In yesterdays Posting on the importance of Base training I spent a small amount of time explaining the 3 "most important" Principles of Training.

These are the 3 Principles we have already looked at:
Principle 1: Specificity
Principle 2: Progression
Principle 3: Adapatation

So in todays Post, I am going to look at the other 7 Principles of Training, that will help you to get the best results from your training, and guide you safely past dangerous and unsafe training programs and practices.

Principle 4: Individual response -
Contrary to popular belief, all men (and women), are not created equal, and they do not all respond to the training stimulus in the same way.

Some of us train better in the morning, some of do not need to spend as much time working on our running , while others of us need to work a little harder on our running.

Our bodies also respond differently to exercise, so applying a "cookie cut" program or training session to a group of very different athletes, will not always deliver the the best results for each participant.

Principle 5: Overload:
In order for you to see improvement in your fitness or performance, there must be some sort of demand or Overload placed on the bodies physiological systems.

The training load (Overload), is controlled by manipulating:

• Training Frequency (How many times per week or day you train)
• Training Intensity (What % of your maximum heart rate you are working at).
• Training Time (The duration you spent training).

This is better known as the F.I.T principle

Manipulating these variables will result in the body adapting to the Overload, and you will see and feel the improvement. improvement.

The key to seeing continued improvement, is to ensure there is a continual and progressive Overload of the bodies systems.

Principle 6: Variation:
Training is meant to be enjoyable. If you do the same indoor session on the bike, not only will there no longer be sufficient Overload on the body, and improvement will cease, but you will very quickly lose interest in the training, and boredom will set in.

In its simplest form, your training program should alternate between easy and hard days, and activities of intense work, should be followed by some form of recovery.

Try mixing up:

• the time of day you train at
• where you train
  
• the route that you run along
• the lane that you swim in
• the people you train with
  

Principle 7: Warm up & Cool down:
The fact that something as simple as a warm up and cool down had to be included as a Training Principle says a lot in itself.

Every training session should be started with a 5 - 10 minute active warm up, including:

• a short cardio-vascular segement (3 minutes)
  
• a combination of dynamic stretches (leg swings, Arm rotations) and dynamic movements (lunges, lateral hops).
• a period of time building into the workout

Every training session should be ended with a cool down (a full body stretch forms part of the cool down):

• Slowly reduce training intensity and velocity, allowing the heart rate to come back to lower levels.
• Come to a gradual stop, and commence stretching.

Principle 8: Long Term Training:
Remember, Rome was not built in a single day.

This applies to all sports and exercise pursuits. The long term, continual application of a Specific Overload to the body, will lead to improvement.

If you try to do to much to soon, there is a good chance the body will breakdown (because of injury or illness) and you will have to cease exercise, and the next principle will become a reality very quickly.

Principle 9: Reversibility:
Use it, or lose it.

After developing a god level of fitness and conditioning, if you cease exercising, or drastically reduce the training stimulus, the body begins Detrain.

This basically means that the body starts to slowly return to unconditioned levels of fitness, and after a few months of doing nothing, you will be "unfit" and feel "out of shape".

Principle 10: Moderation:
Exercising in moderation is the best means to achieve athletic success.

Balancing your training, your social, emotional, mental and spiritual spheres, will ensure you will avoid burnout, injury, and more severe issues such as Overtraining and Excessive Fatigue Syndrome.

Make sure you have at minimum 1 recovery day per week, your training sessions are performed at a variety of training intensities and your nutritional and hydration status is optimal.

By keeping a few of these principles in mind while you are training or developing a training program, you will be sure that you are not only following a more scientific approach to your training, but are giving yourself the best opportunity for success.

We often hear talk of "..developing your Aerobic base" or "increasing your Aerobic fitness base", and in many books and articles training for an endurance event starts with training sessions that are aimed at improving your Aerobic Fitness.

Being the diligent individuals we all are, we go and spend a few hours each week training at a low heart rate, keeping our output at a level that will not elevate the heart rate or allow the accumulation of Lactic Acid to occur.

You may have wondered if these training sessions are completely necessary. Surely to get fitter, you need to training harder or in order to go faster you need to train faster.

Well the logic makes sense, unfortunately the opposite is in fact true.

Before we look at few of the most important reasons to continually train to develop your Aerobic fitness base, I would like to look at 3 important Principles of training (there are many others, but these 3 are the "main ones"), that will help you better understand the importance of Base conditioning:

1. The Specificity principle:
One of, if not, the most important principles in the Sport Sciences is the principle of Specificity. What it points to, is that the training stimulus should be specific to the sport being taken part in .

