Consistency Over Everything: What Really Drives Performance

Many people that when they start the endurance journey, they think that, I'm going to run 15K as hard as I can every day and then I'll be good for marathon.

But they haven't done the long

⁓ slow distance work, they haven't worked on their

ability to burn fat,

So there are like adaptations that we want to work on instead of the numbers.

Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. Paul Marjaana we have a boatload of questions this week. Let's dive in. So from Andrew Kent on Facebook, what part of the year or training season is best to try to lose weight and what should you focus on nutritionally? Also, when should you not do this?

Hmm. Okay. There is, there's a lot of context, right? Yeah. When we just had the, ⁓ you know, we just had the episodes with Dr. Maffetone, right? And ⁓ I think Marjaana was talking at one of them was about the Maffetone kitchen. And ⁓ look at the end of the day, real simple is like the key things that are really going to help you, ⁓ you know, lose weight.

There's a lot in this question. There's a lot here in.

⁓ is getting sugar and processed food out of your diet. Like it just makes a massive effect. You do those things first and foremost, ⁓ then you're gonna be doing a lot of work towards losing that weight. Now whether or not that's how you think about losing weight, a lot of us think about losing weight, I've just got to exercise harder, right? Or exercise more.

That works to a certain point, but it doesn't, it's really not the full picture. Again, from experience, we tend to learn that you can't outrun an unhealthy diet, right? So you've got to, it really should put, in terms of the pillars, it's probably, and you're talking about losing weight, becoming not over fat, as Dr. Maftone describes it.

then yeah, it's kind of, you really want to focus on, I mean, for me, it's always, you always want to kind of have a bit of a focus on that. At least want to have a focus on eating healthy, but that's how I frame it. Marjaana?

Yeah, I would avoid trying to lose any weight close to race. The further away from race you can experiment, the better in my mind. And that's what I did when I went low carb. I had lots of time before my A-Race. And then I just kept going and it started melting. And especially after overtraining when I was carrying a little extra, it was weird because

Mm-hmm.

You know, I didn't even try, but I was resting and recovering well, and it just came off.

Yeah. So I think that is a really good point. think if there is maybe an ideal time in your life to do this, it might very well be after your A-Race, right? And it's like, now you've got this period of time and you don't have, you know, just focus on the whole nutritional element ⁓ of it. And then there's, because that can happen actually, if you're focusing on, or if you all of a sudden shift your diet midway through a build.

Well, that's a stress in itself to your body because all of a sudden, like you're not used to this, this, you know, this new way of eating. You're having these cravings that feels uncomfortable, causes stress. So yeah, I think that, you know, if there is probably an ideal time, it's, it's how MJ did it with, you know, finishing up our last race. He okay, now I'm going to really focus, just focus on one thing at a time. And it's going to be cleaning the cupboards and, and, eating a certain way.

Hmm.

Thank

Thank

One thing that Dr. Maffetone said a couple of weeks ago was ⁓ he was talking about how base season is important and that ability to burn ⁓ fat. And I would really focus on that during base season, like cleaning up your pantry. ⁓ Because when you get rid of those processed foods,

and you're working on your Arabic capacity, then you end up relying less on carbohydrates. And then you don't need that much extra, you know, carbs during your long rides. And that can be really powerful way of enhancing your Arabic capacity. So do it on base season when you're already doing a lot of base Arabic work.

One of the things that I often advise my athletes that I coach is to, given your plate, breakfast, lunch, dinner, focus on having a protein on there and then a fruit or vegetable and or a vegetable so that you're focusing on something as opposed to trying to avoid, you know, kind of a mental thing as well. I also know that Andrew has several young children and you know, that's always the challenge of trying to feed them and

Mm-hmm.

you know, maintain a healthy diet as well. But Marjaana, you talked about that with Dr. Maffetone as well.

Yeah, it's a process, but when the kids also see what you're eating and making a new norm, they'll follow.

Exactly. All right, let's get on to our next question.

⁓ How do we handle training taper and recovery when long endurance events come on back-to-back weekends? And also figure an age Dan is, you know, in his 50s.

