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Training Concepts > Swim . Bike . Run . Strength . Mental . Recovery
Training
Work . Rest . Test > Improve
How does training with heart rate monitor, GPS, or a power meter help me?
Power meter, GPS, and heart rate monitor devices have taken over the triathlon community by storm. No longer reserved for the elites, athletes of ALL levels are improving faster than ever before. These exciting tools allow for the real-time measurement of intensity and record multiple channels of data for easy sharing with your coach. They also provide a means to quantify the training stress of a workout session. With over 10,000 athlete files in Coach Matt's collection, we've got the experience and expertise to shift your training to a whole new level.
Early in your Blueshift coaching experience, you'll complete a field test in all 3 sports to determine your proper intensity zones. For example, a time trial on the bike will show a maximum steady state output for both power and heart rate that corresponds to your lactate threshold. This effort might last 1 hour and produce 100 stress points. Similar tests can be done for the swim and the run. Not only is the athlete held to a higher standard of accountability for their daily workout execution, the data is also used to calculate the overall stress load of each session. Over many weeks and months, important patterns in your averge daily stress points will emerge that show the phases of training that worked best and where over-reaching starts to occur. Through regular testing and training at the appropriate intensity, all athletes can challenge themselves and expect to see remarkable performance gains.
"I was feeling great up until mile X, then the wheels fell off the bus." Sound familiar?
All endurance athletes know the inverse relationship between speed and endurance. The longer the race, the more finely tuned your pacing strategy should be. Start out too fast, and you're guaranteed to pay a heavy price down the road. Setting up intensity zones from field testing is a first step towards crafting your ideal race plan, but it's simply not enough.
Using the advanced features of WKO+, athletes can get get an accurate picture of their entire fitness profile. The "mean maximal" graph shows peak performances across a wide range of durations. For example, your best 5-minute power effort (an indicator of VO2max) might come from a group ride in the middle of the season, whereas your best 1-hour effort (an indicator for lactate threshold) migth come from an indoor time trial several weeks later. Combined with field test results, these ongoing breakthrough updates provide a glimpse of the athlete's relative strengths and areas for improvement. When heart rate is combined with an objective measurement such as power or pace, the athlete can then focus on the decoupling of established normals to further refine their racing strategy.
In summary, "training" can be redefined as a systematic push on various parts of an athlete's mean maximal curve, seeking greater outputs over longer durations. "Racing" is an intimate knowledge of one's own performance envelope, the discipline to pace correctly, and the ability to adapt to the course and environment.
Training Concepts > Swim . Bike . Run . Strength . Mental . Recovery
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