Category: Training

Everyone hits a fitness and strength training plateau. You know you hit yours when you stop climbing your benchmark hill quicker or your 50-yard swim splits stop dropping. You feel like you can’t get any better as an athlete. Frustration sets in, and your athletic goals look suddenly impossible to reach. But it’s not all bad. A plateau signals that your body has become hyper-efficient and optimized to complete whatever workout you’re doing. Consider it a backhanded biological compliment. 

A 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health & Public Health found that endurance athletes will generally hit a plateau after the first four weeks of training. The study further states that athletes only reached 75 percent of their capacity at the plateau. Put another way, you think you’re stuck at completing 15 pushups successfully, and you swear you can’t do anymore. Science says you have five more reps in you.

Most athletes first try a simple solution. They do even more of the same in a misguided effort to break through. They run seven miles instead of five. Bike 30 miles instead of 25, or do more barbell squat reps with the same weight on the bar. Science shows this only makes you better at running or biking at the same speed or lifting the same weight. The real solution is variability and change. Throw your body a curveball, and force it to adapt — and grow — all over again. Here’s how.

Check Your Data

In many cases, training plateaus because effort and intensity start to wane. For example, if your workouts have transitioned from “work” to enjoyable runs or rides, you have a problem. It’s time to push yourself outside of your comfort zone again if you want to improve performance. Your data will tell the tale: Has your average heart rate during training dropped even though you go your usual pace? Are you following the same route(s) for every workout to the point that your body isn’t challenged anymore? Congrats on making your workout easy, but that’s not the point. Easy won’t make you better.

Time to change things up and choose new routes that include some hills that leave you breathing hard. Instead of running at the same pace, split your runs between slower, longer jogs and shorter, faster sprints. Progress comes from increasing your intensity. Humango’s AI-powered training app does just that. It will spot a change in your threshold power based on your workout data and adjust the intensity of the workouts accordingly. All you have to do is keep at it.

Additional Plateau Busters

Nutrition plays a valuable role in overcoming a performance flatline. Check to see if your weight has changed thanks to your new baseline fitness. If it has, adjust your food intake to match your new optimized body. You should see performance improve.

Take an extra day or two off. The human body needs recovery time — especially sleep — to build muscle and neural pathways that lead to better performance. When you’re doing nothing, your body has the time and energy to adapt to your workouts and grow stronger. 

Add a dynamic warm-up to your daily workout. Go through a full-body range-of-motion routine to loosen up your joints and muscles and then a short, easy cardio session long enough to break a sweat. Priming your cardiovascular system and muscles for work should pave the way for a better, next-level workout. 10-15 minutes is all it takes.

Successful athletes do the work. They log the hours in the gym, on the road, in the pool — whatever it takes to become the best athlete they can, they do it. Sounds simple, right? On paper, it is easy. In real life, it never is. While a conditioned body is essential, it takes an equally well-trained mind to succeed. And that’s where so many of us fall short of our true athletic potential.

Whether you call it mental toughness training or mental health training, developing your mindset is just as critical as an interval workout. And it does take work. The good news? Like your muscles, your mental game grows stronger and more reliable the more you work it. And like endurance training, mental training benefits from a coach that guides you to optimum performance.

The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) believes so strongly in coaches learning how to develop mental toughness that they offer a class on it. In the course, they identified four keys to a successful mindset for competitors: motivation, performance under pressure, confidence, and focus. Below, we show how Humango’s AI coach can help you develop all four aspects of toughness.

Motivation

Motivation is the first and easiest step to build a tougher you. Motivation is the desire to do hard things outside your comfort zone. Set ambitious goals for yourself and use them to fuel your pursuit. Too often, athletes fall short of their potential because they play it safe, setting goals that take work but are most definitely achievable. Elite athletes don’t want safe. They want to be the best, even if that means failing multiple times in different ways on their way to the top.

