Overly Aggressive Progressive Overload

"I've always been able to train thirty-five hours a week, only now my weeks last closer to seventeen days than they do seven." ~CV

Pardon me here but I'm all jacked-up on sugar and caffeine, two substances I normally eschew. Every so often though I like to "shock" my body with something it's not familiar with: coffee, alcohol, concentration, lethargy, hitting the gym and squatting ass-to-the-floor style, bowling, sex---you name it. I do this because life is short and I'd like to experience as much as I can while I can. In life, you see, there is infinite possibility but a rather inopportune finite amount of time and I'd like to take a stab at as many of those possibilities as is, um, possible.

Most of us, it seems, come to this realization too late, after spending a vast chunk of our lives working to buy "stuff" and for "security." When we realize that stuff is just stuff and that security is little more than a feeling, we look back on all the time we wasted in the pursuit of them and often wonder what we were thinking. Time is the wealth, of course, and time well spent is the ultimate form of success. But enough pontification. I promise I have a point here and if I don't get to it before long I may lose you, the reader. By the way, thanks for reading, whoever you are.

My point is that it's important to "shock" the body every so often, to step outside our routines and our comfort zones and to extend ourselves, else we do not, and cannot, grow. And life is about growth. This is especially important as athletes. If we don't "shock" ourselves---our bodies, our minds---we rust.

"Unless you test yourself, you stagnate. Unless you try to go way beyond what you've been able to do before, you won't develop and grow. When you go for it 100%, when you don't have the fear of "what if I fail," that's when you learn. That's when you're really living." --Mark Allen

By "shock" of course I mean "challenge," just as Mark mentions.

It is important to understand this very basic principle of training: that without a challenge we do not improve.

Without a challenge we do not improve!

But how to challenge one's self?

It's not as complicated as it seems (e.g., you can head to the gym and squat ass-to-the-floor style). In the simplest sense you can take a close look at what you've been accomplishing as of late and amplify that load. Voila! A challenge!

For example, if you've been running 25 miles a week, try upping it to 35 miles or even twice as many. Forget this 10% crap---that you're not supposed to increase your load by more than 10% a week. To hell with the rules! Rules are convention and if we all stuck to convention we'd all still be living in the dark. The light bulb came about because one man decided not to stick to convention and then worked his ass off to change the way we see things (so to speak). And so it is that you too need to turn on the light bulb in your head and invent your own rules, your own challenges. Forget convention.

Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made thousands of unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail a thousand times?" Edison replied, "I didn't fail a thousand times. The light bulb was an invention with a thousand steps."

Pull an Edison and start taking steps.

If your "functional" "threshold" is 200 watts, then go out and sustain 210 watts for a longer period of time. What's that? You're crying that that's not possible?! Sure it is. Break it up into achievable steps. This might mean 210 watts as 12 x 6-minutes on an 8-minute "send-off." As soon as you achieve this, then achieve it again and again, right to the point your body "gets it." Then take a bigger step and up the ante again, after your body stagnates at this stimulus level. This is what those of us in the know call progressive overload, by the way.

Progressive overload is basically how your body adapts to new levels…how you grow. It is an important part of becoming a better athlete, perhaps the most important part. But it's important to understand that the words progressive and overload both need to be looked at in a manner that allows you to truly know what they mean.

Progressive need not mean from workout to workout or day to day or even week to week. It can mean that it (such progression) needs to be looked at from a longer range point of view, perhaps from month to month or year to year. (Or even decade to decade if you started all this stuff early enough.) As most prudent coaches would acquiesce, if you're sure you'll be involved in this experiment called triathlon for as long, then a long-term outlook is your best look. (If you're new to the sport or young, you can assume you'll be better later than you are now, assuming of course that you continue to introduce progressively greater levels of training stress to yourself, and subsequently absorb them, of course.)

