Friday, February 20, 2009

XTRI.com Featured Writer

If you frequent XTRI.com at all, you've probably seen some of my recent articles and posts there. They have a section of the website called "Coaches Corner", where many of the prominent coaches in the sport of triathlon post about many training topics and issues, from their perspective. I now am a featured writer for Coaches Corner called, "The Training Bible". Check it out, and even follow the posts here to know when new items are there.

In fact, I have a new article there called, "It's not about the swim, bike or run...Well, not entirely". Here's that article....

I admit it. I stole the basis of that line from Lance. But I like it. It has a real meaning to it, but that meaning is different to each person. For some, it means there is more to be had than just triathlon. I agree with that idea, but with the athletes I work with, I find myself more and more trying to get them to see beyond the simplicity of just the sports, if they want to improve.

Quality performance in races requires swimming, biking and running well, we all agree with this. These are clear physical requirements to perform well, and athletes will endlessly train these physical parameters to try and reach their competitive goals.

The odd part of this is that we all know there is so much more to performance than just physical effort and skill. Confidence, focus, tactics, technical skill, and even diet, nutrition and hydration all play key roles in the sport, as well as many other factors. So why do so many athletes only focus on the physical? How much could be gained by athletes cutting back on the physical and becoming more focused on the other aspects which greatly influence performance.

Read the rest here at XTRI's Training Bible.

Coach Vance

2 comments:

Bill said...

Well put, Jim.

I just recently discovered the "Training Load" plugin for SportTracks, which is similar to the WKO+ output from Training Peaks.

As I go back and review the previous few years of data, I realize that I've worked too hard through my tapers and entered all of my races unrested. Also, I had also been scheduling my pre-race peaks 1-2 weeks too late, significantly cutting into that taper.

At 40 years old, that recovery is becoming more and more important.

Now we'll see how it all pans out next month during a 60K trail run.

Jim Vance said...

Great Bill! Good luck with the 60K!