TJ Woodruff ONLINE

A couple posts back I briefly talked about intensity and its importance within an effective training regime. I was thinking about this again during my ride today and decided that it would be a good idea to continue by talking about the role of training volume (time or duration). After all, it is the combination of volume and intensity that make up your total training workload. Keep in mind, Volume x Intensity = Workload.

Also, this mini-article is written with the assumption that you train in order to improve physical performance. This might sound silly, but many people claim to “train,� but fail to give any thought to how their “training� will actually benefit their fitness.

You may have asked yourself, “How much should I ride?� This question could be placed in the context of a single day, week, month, or a year. The answer to this question can be complex and should be based on more than simply what the weather looks like. Let’s break it down and consider the factors that lead us to a suitable decision.  We can do this by asking a couple of questions.

1. What type of racing do you intend to do?  When you answer this, you effectively determine the amount of endurance required so that you can finish strong without totally bonking or crawling across the finish line.  Will it be three day road stage races, back to back NMBS XC and STXC events, or single day WORS races that show up on your schedule? With this knowledge you can quite precisely (thanks to the advent of power meters) determine the mechanical energy and caloric demands that these events will require at your expected level of performance.  Once you understand what your racing will require of you in terms of endurance, you’ll have a better idea of how much training volume will be required. This helps to establish a suitable training volume that will allow you to perform well in your selected events.
2. The second, highly important factor that affects your decision regarding an appropriate training volume relates directly with daily life stresses. Each of us faces unique demands each and everyday.  A person only has so much available energy, so it is important to objectively look at what amount of energy can be put into training. Here a professional athlete will have nearly 100% of their ‘energy’ that they are able to devote to training. A master athlete who works 40+ hours and has a wife and kids obviously has less ‘energy’ that can be focused solely on training.  A college student might fit somewhere between these two relative extremes. The balance between training stress and ‘everything else stress’ can only add up to 100% of the total ‘energy’ available. It’s just simple mathematics here, really. If you try to do more than life’s circumstances allow you’ll only end up burnt out, stressed out, and prone to illness and relational hardships. Who really wants any of these anyways? So, step back and take a look at what’s going on in life. How does training fit into the big picture?  For some of you, putting in bigger training hours will be no problem, while other might need to limit their volume so that an effective balance can be found.
3. So now that you’ve considered all of this, what do you do? Well, if you’ve realized that you have a somewhat limited amount of ‘energy’ available for effective training, you better make the most of every minute by making certain that each and every ride has a specific purpose, otherwise you will only misuse valuable time. If you’ve considered everything and realize that you have a lot of ‘energy’ that can be devoted to training, then you best be very careful how you spend your time on the bike. Too much volume could tempt you down the path of doing too much intensity, boredom with the sport, inadequate recovery, burn out or possibly overtraining.  It would be a shame to end up in any of these situations.

This is just a brief overview on training volume and the considerations that should be made so that your training is right on.  If you have questions feel free to hit the Inquire button above and drop me an email. As a coach I’ve helped many athletes choose appropriate training volumes while enabling them to make the most of their valuable training time.

Keep it Real,  -TJ

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.