Getting close to the end of the season means it's increasingly difficult to improve on fitness, especially if training has been consistent over the past several months.
The reason, of course, is that you've approached your potential as determined by genetic, training and lifestyle constraints.
Continuing to push the fitness envelope, especially in the same old training categories for the last few weeks of the season, will yield little if any performance benefit.
If you've been doing pretty much the same workouts for the last eight weeks or so you've probably gotten as much benefit out of them as you can. By continuing with this training pattern you are pretty much in a maintenance program.
What's Left to Work On?
The fitness areas now least likely to show any measurable improvement, assuming there has been steady training on a broad scale for several weeks, are aerobic endurance, hill climbing, race-related skills, muscular endurance and aerobic capacity. These are the areas that endurance athletes tend to stress regularly throughout the season, so they may already be near peak levels.
The best possibilities for fitness enhancement will now more than likely come from improved acid tolerance and muscular power training.
There may, however, be little need for these types of fitness, especially if you're training for a long, season-ending event such as an Ironman triathlon or other ultra-endurance race. For these events, continue to emphasize the base fitness abilities previously listed and focus on pacing and in-race nutrition. The other side of the coin is that the shorter the race, the more likely you are to benefit from the training I propose here.
There are two types of workouts I sometimes use with athletes at this time of year: acid reps and power reps.
Acid Reps
During exercise the muscles burn carbohydrate to produce energy and, in the process, lactic acid is formed. As it seeps out of the muscles into the blood stream, hydrogen ions are released and the result is an increasing acidity in your body fluids. If enough hydrogen ions enter the blood, acidity rises to levels that eventually force you to stop exercising.
With proper training, the body not only becomes more tolerant of acidity but also improves its ability to quickly remove acid from the body. The idea of such training is to create high levels of acidity for just a few minutes and then allow it to dissipate before repeating the process. These workouts aren't fun—unless you're a masochist. Here's an example of one such workout.
After a good warm-up, do three to six reps of 40 seconds duration recovering after each by loafing for 20 seconds. Yes, just 20 seconds. This ensures that you attain high levels of acid in your body to stress it and force adaptation.
After the last rep, recover for about four minutes. Repeat the entire set one or two more times within the workout. Do no more than 12 minutes of total high-intensity time within a lactate rep session. The first time you attempt this, do only six minutes of such efforts. That would be nine such reps. Should form begin to break down, stop the workout. Don't get sloppy.
The workout progression would go something like this:
Workout/week 1: 3 sets of 3 x 40 seconds
Workout/week 2: 3 sets of 4 x 40 seconds
Workout/week 3: 3 sets of 4 x 40 seconds
Workout/week 4: 3 sets of 5 x 40 seconds
Workout/week 5: 3 sets of 5 x 40 seconds
Workout/week 6: 3 sets of 6 x 40 seconds
Runners should look for a soft surface for this workout, such as grass, a track or dirt. Never do reps on concrete or asphalt.
Heart rate is not a good indicator of intensity for this workout; perceived exertion is better. The effort for each 40-second rep is near maximal. It may help to have a training partner to keep you going. Allow two days for recovery after this session and do only one of these in a week of training. After six weeks of these workouts, avoid them for at least another six weeks.
Join the Conversation