Training for an endurance event takes time, dedication, resilience, discipline, but most importantly, consistency. Online training programs often look well structured and mostly cover the key elements, however, recovery and injury prevention measures often gets a small mention at the bottom of the page, and are viewed as an extras if you have time. This article will outline some key elements to consider when building your own training program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE PILLARS OF PERFORMANCE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undoubtedly, to improve at any sport you need to do sport specific training. However, building a good solid foundation is integral to your progression, ultimately allowing you to train more consistently and becoming better at what you do. I have always based my training on creating good habits around sleep, diet, functional stability and recovery days. These elements make up the pillars of performance, and provide you with a solid foundation to then build your training upon. Neglecting these elements may hamper your training and will prevent you from reaching your true potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sleep<\/strong> is the most fundamental aspect of human health and plays a key role in how well you perform. My article on sleep<\/a> explains the importance of a good night of rest. As a general guideline we should aim to have between 7-9 hours of solid sleep each night, and the hours before midnight are seen as the most important. To improve your sleep try reducing screen time in the evening, take a hot bath\/shower before bed and make your bedroom as dark as possible. Matthew Walker<\/a> is a neuroscientist and recommends these small techniques to improve the quality of your sleep. His book “Why We Sleep”<\/a> is a must read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diet<\/strong> plays a key role in providing quality nutrients to the working muscles and aids so heavily in recovery. The latest fad diet or recovery super food won’t miraculously boost your performance. However, consistently eating a whole food, predominately plant based and balanced diet full of variety will have a huge beneficial affect on your health and performance. Matt Fitzgerald’s book the Endurance Diet<\/a> highlights how normal highly successful endurance athletes actually eat. They don’t restrict food groups, excessively count calories or embark on fashionable dieting. They do however, restrict junk food and deep fried food, which we already know has very little benefit to our health and performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Functional stability <\/strong>is an integral part of any training program and should feature each week. A lot of sports train the body in a very specific range of motion and as one part of the body becomes strong, another part can become weak. Challenging your body daily for 15-20 minutes with core <\/a>routines<\/a>, rotational <\/a>exercises<\/a> and movement practices<\/a> will help build a more balanced robust body, and will help minimise your risk of injury. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recovery<\/strong> is often neglected but is essential for adaptation to occur. Your training session creates the window of opportunity for adaptation, however, we actually get stronger during the period of recovery after training. Simply training harder and harder each week without adequate and scheduled recovery may end in injury, sub optimal performance and over training. Be mindful of how the body feels and understand key markers of this- repetitive injuries, poor sleep, loss of appetite, drop in performance and mild to severe depression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

FINAL THOUGHTS <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of online training programs look well structured, identifying in detail specific training sessions and training blocks. However, recovery and injury prevention measures often get little mention, and are so often the reason for suboptimal performance and injury . Don’t get me wrong, there should be great emphasis on sports specific training to prepare for an endurance event, but the emphasis often leans too far towards a specific speed session or the amount of kilometres we have to train each week. You can greatly enhance your performance by being mindful of your sleep, improving your diet, incorporating daily functional stability training, and factoring in proper recovery periods. The Movement Project helps with this process. Building good habits around the pillars of performance will benefit your training and help you reach new heights in your performance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Build endurance on a solid foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-training"],"yoast_head":"\n