IM training top 10 list
- It’s better to be under-trained than over-trained - You will enjoy the training more and have less chance of injury or mental burnout. You will have a better race if you are 80% fit with no injuries than if you are 100% fit with an injury.
- Make your hard days hard and your easy days easy - Most people train too hard on their easy days. This means that when they have to do a hard workout they are too tired to give 100% to it. You need to keep a focus on recovery during your training. For every workout that you do, you should know what its purpose is.
- The best training protocol is the one that gets you out the door - Your coach can give you the best training plan in the world, but if you aren’t motivated to execute it, you won’t succeed. If training with your friends is what you enjoy and this means doing a work-out that is sub-optimal for you because they are either slower or faster than you, it is better to do that and have fun, than to start missing workouts because you aren’t enjoying the training.
- Train consistently - This goes along with number 3. You won’t develop speed over long distances without week after week (or better yet years after years) of consistent training.
- Technique is a choice and technique is more important than pace - Whether it is swimming or biking or running, technique is very important. Perfect technique will get you to the finish line with the lowest possible energy expenditure. If you want to see horrible running form, just watch the end of an ironman. If you don’t practice perfect form in training and actively work on drills to improve it, you won’t be able to maintain it when it counts at the end of a race.
- It never gets easier, you just go faster - If anything it gets harder. The faster you get, the more work and the more attention to details (like nutrition, stretching, strength, form) are required in order to make improvements. Your body is also better able to handle the stresses of going fast so you can push it even harder.
- It takes a long time to get good - It takes a lot of hours of physical training and mental training in order to get really good. Even once you have done all of the physical training, you still have to be mentally ready for all of the unexpected that can happen on race day.
- If you would not be able to do the exact same workout tomorrow, today’s workout was too hard - This goes back to recovery. That doesn’t mean that you should be able to do the same workout three days in a row, just that you shouldn’t be so trashed after your workout that you need to take the next few days easy (or off completely) so that you can recover.
- You never fail, you simply produce results, learn from those - No matter how fit you are, there will be races where you don’t perform up to your fitness level. You can either beat yourself up for those “failures”, or you can analyze what went wrong and develop a plan to handle those things in future races.
- JFT (just f***ing train) - At the end of the day, it all comes down to this, did you do the miles or not? There will always be other commitments, bad weather, and things that just come up. Either you will find a way to get your training in despite these obstacles or you will be beaten by the people who did.
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