So he had an example of Dairy Roubaix, Hungry Bear, Royal Gorge, 612 hours, Duluth Mountain biking, all within late April and May. And he'd also like to really hear about training for things that are considered ultra like the Crusher MS 175, which is 175 miles, for example.

Yeah, well, ⁓ you know, when they're back to back on back to back weekends, we have like a back to back, ⁓ you know, taper that's kind of built into Athletica. And the key aspect that you want to do in that week is recover. So that should really be the focus. And then there'll be some sharpening up things as well. So after you recovered from the first, you know, key race,

And you know, and as you, ⁓ you know, build back up and feel good again, it's just a couple extra little sharpening exercises, aerobic development work. But, you know, in theory, you should have put all the work in, you know, beforehand. And as Paul likes to say, you know, the haze in the barn, it still should be in the barn from a week later kind of thing. And it's just a top-up after that for me.

Question, how do you know that you recovered enough?

Yeah. Well, HIV is one, feel is another, and then performance is the other too, right? So when you're doing those sharpening exercises, say two, three days later, ⁓ how does it feel? Like, you recruit muscle? Can you recruit to establish power or pace? Or is it still not there?

Sure be.

Mm-hmm.

That's the big one, right? Because your central governor, your brain will or won't allow you to recruit that musculature. And that's the goal, right? When you get back to that second race, that's where you want to get to again. You want to be able to recruit muscle. The recruiting of muscle is what's going to drive power and performance. So that's what we want to kind get back to again. usually, like, I mean, this almost kind of comes back to the... ⁓

You know, ⁓ the hit science problem with, team sports and they're, they're often with the exception of preseason where they're trying to build fitness every, like you look at a sport like basketball or something, right? Where they're just playing so many consecutive days. It's a, it's a sport for the practitioners of, recover recovery. They're always trying to get their athletes recovered because the game is, is enough of the high intensity for, least for the starters to kind of keep them up there. ⁓

So you, Dan, in this situation as well, you're kind of in that also. yeah, recovery should be the first and foremost. ⁓ And don't really worry too much about training per se. You're not adding so much fitness. You're doing some sharpening work, but otherwise it's, you you're just doing enough to get you back to the start line so that you can release some more hay from the barn.

Mm-hmm.

That brings me back thinking cross-country skiing and how training year is structured and bulk of the training is base season. So it comes like long time before actual races because race season is weekly races for top skiers. So they need to do a lot of summer training to build that big base so that they're able to

Mm-hmm.

hit it hard on race season and then recover enough to do a big race again the next weekend. You can kind of tell by how some skiers don't perform very well in the beginning of the season and they have massive performances in the later season and some people start performing really well in the beginning and then they kind of fade out.

You can kind of like tell how good of a base is based on there. Like there's also, of course, some timing issues there too. Like when do you peak and stuff? But if you have several races and you want to do well, the bulk of your training needs to happen like way before, right? So start early training. Don't start training like three months before, like start a year early.

Totally.

Yeah, I mean, back to the MAPTOWN ⁓ discussions you were mentioning, like it's the adaptive energy that you're trying to create within the base periods of time. Yeah, so the power of those base weeks, again, remember you've got the power on Athletica to insert as many base weeks as you need ⁓ in accordance with the context. don't dismiss the power of those. So if you're seeing, you're thinking it's got

you know, too many build weeks in there. ⁓ know, trust your feel on that and get a little bit more of the base week happening.

I know that I had a similar situation this spring with a whole lot of gravel races on top of each other and Athletica, which I use for, my training, um, had me do, you know, one 30 30 session. was like two by seven, something very, very easy. And then one endurance, uh, no strength training. And it just kept it very easy for me for recovery.

And, you know, it was, you know, and I was prepared for every race.

Nice.

From Jason Kesar on Facebook, what's the new evidence on strength training and high intensity workouts versus old school low steady LSD training, low steady distance training?