Humango helps by showing you a structured, progressive path to achieve your ultimate goal. All training plans and coaches do this, but Humango’s AI designs its plan to suit you — and only you. Once you see it, you can do it. And if you can do it, you’re motivated to do it, and your chances of success grow exponentially.  

Performance Under Pressure

Illness, weather, work, family, equipment issues — all these factors can and will conspire to derail your endurance training. But elite athletes won’t let them. Instead, top performers adapt, adjust, and stay consistent. They keep control. And that same mental agility allows them to keep going on race day no matter what happens. By overcoming adversity in training, they prepare for it in competition.

Humango helps by automatically adjusting a training program to compensate for a missed workout (or a poor one — it happens) so you can stay on track. No need to worry when the pressure of life starts messing with your workouts. Humango’s got it handled.

Confidence

Studies have repeatedly shown that confidence will separate two athletes with similar physical traits. The one lacking it might be a respectable college-level performer. The one with it can be an Olympian. But here’s a cool secret: Confidence is learned and earned. Through years of training and competition, you develop confidence in yourself. You know what works and what doesn’t. With confidence, you can realistically fake it ’til you make it. How? By believing in yourself and trusting that you will achieve what you set out to do. 

Humango helps by providing you with a training plan you can trust. Trust instills confidence. When you’re on track to your best performance, you have the confidence to push yourself to reach it.

Focus

Focus is a more difficult attribute to develop, but it comes with the biggest payoff. That’s why it forms the backbone of your mental game. Focus is the narrowing of your mental energy to the task at hand, whether your goal event or a series of intervals. Focus also means discipline, and this is where mental toughness comes into play. Top athletes apply discipline to their nutrition choices, sleep habits, and commitment to each workout. In short, focus involves making constructive decisions, not destructive ones that make your goals harder to achieve. Like confidence, focus takes practice, and anything you can practice, you can improve. 

Humango helps through its customized training program built for your athletic goal and lifestyle. You’ll have an easier time staying focused if you break up your goals into one workout at a time. All you need to do is put your attention on your effort. Plus, Humango’s feedback data will reassure you that you’re on track, leaving you committed to the task at hand rather than wondering how you’re doing. Let Humango’s AI process the results and adjust your next workout accordingly. 

Everyone hits a fitness and strength training plateau. You know you hit yours when you stop climbing your benchmark hill quicker or your 50-yard swim splits stop dropping. You feel like you can’t get any better as an athlete. Frustration sets in, and your athletic goals look suddenly impossible to reach. But it’s not all bad. A plateau signals that your body has become hyper-efficient and optimized to complete whatever workout you’re doing. Consider it a backhanded biological compliment. 

A 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health & Public Health found that endurance athletes will generally hit a plateau after the first four weeks of training. The study further states that athletes only reached 75 percent of their capacity at the plateau. Put another way, you think you’re stuck at completing 15 pushups successfully, and you swear you can’t do anymore. Science says you have five more reps in you.

Most athletes first try a simple solution. They do even more of the same in a misguided effort to break through. They run seven miles instead of five. Bike 30 miles instead of 25, or do more barbell squat reps with the same weight on the bar. Science shows this only makes you better at running or biking at the same speed or lifting the same weight. The real solution is variability and change. Throw your body a curveball, and force it to adapt — and grow — all over again. Here’s how.

Check Your Data

In many cases, training plateaus because effort and intensity start to wane. For example, if your workouts have transitioned from “work” to enjoyable runs or rides, you have a problem. It’s time to push yourself outside of your comfort zone again if you want to improve performance. Your data will tell the tale: Has your average heart rate during training dropped even though you go your usual pace? Are you following the same route(s) for every workout to the point that your body isn’t challenged anymore? Congrats on making your workout easy, but that’s not the point. Easy won’t make you better.

Time to change things up and choose new routes that include some hills that leave you breathing hard. Instead of running at the same pace, split your runs between slower, longer jogs and shorter, faster sprints. Progress comes from increasing your intensity. Humango’s AI-powered training app does just that. It will spot a change in your threshold power based on your workout data and adjust the intensity of the workouts accordingly. All you have to do is keep at it.

