"It is a sublime thing to suffer and be stronger."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American educator and poet
We've all heard it before, and keep hearing it all around us. At the suburban boot camp sessions, at football clubs, amongst mates, on films, in advertisements and more. Go hard or go home. No pain, no gain. Blood, sweat and tears. Cliché after glorified cliché...
While these are great for a moment of inspiration and motivation, as on-going messages they're miss-guided and ill-advised. Great performances are a result of great training, day after day after day after day. So anything that compromises your ability to do that - such as going too hard, too often - also compromises your capacity to improve.
What we're really after is a controlled approach to training, to bring about continual improvement rather than the skyrocket approach which usually ends up in a sparkle of dust and pieces as you crash back to earth, damaging your body, confidence, enthusiasm and simple enjoyment for the beauty of being fit and healthy.
A good coach will take a long-term approach to your development, guiding and shaping your progress with a measured strategy. With time and training, each aspect of your fitness and performance will improve in line with each other...things like your aerobic capacity, strength, coordination, skills, tactics, psychology, endurance, speed and so on. Consistency in training and development is important.
Think of each of these aspects as a pillar holding the roof above your head. Each one needs to be strong enough to take an equal amount of the load. But no pillar should become too strong at the expense of another pillar or else the roof will fall. Likewise, if one pillar has some troubles then the others need to be able to pick up the slack, to maintain the equilibrium while the weaker pillar becomes stronger again.
Think back to "Go hard or go home" and you can see how this approach can lead to all kind of imbalances between development of fitness aspects. However, having the ability to go hard is an important capability, and usually differentiates athletes at the finish line. The problem is that many athletes go too hard in easy sessions, and too easy in hard sessions (or races). They spend too long in the "mushy middle".
So when do you go hard? Easy. You go hard when you're meant to go hard, according to your coach / program, at the pace / intensity you're aiming for. The closer you execute your training according to script, the more you'll get out of it. When you're not going hard, go easy, and make sure there's a distinct difference / gap between hard and easy.
How hard is hard? That will depend on what you're aiming to achieve from the session. Hard could simply be a long run, which is hard because of the distance. Or it could be some gut busting 1km intervals, or 400m reps. The really important thing is to stick to the target pace / intensity, otherwise you'll change the nature of the session and compromise the objective you're after.
How easy is easy? It's what most people would consider very easy!!! You'll be surprised how easy, easy really should be. Talking pace. Comfortable. Relaxed. About 75% of max HR. Like the hard, it's important to make easy, easy enough that you're still ready to hard at the next session. If you're not ready, then perhaps your easy is too hard.
The ability to turn it on when you need to - in training and in racing - is vital to success, and is a hallmark of consistent performers. But it's how you control your hard and easy that distinguishes the good athletes from champions.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American educator and poet
We've all heard it before, and keep hearing it all around us. At the suburban boot camp sessions, at football clubs, amongst mates, on films, in advertisements and more. Go hard or go home. No pain, no gain. Blood, sweat and tears. Cliché after glorified cliché...
While these are great for a moment of inspiration and motivation, as on-going messages they're miss-guided and ill-advised. Great performances are a result of great training, day after day after day after day. So anything that compromises your ability to do that - such as going too hard, too often - also compromises your capacity to improve.
What we're really after is a controlled approach to training, to bring about continual improvement rather than the skyrocket approach which usually ends up in a sparkle of dust and pieces as you crash back to earth, damaging your body, confidence, enthusiasm and simple enjoyment for the beauty of being fit and healthy.
A good coach will take a long-term approach to your development, guiding and shaping your progress with a measured strategy. With time and training, each aspect of your fitness and performance will improve in line with each other...things like your aerobic capacity, strength, coordination, skills, tactics, psychology, endurance, speed and so on. Consistency in training and development is important.
Think of each of these aspects as a pillar holding the roof above your head. Each one needs to be strong enough to take an equal amount of the load. But no pillar should become too strong at the expense of another pillar or else the roof will fall. Likewise, if one pillar has some troubles then the others need to be able to pick up the slack, to maintain the equilibrium while the weaker pillar becomes stronger again.
Think back to "Go hard or go home" and you can see how this approach can lead to all kind of imbalances between development of fitness aspects. However, having the ability to go hard is an important capability, and usually differentiates athletes at the finish line. The problem is that many athletes go too hard in easy sessions, and too easy in hard sessions (or races). They spend too long in the "mushy middle".
So when do you go hard? Easy. You go hard when you're meant to go hard, according to your coach / program, at the pace / intensity you're aiming for. The closer you execute your training according to script, the more you'll get out of it. When you're not going hard, go easy, and make sure there's a distinct difference / gap between hard and easy.
How hard is hard? That will depend on what you're aiming to achieve from the session. Hard could simply be a long run, which is hard because of the distance. Or it could be some gut busting 1km intervals, or 400m reps. The really important thing is to stick to the target pace / intensity, otherwise you'll change the nature of the session and compromise the objective you're after.
How easy is easy? It's what most people would consider very easy!!! You'll be surprised how easy, easy really should be. Talking pace. Comfortable. Relaxed. About 75% of max HR. Like the hard, it's important to make easy, easy enough that you're still ready to hard at the next session. If you're not ready, then perhaps your easy is too hard.
The ability to turn it on when you need to - in training and in racing - is vital to success, and is a hallmark of consistent performers. But it's how you control your hard and easy that distinguishes the good athletes from champions.
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