There are 3 important areas that must be kept in mind:

1. Specificity of Energy Systems - in road running the predominant energy systems are the Aerobic energy pathways. Obviously a certain amount of Anaerobic training is incorporated into the program too.
   
2. Specificity of the mode of training - as a long distance runner, running should be the primary activity used in training. Cycling could be used for cross training purposes.
3. Specificity of the muscle groups and movement patterns - The biomechanics of the training should be similar or the same as the actual movement of the sport (Hip extension and Hip Flexion etc).
   

2. The Progression principle:
We have all heard of athletes who have, at the last minute, decided to take part in an event, without sufficient time to prepare for it. They have trained very hard, over the short amount of time available to them, and have either had a terrible race, or have ended up with injury.

They tried to do "To much to soon" and the body was unable to cope with, and adapt to the stress placed upon it.

The end result - Dysfunction and ultimately breakdown.

3. The Adaptation principle:
The body requires a certain amount of stress stimuli placed upon it to force it to adapt to the new demands imposed upon it.

Each system (Muscular, Skeletal, Cardio-Respiratory) requires a different amount of time to adapt to the training stimulus.

With a progressive increase (progression principle) in training volume or intensity, the body will improve steadily without the risk of injury.

Armed with this knowledge, let's go into a little more detail on the importance of Base conditioning.

Working at lower intensities for progressively longer periods of time, allows the body sufficient time to adapt to the Training stimulus.

The Muscular system adapts a lot faster to stress and imposed demands placed upon it, than the Skeletal system . This means that even though the muscle might be capable of handling a 60 minute moderate paced run, the bones, ligaments and tendons might not be, and this can lead to inflammation or ultimately things such as stress fractures and other injuries.

Base training makes sure the Principle of Specificity of Energy Systems is taken into account when training.

The primary energy pathways used during your running event is the Aerobic pathway - Carbohydrate and Fats are used for energy.

Developing the bodies ability to use a greater amount of Fat and rely less on Carbohydrates, means you will be able to continue running for longer, without "running out" of energy.

It also means that that your body becomes a more efficient system, using less energy to do more work.

On that note, keep in mind that increased concentrations of Lactic Acid in the body "shut down" the bodies ability to process and use Fat as an energy source, so keeping activity at a lower intensity has a direct impact on what energy source the body is able to use.

Your Aerobic Base is like the foundation of a building. If it is a shallow foundation, the building will not be stable.

The larger the Base, the better you will be able to tolerate the higher intensity demands placed on your Physiological systems later in the program.

Your Aerobic Base is not created over a season, or 2. It is developed over many season od training, and takes time and patience to develop.

If you are thinking that training slow = racing slow, then you are 100% correct. HOWEVER - there is a time and a place for everything, and right now is not the time to be thinking about speed.

As the program progresses toward your event, there will be a change in focus from the Aerobic to the Anaerobic, from the slow to the faster.

A good level of Aerobic conditioning will allow you to get the most out of your Interval training when it begins, later on in your training program.

So for now, just go slow!

After yesterdays posting on posture and how dysfunction occurs, I thought this short (5 minute) video, presented by Danny Dreyer, developer of Chi Running, was especially relevant.

How a watch, and allow Danny to explain how Postural Dysfunction can impact your running.

The body is an amazing collection of hard and soft tissue, that when in balance and in alignment, allows us to do pretty amazing things.

But when this system of pulleys (muscles) and levers (bones), begin to fall out of alignment, a number of problems, potentially serious, begin to rear their ugly heads.

This full body image shows how, in a perfect world, you would like your body to line up.

The side profile clearly shows (Follow the small, red dots):

• The Ear lined up with the outside of the shoulder
• The shoulder aligned with the crest of the Hip
• The Hip aligned with the Hip joint
• The Hip joint lined up with the outside of the knee
• The Knee directly above the outside of ankle bone.

From behind, we look at the following (Again, follow the red dots):

• The position of the skull on top of the neck - not dropping to the left or right
  
• The alignment of the spine - is it straight, or is it skewed to the sides?
• Shoulders at the same height -
  
• Hips at the same height -
  
• Neutral Foot position - do the feet collapse inwards or outwards?
  

As I mentioned in the introduction, when muscles are out of balance, some long - some short, the affect on the body can be quite damaging and harmful.

The Head and Neck (Cervical Spine):
Weak Trapezius 1 muscles, Strong SternoCleidoMastoid muscles:
These muscles are responsible for pulling the head backwards (extending it), and when they become over-lengthened, they become weak, and holding the head the ideal position, becomes more difficult.

This might occur if you spend many hours looking down at a keyboard, or make jewelery.

In conjunction to this, the muscles at the front of the neck that pull the chin down toward the chest, become overactive and tight.