Additional Plateau Busters

Nutrition plays a valuable role in overcoming a performance flatline. Check to see if your weight has changed thanks to your new baseline fitness. If it has, adjust your food intake to match your new optimized body. You should see performance improve.

Take an extra day or two off. The human body needs recovery time — especially sleep — to build muscle and neural pathways that lead to better performance. When you’re doing nothing, your body has the time and energy to adapt to your workouts and grow stronger. 

Add a dynamic warm-up to your daily workout. Go through a full-body range-of-motion routine to loosen up your joints and muscles and then a short, easy cardio session long enough to break a sweat. Priming your cardiovascular system and muscles for work should pave the way for a better, next-level workout. 10-15 minutes is all it takes.

New endurance athletes start from zero when training for their sport. They need to learn what their body is capable of and, more importantly, what their brain is capable of. Jumping into a training plan for that first marathon, gravel ride, or triathlon, these athletes push blindly ahead, hoping for the best. 

Elite athletes have years of experience to draw from. They’ve gone through the learning process, figuring out what works for them, what doesn’t, and how to bounce back from injuries, illness, or even a long break from competition. But here’s the thing: Like novices, even top amateurs and pros are constantly tweaking their training and adapting it to the consequences of getting older and slower or, conversely, growing faster and stronger.

This is where the potential of AI-driven endurance sports training holds so much promise. Through machine learning and aggregation of data from your workouts and thousands of athletes just like you (same sex, same age, same sport, same fitness level, and so on), artificial intelligence optimizes every move you make, ensuring your effort and time are never wasted, even if it tells you to lie down and take a nap. 

5 Ways Data-Driven Training Can Optimize Your Fitness

Knowledge is power, but only if you put that knowledge to use. Here are some practical ways that AI technology does it for you.

1. Let’s Get Personal

Training through data analysis starts on day one. With an AI coach such as Humango, you enter your goal race. Let’s say it’s a half-marathon three months away. You plug in your available training slots and your fitness level. From there, the digital coach will design a customized training plan to get you across the finish line and get you there at your peak fitness level.

With AI training, you get a plan built around who you are right now, not a program that asks you to adapt to a general program built for 18-year-olds and 80-year-olds.

2. Real-Time Feedback and Adjustments

Even athletes who work with coaches deal with delays, waiting days or weeks or more before their coach analyzes the previous workouts and maps out the next training block. But with AI, the analysis and adjustments happen immediately. Based on the results of today’s workout, tomorrow’s workout will either remain the same, push you a little harder, or dial the intensity down so you can recover. Either way, the instant feedback ensures that every workout is the most productive and effective it can be.

3. Data-Driven Recovery

The popularity of sleep trackers has made millions aware of the power of good sleep. The same power applies to recovery and rest from your training. In fact, one could argue that the balance between pushing hard in training and allowing yourself enough time to recover is the most valuable insight a coach can provide. Negative adaptations — slower and less-powerful workouts, lack of sleep, irritability — are all signs that a good coach will spot before they destroy your progress. An AI coach will spot those trends before you feel them and adjust the training accordingly.

4. More Data Equals Better Training

As you work towards your race day, the AI coach keeps learning more about what makes you tick. Workout by workout, your training program becomes more uniquely relevant and customized for you and only you. For example, instead of arbitrary, high-intensity, all-out efforts of two minutes, the AI coach may start you at 75 seconds and gradually increase the length of them over time. In short, each day’s training becomes more finely tuned. And with each AI-powered training program you complete, the AI coach learns more about you so that year by year, you come closer and closer to the perfect plan.

