By: Eric Kenney
With busy schedules, many athletes just don’t have enough time to work on all the aspects necessary to reach their full potential. Thus, it is of great value if one can combine workouts. I am not talking about a brick workout or double sessions. I’m talking about maximizing your time. Even pros who train for a living need to be effective with their time and training. Do you think Lance logged any junk miles while training for the Tour? Don’t think so.
A great way to do this is by focusing on more than one area of your training during your workout. By placing workouts within workouts one can get a double whammy effect out of his or her training. Consult your coach before concocting your own “double whammy” workouts. One of the best ways to do one of these is to place tech drills or hard intervals into a longer endurance workout.
For example:
- During your 3 hour ride, focus on your technique while riding up hills. Keep pedal cadence high and concentrate on pedaling “perfectly” (Consult a cycling coach if you need help with this).
- Alternate standing and sitting. Stand up on one hill, for the whole hill, sit on the next. Hone your skills.
- Do fast pedal drills in your long ride or strides in your long run.
Another option is to do intervals or some sort of harder effort during your work out. If you are looking to increase your power or speed, do your intervals after a solid warm up. Cool down easily, hydrate and fuel up appropriately, then continue with a low intensity endurance workout.
Bike example: 20’ warm up.
3×10’ level 3-4. (rest 3’).
10’ cool down, continue cool down at level 2 for 2 hours.
Looking to focus on more endurance for that IM. Do the intervals after 2 hours of riding at level 2. BAMB! Two birds with one stone! Please consult your coach or a coach before doing any of these as they are a bit more taxing than your normal single aspect workouts that mere mortals do. There are some “double whammy” workouts that are a bad idea. Example: working two different maximal effort zones in the same work out. Working long tempo, cooling down then doing 1minute intervals. Not effective training here.
With proper planning there is no reason that anyone can’t finish that IM, be a contender in their age group, or win the big one. Happy training!
Eric coaches athletes of all levels in triathlon, cycling, mountain, biking, Cyclocross
and is working with RAAm solo rider this year!
I will try to use this method
I’m not athlete any more, working at the office now ..
Is this method suitable for me ?