By "absorb" I mean instead of a constant, quick progression, you need to allow your body to adapt to the workload you're currently doing, by doing it for a while. This essentially implies that you need to start to see a plateau at a specific workload before progressing to a greater workload, until you see those gains plateauing. Constant, quick progression is not adaptation but rather a one-way ticket to breakdown or staleness or performance decline. And any intense training that can be done without a solid fitness foundation can be done far more effectively after that base has been acquired. Good things come to those who wait. But better things come to those who work while they wait! As I've said before, the correct training is like the steady fall of raindrops slowly forging a hole in a rock. Some days the rain falls harder and some days it doesn't fall at all, but the process cannot be rushed.

So progressive is very much real and required but also highly subjective and individual. If you try to progress too aggressively (i.e., you apply too much of an overload) you'll incur a setback in one form or another (or through more than one form or another). Overload must therefore be controlled and wisely and patiently applied. If you overload too soon or by too much, or with too little recovery between tough bouts of training, your "progress" will stall or even go backwards, leaving your chances of progress as good as over, and anything but progress. You'd essentially need to let injury and illness be your guide.

And so overload really ought to be considered "load" so long as that load still presents you with more of a burden than what you're already capable of dealing with, over time. That's the "over" part in the word. It does NOT mean "overdo."

And that's the interesting thing: we adapt and grow from our mistakes so long as they aren't so great as to completely break us. There's a fine line between overload and overdoing it, and an even thinner line between fatigued and f%^ked. Such a line is highly individual of course, and your training partner's line might be well beyond or well before your line. Your line even differs from day to day! The key here is to know your boundaries by consistently stepping over them ever so slightly in attempt to push them outwards, upwards. So when I write "to hell with rules" as I did previously, it's important to understand and respect your body's rules. Break those and you will break down time and again. We all know athletes like this; I even know some guys like this who make their living as coaches, publishing books and/or blogs on how you should train! Train how YOU want, but you best obey the fundamental rules of exercise science and the even more fundamental rules of your body, else it'll be at its peril: your own.

Smart and steady will have you ready. Press on.

"When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens – and when it happens, it lasts." -- Coach John Wooden

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PS: I'm off to the Desert Classic Duathlon in Phoenix tomorrow, for the first multisport race of 2010. As coach I will not be competing, just silently observing those who are. Now if it were the Dessert Classic, well then, I'd definitely enter! Kobayashi has got nothing on me! Anyhow, if I have any thoughts on the race I'll post them on Monday or Tuesday. I personally feel that duathlons are tougher than triathlons, but the word "duathlon" is lame, no doubt. I'm not bisexual, I'm dusexual. What the...?

The Success Process

For the triathlete and humans in general (which most triathletes seem to be) there are basically three kinds of stress. First, there's the stress that benefits you, like intelligently applied training stress. Then there's the stress that doesn't benefit you. This type of stress can include detrimental choices like inappropriate recovery; poor nutrition; worrying about things you have no control over; repeatedly hitting yourself in the head with a two-pound block of pepper jack cheese; listening to country music, etc. Finally, there's the stress that I like to call success stress (not that I know much about success, but hey, I once knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a fairly successful guy. I also played a successful guy on TV once, but the show was pulled after one unsuccessful episode.)

"Success stress" is basically the stress of having achieved something you set out to do (e.g., reintegrating back into society after having walked from Mexico to Canada; the post-Ironman blues; the "now what?" process, etc.) Such a task involves (involved) plenty of stressful work (winning your age-group at a big race, for example) but the rewards of having done so far outweigh (or should outweigh) the stress of the attempt. Success stress, needless to say (though I will anyway), is also beneficial to the triathlete, even though it's still a form of stress. (In today's lethargic seek-comfort-at-all-costs-culture we tend to view stress as a bad thing, whereas as athletes it is very much necessary; ultimately, I've found that it takes stress to be happy.)

Where things get tricky, of course, is in defining success and moving on after it. Bear with me as I try to explain.