The solution: Stretch the muscles at the front of the neck, and strengthen the muscles at the back of the neck.


The Upper Spine (Thoracic spine):
Weak Trapezius 2 muscles, Strong Pectoralis Major muscles :

These muscles are responsible for maintain a good posture, and when they become weakened and elongated, allow your spine to curve forward and your shoulders to round forward.

This in conjunction with the chest muscles pulling the shoulders forward, leads to the appearance of a rounding of the shoulder girdle forward.

This is very common in most of us, because nearly everything we do (Computer work, Driving, eating) is in front of our body.

The solution: Stretch out the Chest Muscles and strengthen the postural muscles of the Mid-Spine: Rhomboids, Trapezius.

The Pelvis:
There are many muscles that have an impact on the pelvis, and the 2 groups I have chosen to look at are the Hamstring group (Image 1) and the Psoas group (Image 2).

The weak hamstring muscles at the back of the Pelvis, allows the Pelvis to tilt forward. This is exacerbated by the Hip Flexors become overactive, and tight and short.

Weak Psoas muscles (Hip Flexors) at the front of the Pelvis, allow the opposite to occur i.e. the Pelvis to tilt backwards. This situation is complemented by the Hamstrings at the back of the thigh, become tighter a shorter.

Each of these scenarios have an enormous impact on the functioning of the body, and can lead to Spinal mal-alignment, pain at the base of the spine (Lumbar Spine), and other problems above and below the pelvis.

It is important to remember that the body functions as a unit, and when some sort of dysfunction occurs (lower back pain), it is often not a direct result of trauma at the site of pain, but at some other point above or below it.

As a Coach and Trainer of athletes of all levels, it amazes me how little understanding exists amongst athletes about the nature of how the body produces the energy that drives it.

The body gets its energy from the food we eat every day, and from this food, our body is able to extract the energy it requires to keep us alive and for physical activity requirements.

The body can derive energy from Carbohydrates, Fats and Proteins, but is most efficient in metabolizing Carbohydrates, through a process know as Glycolysis.

If the body does not require the energy derived from food immediately, it stores it either as Glycogen (the storage form of Carbohydrates) in the muscles and the liver, or as fat.

Fats are an unbelievably rich source of energy, however, the process of Lipolysis (the process of getting the energy from the fat molecule), is not the bodies first choice for energy metabolism (Glycolysis is).

The main problem with Glycolysis, is that the stores of Glycogen in the body are very limited, and can only provide around 60 minutes of energy, before the stores are depleted, and if you are an Endurance athlete, you will experience a Bonk first hand.
Bonking is a phenomenon that occurs when the bodies stores of Carbohydrate energy are depleted to the point that the body will start to look to Fats and Proteins as its primary energy provider - not the most effective or efficient system of energy production.

There is also a lot of uncertainty around the terms Aerobic and Anaerobic amongst athletes in all sports. The meanings of these words are very important in your understanding of how the body produces energy.

Aerobic means in the presence of the Oxygen, which means that the chemical reactions that produce energy need Oxygen in the process.

Anaerobic means that the energy is in an a form that is immediately usable.

The Aerobic pathway utilizes Fats and Carbohydrates as its primary energy sources, while the Anaerobic pathway uses Carbohydrates.

I often get asked about the relationship that exists between Fats and Carbohydrates. It is a simple one:

As the intensity of exercise increases, the bodies reliance on Fats decreases, and its utilization of Carbohydrates increases, until it is relying almost 100% on Carbohydrates.

This is not ideal because as you know, these Carbohydrate energy sources are limited, and it is very difficult (if not impossible), to replace the energy that has been spent, Calorie for Calorie.

This is why, as Endurance athletes, a large percentage of your training is done at in the Aerobic training zones. The logic behind this approach is to attempt to reduce the bodies reliance on Carbohydrates, and at the same time, improve its ability to use Fats as its primary energy source.

This will leave your Glycogen stores available for when you require activity at a higher intensity (Anaerobic efforts), and help you avoid the dreaded Bonk.

The bottom line is that in order for the body to perform at an optimal level, the right mix of fuels need to be acquired i.e. the correct balance between Carbohydrates and Fats.

If you spend any amount of time reading any literature dedicated to cycling and triathlon, you will surely have noticed the volume of writing committed to the Power and related topics.

Power in cycling has become the Gold standard tool used by many athletes to represent their training intensity.

It has allowed us to take the Science of sport, to the next level.

Q: What exactly Power is.

Simply put, it is the rate of performing work, and is the product of Force and Velocity, and is presented in watts (w).

Power (w) = Work/Time

Translated into bike talk, it is the amount of time it takes to do a certain amount of work. Perhaps complete a century race, or a 40km time trial.

