In the attached article about a running and coaching legend Alberto Salazar's handling of Mary Cain, the following paragraph jumped out to me. It is a foundational element of my training and coaching philosophy. The term I use that is more common is "Periodization". This is why I am talk about rest and recovery being very important. While resting the strained system, it will adapt to the stress and become stronger, faster, or more efficient. It is also why I prescribe program training variances so that we strain and rest different mechanical and energy systems. One day would be more anaerobic / lactic threshold minded, and then followed by a long slow aerobic recovery run.
"From the moment Salazar started coaching Cain, he set out to develop her talent slowly over the course of many years, building her up and holding her back as necessary, aiming for her to peak when most female track runners peak, around age 25. All athletic training depends upon a careful balance of physical stress and rest and is governed by the progressive-overload principle. It holds that if an athlete pushes herself slightly out of her comfort zone — ramping up the distance she’s running, or her pace in sprints, or the amount of weight she’s lifting — then once she rests and recovers from that workout, she’ll be stronger or faster than before. But this adaptation, or supercompensation, as it’s called, lasts for only a short time. The key is to apply training stress again, during that window, to spur more adaptation and increase fitness."
I've covered Periodization principles in a previous post, highlighted by TrainingPeaks data to provide quantitative measurement of fitness gain.
No comments:
Post a Comment