In the past I've coached a few athletes who made enormous gains throughout the year, and I ain't talking about the steroidal body-builders I used to spot for (Big gym guy: "Spot me!" Me: "Yep, there you are, I see you."). I'm talking endurance athletes, those who like to inflict long, drawn-out pain to themselves. Everything worked for these athletes because they worked. They watched both their health and fitness increase, while they became leaner, stronger, faster and more tanned (which, of course, is always a bonus, whether you're a steroidal body-builder or a twiggy endurance athlete). They met new friends and managed to drop training partners that they'd never dropped before, including their coach. They enjoyed the process all along and found themselves waking with anticipation of the day ahead, nearly everyday. But then, when race day arrived, they failed to meet their goal.

I posit: is that failure?

Not to me, it isn't.

And this is precisely why coaching is risky business…a risky business.

If an athlete is concise with his or her goals, success often hinges on a single result (e.g., qualifying for Kona) and it not only puts a lot of pressure on the athlete's scrawny shoulders but on his or her coach's shoulders too.

"If I don't win this race, I suck," the athlete might tell him/herself. In this instance I usually point out that, "Maybe, just maybe, you suck anyway," but they usually miss my point and me, well, I usually find myself with yet another black eye.

"Because you didn't win today means that you suddenly suck?!" I'll ask.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for winning. I've even done some of it myself, having won more Scrabble tournaments than anyone in my current household, and I know what a great feeling it is, especially when I partake in my customary post-tournament celebratory dance around the house for the next six or seven hours, banging my opponent's head with a two-pound block of pepper jack cheese as she tries to sleep. "Of course 'jo' is a word, fool!"

But because I've won, does it really make me BETTER than the next player? I mean, if she sucks (because she didn't win), then wouldn't I also suck, since I was in close proximity to such a loser? Suckyness by association? The whole thing seems laughable to me. Really, success is as much a process as it is a result. It is a moving target and it is never final, just as failure is rarely fatal. And besides, this whole sport (and all sports, not unlike life itself) is just that: a sport. A game. Fun. Recreation.

So let recreation be re-creation and recreate the person you were when everything was a game…when you were a child. Stress to be happy. If you continue to grow and learn, there will be no failure. Unless you were to play me in Scrabble, that is.

PS: I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from years ago...

"Live your life so that when you wake up in the morning, Satan says, 'shit, he's awake.'"

And whether you're hell-bound or heaven-bound be sure to raise some hell en route.

The Losers in our Sport

In the sport of triathlon there really are no losers*. Sure, there are nerds, dweebs, geeks, dorks, assholes, egos, stick people, loners, know-it-alls, whiners, gabbers, idiots and obsessive-compulsive types, but there really are no losers.

*Except, that is, for one type of participant. Enter the cheater.

Only the cheater, who too plays an unplayful part in our sport of sports, can be classified as classless, whether he or she even believes it. Yes, the cheater can be considered a loser, regardless of outcome. In fact, not only can they be considered losers, they are losers. Now naturally the cheater isn't just confined to triathlon. He (or she) can also be found in every other sport out there (every sport, actually...not every other). He or she can be found in corporate boardrooms, in the classroom, in government, in the courtroom (quite often here, in fact), behind the cash register, in your town hall, and, well, everywhere else you might care to look. Yes, cheaters can be found in all walks of life (though it's my guess they're trying to find a way from having to walk).

What is it with cheaters? Why do they exist?

(Disclaimer: I do not claim to be a sanctimonious sort or holier than thou. No, no, no. In fact, there's a very good chance that I wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't cheated death once or twice, not to mention having cheated my way out of my third consecutive year of third grade, amongst other things.)

Cheating doesn't exist in the animal kingdom but for humans. You see, animals have no egos to protect. Plus, they already know that life is unfair, and they get on with it. It isn't cheating when the hyena takes down an innocent gazelle, only to have it pilfered from her by a big, bad-ass lion. It is survival.