Yeah, LSD,

Long slow distance. Yeah. So yeah, the new evidence. ⁓ goodness. Is it new? I don't know. It's all in here, right? So you definitely want all of that in your program. We did just have Maphtone, Phil Maphtone on the podcast and he is all about ⁓ LSD training.

math training as a foundation, which we're all about as well. But there's no question that an emphasis on high intensity workouts and strength training throughout both base and build phases is instrumental in leading to optimal physiological adaptations and performance. And that's ultimately ⁓ what we're all about in Athletica. ⁓

Yeah, I don't know if it's that new. We've covered it in lots of different episodes, but ⁓ yeah, high intensity interval training, we know it elicits time in the red zone and you can do more time in the red zone if you break up the high intensity work. And then we also know that strength training facilitates efficiency or economy of movement. A stronger group of muscles is going to fatigue less.

and it improves the economy ⁓ of your running, ⁓ because your muscles just fire that much better. So what do you guys think?

And I think if you're someone who hasn't tapped into strength training yet and you've plateaued, I think that's a good sign ⁓ to try strength training to elevate your performance. Try it out, see what happens.

Yeah.

And we're trying a lot of that out these days, aren't we, MJ, ⁓ as we're launching our new HiRox plans on Athletica. So very excited about that. Those ⁓ are in beta mode now as we speak. ⁓ so yeah, you're... Check out this new sport that's capturing the ⁓ imagination of the world. And we'll certainly do an episode on HiRox in ⁓ coming times. But... ⁓

Yes we are. ⁓

Move.

But yeah, MJ and I are shooting a lot of footage on various different workouts and that we have for video analysis and video instruction on these exciting workouts. MJ, any comments there? Well, I let the cat out of the bag.

It's

surprisingly fun although 80 meters of broad jump burpees are brutal. They're pretty brutal I have to say.

Laughter

Yeah, are sled pushes and sled pulls on ⁓ the wheelbarrow or the trampoline.

Yeah, but it's surprisingly fun actually, I have to say, because I get to run, like you get to run in between.

No, it looks awesome.

and

I think with Jason's question about the LSD training, think old school, you know, that's the one thing that I took from, from Dr. Maffetone's session is that it may be old school to go long and slow. Um, but it's critical. You, you've got to have that base to be able to do as well as you can with the high intensity and, um, you know, doing fast group rides, doing a lot of intensity.

You know, you need to get back to the slow distance and just putting in that slow time. And sometimes that's hard on a group ride is to convince a bunch of your friends to let's just go ride slow today. And you know, it's, that gets to be a challenge.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. Yeah, is nothing wrong with old school training. And yeah, the base, I mean, yeah, we've said it million times, base and the LSD stuff is super important for the foundation. Get that going first before you add the fancy stuff.

Yeah.

I'm actually surprised how prevalent not strength training is on this side of Atlantic. Because, yeah, because I grew up strength training. I was endurance athletes, I was cross country skier and track runner and we did strength training. It was just part of it, like year round. Yeah.

Really?

both Finland and Norway.

All right, here is the next question from the Athletica Forum and Jack Buchholz. I've heard many, many times that, consistency is key, unquote. I know that part of that is not going so hard on any given workout that you cannot train the next day. And conversely, taking the plan seriously and not skipping days casual, casually. What else goes into this? I presume this is a long question. Let's just do the whole question.

break it down. I presume that performing the same 45 to 60 minutes zone two workout seven days a week, week after week, wouldn't satisfy that statement. So should I be looking to keep form in a consistent range, keep weekly load within a plus minus a certain percent of the previous week's load, ensure my ramp rate isn't too steep, or something else.

I think the simple answer is we've thought of all this and built it into atheletica to trust the plan, but I'd like to understand things and I'm curious.

Yeah, nice. Well, yeah, I mean, there is a lot of that, but, you know, ⁓ so I think the, you want to keep going through with that consistent signal and the consistent signals that are.

important. you know, I think you should see, Jack, that there's not, you're not just getting a seven day a week zone two workout of 45 to 60 minutes. There's probably some other elements that are in that plan, like a strength endurance workout, right? Where you're to be running up and down hills and doing like a functional strength training, like a form of HIIT workout, like a build workout or a tempo kind of workout, right? So there's different elements and whatnot.