5. Ability to Push Harder

Following on #4 above, as AI learns more about your capabilities, it will also learn how hard you should be able to push yourself in training — and in your goal event. In many cases, this may be harder than you think you’re capable of. And that’s a good thing. The difference is that AI coaching (and top endurance coaches in general) will guide you to those exceptional performances without burnout, allowing you to save your all-out efforts for the days they will produce maximum results, ideally on race day. The key is to trust your coach and see what your body can do, even if your mind thinks it can’t. 

Combine these five training optimizations, and you have the recipe for becoming the best athlete you can be and staying at the top of your game for years — if not decades.

Triathlons demand stamina and the ability to excel at three different sports back-to-back-to-back: swimming, cycling, and running. As such, one could argue that triathletes are the most complete endurance athletes around. Becoming a successful one takes hard work and commitment. It also takes specialized gear. You need swim gear, a suitable bike, cycling gear, running shoes, and running clothes. You need regular pool access (and a lake for at least one open water swim practice) and bike maintenance and repair skills. You also need time to train and time to recover. For Ironman distance triathlons, it can take years to build up the endurance to consider training for the distance, much less tackle the event. But put all that together, and you’re ready to go. Now, all you need is a plan. That’s where an AI coach can help. 

Three Ways AI Will Make You a Better Triathlete

Below are three ways your triathlon dreams will benefit from having a tech-enabled coach to guide you to each finish line.

1. Set a Baseline.

Sprint triathlons are most newbies’ first entry into the sport. These short-distance races take top pro triathletes about an hour to finish and up to two hours for less fit or experienced athletes. The value of the sprint tri is that participants can finish the race with as little as 6-8 weeks of training. Free training plans are available all over the web. For most people, they work fine. But if you want to perform better than most people, AI can give you the edge you need.

You’ll see two benefits from using an AI coach to create and monitor your training. First, the AI coach will design a plan for your age, fitness level, and available training time. Your plan may not be perfect yet, but it’ll be magnitudes better than the free one you found on a website. Second, the data collected from each completed training session helps inform upcoming sessions, and it’s used to continually improve and build toward your next event, whether it’s another sprint tri, an Olympic distance triathlon, or a half-ironman distance triathlon.

2. Maximize the Gains From Each Workout From Day One.

AI can construct a progressive training program from the data culled during the training from your first tri. From the first week, you’ll see workouts you can complete successfully — even if they look hard at first glance. And if you have an off day or miss a workout, the digital coach will instantly adjust your schedule and workout intensities to account for the setback. The guesswork is gone. All you need to do is provide your AI coach with timely and accurate data to process.

As you get closer to race day, the training plan will taper your workouts to let you recover and grow stronger in preparation for the big day. Tapering is different for everyone, but AI learning gives you a guide for your physical transformation into a triathlete. It will custom-tune your taper, delivering you to race day rested, primed, and physically prepared for your best performance.

3. Race With Confidence, Not a Prayer.

Race day is where the power of AI coaching truly shines. Thanks to the weeks and months of training with an AI coach, you’ll hit the start line knowing that you’ll not only finish, you’ll be primed to achieve your personal best. What seemed like an ambitious goal at the start of your training is now a very real objective. All you need to do is believe it and believe in yourself.

If you’re prepping for your first foray into the world of triathlon or looking to level up in the next race, Humango’s AI-powered coaching app will make sure you’re ready. Then, instead of arriving at a triathlon race wondering how well you could do, you’ll know what you can do.

Apps make fitness success easy.

Today’s coaching apps cover nearly every aspect of an athlete’s journey from novice beginner to elite champion. Apps exist to track and monitor nutrition, sleep, and workouts, and the years of data collected by these apps have allowed the technology to improve steadily. Today, they can adjust training plans or fitness programs automatically to match a person’s endurance progression — or regression — as they work out. Many of the most popular training apps can automatically adjust workout intensities to reflect an improved fitness in terms of functional threshold heart rate and watts data (if on a bicycle with a power meter). 

