Our training program is based on heart rate training
principles. The basis of the program comes from training
programs developed by Intelligent Health and Fitness, the
suppliers of Polar heart rate monitors in SA. The reason that
we like these programs are because they are flexible and
relatively simple to follow.
Training Programs
Training programs are found everywhere in magazines and on
the internet, and obtainable from training companies and
coaches. Following a program blindly is not necessarily the
best way of going about it. It’s a bit like the fishing
analogy, giving a poor man fish vs rather than teaching him to
catch his own fish.
Problem with many programs is that they just don’t make
sense, are too complicated, too prescriptive or just too
demanding and not always pitched at your level. Everyone has
different levels of fitness, different time constraints and
different goals, so finding the right program for you can be a
bit like finding a needle in a haystack. There is no reason
that it should all be so complicated because most training
programs are based on the same fundamentals. So if you can
learn the fundamentals and apply them, then you are set to go
on to bigger and better things. If you can understand and
apply the fundamentals then there is a good chance of you
really sticking to a training program for an extended period
and reaping the long term rewards. If you can understand how
and why you train a certain way, it will make it a lot easier
to follow the program and you will be much more motivated and
committed.
Back to Basics
We landed up using this program and committing to it after
coming from a very social riding background and have no prior
understanding of how it worked at all. Our belief and
experience has been to go back to basics, get that right first
and then once that is habit start to add more variation and
specific training techniques. If you have never followed
structured training before then you stand to benefit the most
by simply following a structured program. Just by applying the
basics and getting the fundamentals right you will make huge
progress and be amazed at the results that you can achieve.
You will find our program to be very simple and easy to
follow, and it will prove itself time and time again. After
more than 3 years of following it we continue to see the
benefits and it continues to amaze us.
We found that following a simple training program is better
than not following the best training program. [systematic
training quote]. The real secret of a training program is not
what is written on paper or a book but rather what you
actually do. It is all about understanding what you need to
do, how to go about it, monitor how you are doing and being
disciplined.
Real World training
Our experience does not come from degrees doctorates and
thesis’s but instead from real world experience. Like most
people we got heart rate monitors to help us with training but
never really understood how to use them or what their
potential really was. After discovering heart rate based
training via one of the Polar heart rate training workshops we
have never looked back. When it came to our
first Cape Epic we
took a modified Polar training program and used that as the
basis of our training. Then over a period of 3 years we have
continued to refine our training plans with great success in
the Cape Epic.
These training plans are ideal for amateur riders who need
something to work towards and some form of guidance. Using
Polar software together with this plan is like having your own
personal trainer. It gives you goals and something to aim for,
an easy reliable way to measure and record your progress and
most importantly keeps you training at the right intensity
levels.
Understand your training
There are some fundamentals in heart rate training that are
important to understand in order to really benefit from these
programs. I have proven these fundamentals to myself through
the years. However at first I too was sceptical, so any extra
reading or courses covering heart rate based training would be
very useful in helping this process along. There are a few
books written on the subject of heart rate based training that
can be recommended. The free workshops offered by Polar are
useful and practical ways of getting to grips with the
concepts.
Principle 1:
The first fundamental principle of training is that you
increase fitness not while training but after training, during
recovery. This is due to the fact that training is a stress on
the body, which the body then reacts to by increasing its
strength. This process starts to happen after training has
stopped and continues for a period of time afterwards. So this
means that you need to allow time to recover during an
exercise work out and an exercise program. Hard and long
workouts or efforts need to be followed by periods of recovery
to allow the body to strengthen in preparation for the next
workout.
Principle 2:
The second principle is to understand the relationship between
training time and training intensity. The training time is the
duration of your training and intensity is your heart rate and
exertion during exercise. The relationship is defined by a
simple law: the longer the duration the lower the intensity
and the shorter the duration the higher the intensity. Put
simply the easier and slower you ride, the longer you will be
able to ride for, while the harder and faster you ride the
shorter you will be able to ride. In a race situation, a
sprinter has high intensity over short distance while a long
distance athlete has low intensity over long distance. Getting
these mixed up in training can lead to fatigue and destructive
training.
Principle 3 = Principle 1 + Principle 2:
The third principle is a combination of first two principles,
principle 1 being load and recover, principle two being
intensity and time and this gives you the concept of load -
overload – recover. This then is the principle that you will
use in a single interval training session as well as in the
overall program which has weekly training cycles.
So using these principles you can understand how to put
together a basic training session as well as a whole training
program. This program then runs in periodic cycles by varying
intensity and duration in such a way that it builds the body
up while minimising fatigue.
The Polar programs have been setup as 12 week or 16 week
programs
Be Realistic
Training to a program sounds easy enough but actually it
requires commitment and dedication. So it is best that you set
yourself up to win rather than to loose by choosing a
manageable flexible program that will give you the
satisfaction of completing it. The most important part of a
training plan is to do what you say, so firstly know what it
is that you are aiming to achieve, make sure that your
objective is realistic and manageable and then commit to it.
Just sticking to the plan will be a huge achievement and
reward in itself and then of course the improvement in your
performance and fitness will be the real benefit.
Follow the Plan
To make sure you are following the plan you will need to be
completing the total training time, achieving the overall
goals for intensity and lastly be following the weekly
intensity and time goals. The most important is to achieve
your total hours of training while erring on the lower side of
intensity. Remember you need to be doing the right training at
the right time at the right intensity. So if you miss time and
try to catch up you will probably compromise your training,
either time or intensity. Achieving the overall goals of
intensity will mean that you have prepared your body correctly
for the relevant event by not over training the body and by
achieving the desired levels of endurance versus power
fitness. The weekly time and intensity goals force you to rest
when necessary and take you through a structured load,
overload, recovery cycle.
With an understanding of these basic principles you should
be able to interpret most training programs, especially the
Polar heart rate programs.
There is more info at
www.polar.fi
If you have specific questions or comments then
contact us, or discuss and
share your experiences and advice for others to see at the
Epic Guide Discussion.