⁓ but you, and you want to consistently hit those different session aims in your week, but you're only going to do that if you ⁓ aren't burnt out on any given day. So if you'd go and do some of those more fancier workouts, like the hip workout, ⁓ et cetera, and you're too damaged from it to back up the next day. And, know, you haven't left one or two in the, in the chamber.

then that's gonna be problematic and you're gonna have to take more of a break. So that's really, think, what we mean. It's like just always kind of preserving, like know what you gotta do tomorrow, right? Think about that workout no matter what it is. Like how can I keep going and consistently perform today's workout so that I can perform again the next one? And the reason why you wanna do this is due to the fact that from a cellular standpoint, ⁓ you want to...

keep telling your cells to adapt and they'll change, right? So all of the cells in your body, when you're actually exercising, you actually are forming a signal that causes the cells to adapt. Usually you're telling them to make more mitochondria in one way or another, but when you do that, they develop more energetic resource and... ⁓

they'll, but if you don't keep signaling it and telling it to do that, then it, it regresses and it doesn't have a reason to adapt anymore. So that's kind of why you do that. And, and you're sort of trying to do that right across the body around the various different, you know, in line with the demands that you're trying to chase down to perform well. That was a long answer. I know, but that's, that's generally how I think about, you know, forming these, ⁓

the backbone and adaptive nature of Athletica.

⁓ And I see these questions often like ⁓ my fitness numbers are not increasing and people don't understand that the fitness numbers are not same as race preparedness or race ⁓ ability to race. ⁓

at the highest level because you can get to very high fitness numbers by doing only heat sessions for as long as they are able to before body breaks down. True story. I have tried that. ⁓ But there are physical capacities that we're trying to develop and they don't go hand in hand with the fitness numbers. So ⁓ just because you have a 140

TSS or any other fitness number doesn't mean that ⁓ you're going to crush your race. ⁓ Many people that when they start the endurance journey, they think that, I'm going to run 15K as hard as I can every day and then I'll be good for marathon. ⁓ But they haven't done the long

Yep.

⁓ slow distance work, they haven't worked on their ⁓ capacity ability to burn fat, or they haven't worked on their VO2 max. So there are like adaptations that we want to work on instead of the numbers. And then the ramp rate kind of, it's a guardrail really on how much

work you want to see yourself doing and that's individual, right? Some people can have a higher ramp rate, some people are better off with the steady small ramp rate and so individual stuff.

Totally, and yeah,

so what we're talking about, we're talking about the performance potential chart, which is on your overview tab, right? And a lot of people look at that and they're trying to build that level up as high as they can. And of course, our algorithm works towards doing that. But as MJ mentioned on the chat with Phil Maftone, she had a really high... ⁓

⁓ fitness level, theoretical gained, but she was, you know, she was kind of over trained. She couldn't express all of the fitness that she developed. So only actually, once you are a healthy athlete, can you actually express all of that fitness? So, you know, and in MJ's example, she actually was, you know, after she recovered and became healthy again, ⁓ then her nervous system was able to release all of that.

fitness. So she was able to almost kind of do the opposite that you'd predict. ⁓ And as Andrea is ignoring our back end developer always tells me, some models are useful or no, sorry, all models are wrong, but some are useful. So this is a useful model, but it's wrong at the end of the day. It's just a useful guide. These are all guidelines, but we're trying to kind of help you run your own N of 1 experiment here. ⁓

you

Mm-hmm.

Use it as a guide, but at the end of the day, make sure that you're healthy.

But I really love this question because he shows that he wants to learn what is behind these numbers, right? I really, really like this question.

Yeah.

Good, all right. Arianna, do you wanna take number five here?

Yes, from Michael Lambert on Facebook. Endurance athletes and longevity slash heart health. What is the connection between endurance athletes and cardiovascular damage?

