Part 2 – Training that is More Efficient, Produces Fewer Injuries, and is More Effective
In part 1, I described how I choose to work with fewer clients and how I don’t waste time with AI and producing content for social media so that I have more time to devote to the small number of clients that I work with, but that also provides me with more time for learning and improving my coaching skills and knowledge. I read dozens of scientific research articles every month across many performance-related domains, including: physiology; training; nutrition; sleep; recovery; injury prevention; motivation; footwear and other performance technology; and any other factors relating to performance. I started regularly reading research articles and performance-related books in 2004 while I was still an undergraduate. And ever since I started working at the Olympic Training Center in 2006, I have regularly attended conferences (e.g. the USOPC’s Altitude Training Symposia and the American College of Sports Medicine’s Annual Conference [which has thousands of people presenting research covering almost every conceivable aspect of performance imaginable]) where I talk with the scientists who conduct and publish the research articles, so that I can gain even greater insights into their findings. I also spend time reading about how other top coaches and their athletes train as well as watching videos from actual experts (as opposed to influencers) in order to try to find the best, most-effective methods and ideas for helping my athletes optimize their performance.
All of that studying over the past couple of decades has provided me with knowledge that informs the training suggestions that I provide to my clients. But that training is not only informed by just the theoretical knowledge from what I’ve read, watched, or heard in conversing with other coaches, athletes, and researchers, but also my own experience. Back when I was still competing as a runner, I trained at a very high level, including running weeks of peak mileage over 130 miles and months over 450 miles, all (or mostly) at altitude, while also working at my job. And I personally used some of the most advanced training techniques, such as supplemental oxygen and inspiratory muscle training, so I know firsthand the challenges and what it feels like to train at the highest levels and to use many of the most advanced techniques and not just what it’s like to use those methodologies as a coach.
Because of the knowledge and experience that I’ve cultivated over more than two decades, I’ve been able to determine some ways of doing things differently that allow my athletes to have more efficient training that produces fewer injuries and greater improvements in performance. For example, I’ve identified some dogmatic components of training that do nothing but waste time and generate fatigue without providing any benefit. Those components are just there because they’ve always been there and most coaches just take them for granted and never question their efficacy. Removing those unhelpful components removes opportunity cost. The time and energy spent doing unhelpful things is time and energy that could be used to do more of the things that are actually beneficial for performance. And because fatigue is a significant risk factor for injury, reducing the amount of fatigue generated also reduces the risk of injury.
Another area where my suggestions differ from other coaches is the off-season or the break following a goal event prior to the beginning of the next training cycle. The way that most people (even many elite professional athletes) structure their breaks is vastly sub-optimal. Have you ever noticed that a lot of professional distance runners, for example, often start off one season significantly slower than they ended the previous season and they often are only able to eke out small improvements from one year to the next (if they improve at all)? While part of that is the nature of competing very close to your genetic potential, meaning you have very little room for improvement, in many cases a larger contributing factor is that the athletes are failing to structure their between season breaks in a way that is conducive to year over year improvement. My athletes can tell you, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Similarly to finding ways to make my training suggestions more efficient and better at providing year over year improvement for my clients, I have uncovered strategies and methods that help my clients avoid injury and improve performance. As many endurance athletes and coaches know, strength training can be one of the most helpful tools for reducing injury risk and improving performance. In my experience, however, the way most endurance athletes and coaches implement their strength training is either unhelpful at best or harmful at worst. The strength training that is shown in the videos that many professional runners or their teams post to their socials often is misguided and is likely to merely produce more fatigue without much benefit (for a whole host of reasons that I explain to my clients). Thus, it does not produce the intended effects of reduced injury risk or improved performance. My hypothesis is that this flawed training results from poor design because of insufficient knowledge on the part of the person who suggested it. With many professional teams, for example, the strength training is programmed by a strength coach, who has expertise in strength & conditioning, but no experience or expertise with high-level endurance training (most strength coaches come from a strength/power sport background; that’s why the strength coach doesn’t program the endurance training). As a result, the program provided by the strength coach has weaknesses that make it ineffective. Often, the strength coach chooses individual exercises based on their general effectiveness without consideration or even understanding of how a given exercise translates to running performance. Some exercises might produce gains in strength but not in a way that translates to running performance, which is critical. Athletes spending valuable training time and energy doing exercises that don’t translate is inefficient and counterproductive. Additionally, oftentimes the strength training undertaken by professional runners is not adequately integrated into their training as a whole, especially when their endurance training and their strength training are programmed by two different coaches. A common risk of poorly integrated training is that the strength training and endurance training compromise each other, reducing the benefits of each. I started learning about and doing strength training when I was in middle school (around the same time I started training as a runner; my parents wouldn’t let me start strength training before that because back then many people mistakenly thought that strength training stunted children’s growth); I started learning by reading Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding. Because of my experience with both strength training and endurance training, and because I am certified as a strength coach, I have the knowledge about what strength training most effectively translates to running performance and injury prevention, and I have the ability to effectively integrate the strength training with the endurance training so that they do not compromise each other.
As it did with strength training, all of the reading and learning that I have done has enabled me to uncover knowledge of nutrition, shoes, sleep, and cross training that reduces the risk of injury and improve performance. And one of the benefits of my coaching is that none of these things that I suggest doing differently than what most coaches suggest is experimental. All of the things that I’ve mentioned or alluded to have been willingly tried by my current and former clients and athletes. When I explain the details to them, many understand the benefit and are eager to try these things for themselves, and you can see how successful their results have been elsewhere on this site.