But humans, for the most part, and in particular those PLAYING in a game or a sport like triathlon, needn't really concerns themselves with survival. After all, triathlon is a country-club type of sport and those participating in it aren't exactly starving (though one might think otherwise when eyeing them). And yet there are those of us who enact these dirty deeds---cutting corners when no one is looking, taking performance-enhancing drugs and the biggie: drafting on the bike---essentially breaking the rules that are supposed to apply to us all.

Right around the time the first humans began to establish the rules of/for ethical behavior, so too did some scheming caveman start to work out ways to bend or break them. Cheating has evolved right alongside humans ever since then. Perhaps rules themselves are the problem, but I think we can all agree that the majority of rules are needed. I mean can you imagine what sort of chaos would exist without them? It'd be fun, that's for sure, and I'd have never been reprimanded for purposefully taking down a few wheelsuckers back in the day.

Statistics show that cheating is on the rise in almost every facet of human existence. But then again, whoever calculated those statistics probably cheated a little while doing so, so who knows what to believe! I personally like to do as our ol' Solvang (P)resident used to say, "Trust, but verify." (That's Ronny Reagan for those of who don't care to google; you're only cheating yourself.)

I tend to think that society's emphasis on getting rich, coupled with fears of financial "insecurity", has helped to foster the spread of cheating, and it's trickled down to everything and just about everyone. We cheat at work; we cheat our children; we cheat ourselves (i.e., diet); we cheat on our taxes. I find it interesting about financial security though; most people would feel terribly insecure on my income (an income that hardly ever comes in; I think I better go looking for it) and yet, for some reason, I do not. Like you, I stay afloat.

But I digress.

The triathlete may think he or she is special in their deceitful ways, but in truth they cheat for the same reason anyone else does (and I'm NOT talking about Tiger-like transgressions or cheating within a relationship here). They do it to make things easier on themselves. To get ahead. To boost their ego (which is obviously fairly fragile to begin with). To "earn" more money. To guarantee defeating someone they don't like. To see if they can. To remain "secure". Some people even cheat to become famous.

Take Rosie Ruiz, who, for a short while, had been declared the women's winner of the 1980 Boston Marathon. It turns out, of course, that Rosie took the fast track to the finish line (i.e., the subway), although to this day she still denies it. Thanks to Rosie and others like her, the timing chip became a part of almost every race, and video cameras are seen at all the big marathons. Rosie is an anomaly though; most cheaters aren't usually looking for that kind of public attention. In triathlon, only the top finishers get much attention anyway, unless your story is worthy of one of those cheesy human-interest sagas that run every December during NBC's Ironman coverage. (I actually like some of these, particularly one of the ones that ran during the 1993 Ironman.)

But once again, I digress.

One thing you frequently hear in triathlon, with regards to drafting, is the ol', "Well, everyone else was doing it" cry, as though this makes cheating completely justifiable. While it may be acceptable to the race director (let's face it: he's banking the big buck$ regardless of what goes on during the race) it should NOT be deemed acceptable for the competitors who enter in the name of fairness and fun or for the race marshals. One thing I learned years ago about excuses and justification is that the more excuses you need in order to justify your behavior, the more compromised your ethical compass will wind up pointing you. Ultimately, these types end up feeling like frauds---ala Nina Kraft---and find ways to fail...regardless of race results (believe it or not there is life after sport). Just look at Floyd Landis or Tyler Hamilton today, if you don't believe it.

But what is one to do if indeed everyone else is cheating?

Honestly, I wish I knew. You can do the right thing, but then you might end up feeling like lone chump who raced an honest race ("Daddy, why did so many people beat you?"). Or you could join the crowd. Hell, it might be impossible someday not to join the crowd, since the crowd continues to grow. After all, the more people cheat the more it becomes accepted. And the more it's accepted, the more people do it.

I know what I'd do, and let me just say I wouldn't be entirely proud of it. Moreover, I'm sure I'd be reprimanded for having taken such actions. Irrespective of their actions, purposefully taking down a few wheelsuckers at a time is really not all that nice. Still, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to help myself. They shouldn't have been sitting behind me so closely.