I think it's a bit of a, yeah, well, it can actually occur. if you are, ⁓ you know, I think there's forgotten actually the marker ⁓ that you can actually measure. it's actually, it's an isoform of ⁓ creatine kinase, which is basically a muscle damage marker. And you can get an isoform that is specific to the heart muscle.

the cardiac muscle. So ⁓ yes, that kind of can occur when there's also stories about long-term exposure to high-intensity training, high-volume training. ⁓ know, ⁓ heroes of mine including, know, Dave Scott and Scott Tinley are, you know, currently, you know, they've recently had operations and how they're doing today is a bit

If you're a healthy athlete, then your damage level is going to be minimal because we were meant as humans to exercise. But if we are bombarding our bodies with stressors that include all the ones we've spoken about before, then you are going to do potentially more

And that can include the cardiovascular organs. ⁓ that would be, mean, Paul, I know you've had some challenges as well with your own cardiovascular system. And yeah, I don't know, any reflections there yourself, my friend?

Yeah. You know, we don't know why my heart issues came about. You know, there, there may be a genetic piece that comes from my mother's side of the family and that may be a part of it. You know, ⁓ I've certainly had a life of, of, ⁓ doing endurance athlete, you know, as a, as an endurance athlete and cycling. ⁓ but you bring up a good point, like what would have happened to my heart if there's this genetic piece, if I hadn't.

hadn't been doing all of this cycling over my life.

Yeah, we will never know, will we? Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know if that answers Mike Lambert's question there, but, ⁓ you know, I don't know if there's a direct connection, but, you know, I think it's like, we've been discussing the individuality sort of principle, right? So, ⁓ you know, I think there was a lot of the general population as well that has a lot of cardiovascular damage, of course, and, you know.

No, no.

Hmm.

Are they, is their presence or lack of endurance training associated with that? ⁓ I would say it tends to be more of a, it's less associated with cardiovascular damage. ⁓ then, you know, in, terms of developing cardiovascular disease compared to, ⁓ compared to the alternate. However, you know, I think it's, it's yeah, it's probably. Yeah, it's probably, I don't know if there's a.

Yeah, there's probably no direct link is what I'm saying.

All right, let's get one more question in here. ⁓ One of my athletes, Robin, who is just starting on Athletica and is pretty new to structured training, did a long ride last week and her file showed a high heart rate at the start. And she just uses heart rate in the 150s. And then by the end of the four hour ride, she was tired and her heart rate was in the 120s. What would explain that difference in heart rate given that heart rate might increase with decoupling?

Yes, so we need more info Paul. We need to know the power. you know, if I were to guess, ⁓ and I, you know, again, I follow the, you know, the central governor model, it's likely that after four hours of riding, that ⁓ effort and fatigue level, efforts lower, or sorry, well, the effort might still be there, but the ability to recruit muscle is less.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

and

that power number should go down because you're fatigued. And when the power number goes down, usually the heart rate number goes down as well, right? Because it goes one and one, it's in line with the metabolic demands. So I think that would be the main thing that would explain the difference in heart rate from the beginning to the end, would be my guess.

Yeah, but what a journey. Like she's in the start of her journey. This is going to be so good. I can't wait to follow up and see how she's going to do after a good training block because I missed those early days when you can see the big gains. It's so awesome.

Hmm.

Yeah, it's gonna be fun to watch her.

Yeah,

you think of what that, you know, the signals that that still does that long ride, right? Like you should see some decent gains and then that heart rate, power and heart rate should be ⁓ increased as she makes her gains throughout. So sure, yeah, she should be pushing more power. Heart rate should be higher because the, you know, she's more like she's developing mitochondria that are producing, you know, burning more fat.

and she can access that in those long rides. with training, I would expect that the whole system is uplifted.

right. Thanks for listening today to the Athletes Compass podcast. Take a moment now, subscribe, share, and let's keep navigating this endurance adventure together. Improve your training with the science-based training platform, Athletica, and join the conversation at the Athletica Forum. For Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Larson, I'm Paul Warlowski, and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you for listening.

Thank you