Asker Jeukenderup says it best: Power is the amount of energy that is transferred into the pedals every second.

Unfortunately, we are not very efficient on the bicycle, and this reading represents about 20%-25% of the total energy produced. This means the other 80% does not result in power transfer to the pedal, but is lost as heat energy.

So we now have a better understanding of what it is, how about looking a few numbers that give us some perspective on the sort of power outputs that are generated during various cycling efforts:


Obviously the more conditioned the individual, the better able they are to sustain a greater Power output for an extended period of time.

Q: How do we measure Power?

Most cycling power meters make use of a strain gauge to measure the torque applied (the strain gauge strip are attached to the crank and measure the "stretch" of the strip when a force is applied to pedal), and, combined with angular velocity (Pedalling speed), we are able to calculate power.

These strain gauges are mounted in the bottom bracket, rear hub or the crankset of the bike.

There are newer meters that do not use strain gauges, but instead measure power through a handlebar-mounted unit that measures the forces opposing the cyclist (gravity, wind resistance, inertia, rolling resistance) and combining these with velocity to determine the rider's power output.

It is based on Newtons 3rd Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Q: What is the benefit of using Power to gauge intensity over other methods (Heart rate for example)?

Power is the bottom line when it comes to bicycle racing.

It is far easier to determine at what Power output you must ride to complete a 40km TT in a Personal Best time, compared to using Heart rate.

There are many external and internal factors that affects Heart rate: External factors such as Environmental conditions such as: Heat, Cold and humidity, Physiological factors: Cardiac Drift, Dehydration and Fatigue or Other factors, such as: Caffeine, Medication and lack sleep.

Power is affected by anything that impacts your bodies to function efficiently (Increase in workload), however, it is shown in a real time display.

When the workload increases, the Power increases immediately - no delay - unlike heart rate, which takes a period of time to respond the increase in demand placed on the body.

Q: Why don't we all then use Power?

The most obvious answer is cost.

Power meters are not cheap, and not affordable to all cyclists. As a tool for maximizing your performance, it can prove to invaluable, and at the higher levels of competition, can be the difference between winning and losing.

Another factor is actually taking the enormous amount of information you can acquire from your Power meter, deciphering it and then applying it to your program.

At the end of the day, whatever you decide to use to quantify your training intensity, the most important thing is that you are able to clearly differentiate between different training intensities and what energy system is being used .

There has always been lot of talk (and controversy) surrounding the placement of the cleat on the sole of the cycling shoes and tradionally it has been recommended that it placed around the area of the ball of the foot.

In a posting I discovered by Joe Friel on the topic, I was intrigued by his thoughts on the placement, and that there was a cycling shoe company that made shoes that had the cleat in this alternate position.

Here is the posting from January 30, 2007:

Why do we place the cleat under the ball of the foot on our cycling shoes? I can find no evidence to support this location. It appears to be simply a result of tradition--cyclists have always done it that way.

Last July former pro cyclist and shoe designer Goetz Heine (www.biomac.biz) suggested I try putting my cleats in the arch of my shoes. With some skepticism I tried it. To my amazement my performance improved. In fact, my power-heart rate ratio which I tracked for years improved by 9%. That's a huge change.


Here you can see a picture of my Shimano road shoe with an SPD mountain bike cleat in the arch. I used a mountain bike pedal since the cleat has only two holes and I didn't want to punch too many in the shoe.

Crank Brothers pedals also work well for this position. Since changing over last summer I've done some searching of the scientific literature and found only two studies which looked at the traditional vs. the aft cleat position.

Both found there was no difference whether the cleat was under the ball of the foot, at the arch area, or somewhere in between. And those studies were done with experienced cyclists who had not adapted to the arch position.

So is there an advantage in placing the cleats farther back? I believe so.

Economy - how much effort it takes to ride at a given power output - improves. There may be lots of reasons for this which I won't go into here.

Another advantage is that the biggest muscles of your body - the quads and Glutes are used more since the calf - a relatively small muscle - is now less active and no longer serves as a "transmission" for the biggest muscles. This latter point is especially beneficial for triathletes who rely on those calf muscles as their primary mover when they start the run.

Fresh calf muscles mean a better run.

Should you try it? I've suggested to all of the athletes I coach that they move their cleats back toward the heels as far as they can. All that have tried it reported feeling more powerful.

The next step for those who use Speedplay pedals will be to try Speedplay new adaptor (cost $25) which allows them to put the cleat even farther back. If that still feels OK then we will talk about either modifying their existing shoes (not all can be re-drilled) or having custom shoes built (Rocket 7, DS Shoes, Biomac).

Interesting - Thanks Joe!