdom ultimately mean is that if you aren’t actually recovering from the workouts you are doing, you most likely won’t get any faster or stronger and in some cases, your body may even deteriorate due to chronic under recovery. Another adage that gets tossed around a lot is, “work smarter, not harder.” The way I like to apply this to my coaching strategy is to ask the question: “how can we do the bare minimum while still facilitating adaptation?” In this article, I’ll present a few strategies to help you learn to moderate your workouts and make your training the most impactful for progression.

 

Training in conjunction with life stressors

As we all know, training does not take place within a vacuum. Not only do you
have to do your 2x20 minute threshold intervals but you might also have to work eight
hours that day and pick up your kid from school and soon enough your recovery is
diminished. Sometimes external stressors are unpredictable or simply out of your
control, but you can work with your coach to optimize your schedule to minimize their
impact on your training. Schedule recovery or off days when you are the most time
limited/stressed, training was probably not going to be very productive anyway.
Conversely, schedule your hardest training sessions on your lowest stress days, which
may end up being on the weekend when no work is scheduled.
Time management

Time management with training is very important, as this will minimize the impact
of external stressors and keep recovery as high as possible. Healthy time management
might look like prepping meals for the week, so you always have a meal readily
available post ride or post work to fuel a workout or recover from one. Effective time
management might also mean knowing how much time you can allot to training each
day. Be realistic about this number and remember that if you are having to rush to the
next thing, you are probably not going to recover as effectively as you could be, so build
in some buffer time for eating, putting the feet up, and maybe the occasional mishap,
such as getting a flat tire.

 

Sometimes more is more and sometimes less is more

Once you have optimized your schedule to maximize your recovery time from
training sessions, you can start to moderate your daily workload. This is definitely a
more advanced practice, so work with your coach to help figure out what will be most
effective for you and your schedule. When prescribing training, I almost always
prescribe training in a range rather than as an absolute. For example, instead of
prescribing an endurance ride of 3 hours in total, I would prescribe 3-4 hours in total.
Figuring out whether to do 3 hours vs 4 is something your coach may not necessarily
have the answer to. My answer would be to do as much as you can recover from, and
this is meant to be somewhat ambiguous, encouraging the athlete to figure it out based
on time available on the day, as well as the non-training stressors they may be dealing
with.

 

 

Remembering the big picture

Reframe the way you think about training to include the next few weeks and
maybe even the next month. Looking at the big picture will help keep training in check.
No need to ruin yourself in a single training session only to have diminished quality for
subsequent training bouts. Saving just a little bit of extra energy during your training
sessions is usually the best practice to set yourself for success for the following day of
training. Remember, getting stronger happens over months of consistent training, so
think about how you can most effectively execute a training block rather than a single
session.

 

Taylor Warren Is a USA Cycling Level 1 Coach that has raced at the elite level since 2014 and graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Exercise Physiology from Colorado State University in 2015. Taylor continues to race at the elite level with CS Velo Racing, gaining experience and wisdom to help impart to the athletes he works with. Taylor is also a student of the game, with a passion for human performance and physiology, he is able to combine his race experience with an understanding of how the human body responds to training to deliver the best possible coaching experience. Taylor believes in a practical, holistic approach to coaching and training that values the athlete’s lifestyle and understands how to make the process approachable and enjoyable.
Learn more about Taylor and Source Endurance here.