Sounds great, right? It is, but these apps still rely on the endurance athlete to follow the plan. Real life has a way of fouling those plans. When these complications arise, a coaching app, especially an AI-powered app like Humango, can step in and keep that athlete on track to nail their fitness goal.

Keys to a Successful Training Program

It’s easy enough to sign up for a marathon, endurance gravel ride, or triathlon and grab a free training plan off the web. A goal race or event is the first step. To get to that start line will take more than a well-trained body. A person will need to demonstrate the following soft traits: Resilience, consistency, organization, drive, and focus. 

Successful endurance athletes are born with all of them or develop them over time and practice. An endurance coach can guide an athlete’s development of these traits. In fact, the ability to manage and manipulate these mental aspects of endurance sports is what separates decent coaches from great coaches.

Coaching from a Human or an AI-Powered App Is Still Coaching

AI-powered coaching apps can and do help athletes develop the soft traits mentioned above. Take resilience; AI can parse the data to see how a poor night’s sleep or 24-hour flu negatively affected the day’s performance and adjust the next day’s workout — or the next several — to be easier so that an athlete can recover adequately before starting again. That’s resilience.

This adjustment leads to the next trait, consistency. AI will adjust a training program to help an athlete stick to their schedule instead of burning out and quitting. Next, an athlete must be organized to stay consistent. AI’s ability to easily modify or switch workouts based on available training time ensures that an athlete has the time to get the work done. AI does the hard part of organizing training around an athlete’s life instead of forcing the athlete to organize their life around training.

Drive may seem unrelated to a coaching app, but research shows that a coaching app’s ability to hold users accountable — even if it’s just to themselves — is as effective as that of a human coach. Focus on the immediate task (i.e., the workout) is the last trait AI can help with. With AI’s ability to pull data from years of workouts, it can build a workout program that seems complex at the outset but serves to hold the athlete’s attention and, yes, focus.

It’s All About the Data

A coaching app processes and applies the same data as a human coach to its suggestions. For example, take a runner who fails to do the last two hard pieces of a workout at the assigned pace and intensity. A coach will note that failure and adjust the next training session accordingly. An AI-powered coaching app takes it a step further, instantly drawing on weeks, months, or even years of similar occurrences to ensure the program adjustment doesn’t set the athlete back too far on their road to recovery. AI also won’t push the athlete too hard or too fast based on the data.

In the scenario above, one core benefit of the AI coaching app is speed. The athlete will know how their training program will change as soon as the workout data gets uploaded to the app. There’s no need to wait 24 hours or a week for a human coach to review the data and draw up a new training program. This instantaneous feedback keeps the athlete motivated, driven, and focused. It removes that kernel of doubt that may creep in while they wonder what’s next.

If all this sounds easy, it is, except for one big caveat: the athlete must apply the same soft traits of consistency, organization, drive, and focus to collecting and uploading their workout data as they do to their sport. Without consistent, reliable data, the coaching suffers — whether from a human or an AI coach. Collecting and sharing data can be difficult for athletes when the data doesn’t show progress. Frustration and doubt start to rear their ugly heads. But these times are when a coach who can guide an athlete back on track is most valuable. Training is easy when things go well; not so much when they don’t. When game plans go sideways, having and listening to a coach will make the difference.

Humango uses artificial intelligence to elevate endurance training and boost athletic performance.

Endurance sports have long pushed the leading edge of coaching and technology. Think Bill Bowerman of University of Oregon Track fame, who famously moved U.S. runners’ training for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City to the higher altitude of Lake Tahoe, Nevada, to prepare his athletes for competing at altitude in Mexico City. He later started Nike with the goal of engineering a better running shoe. Over the decades, training technology has only gotten better. We now have heart rate monitors to track the intensity of efforts, GPS units to track speed, distance, and efficiency, and bicycle power meters to measure watts. Artificial intelligence, (AI) promises to bring all that data together and help marathon runners, ultra runners, cyclists, triathletes, and other endurance athletes — plus their coaches — perfect their training.

The Endurance Coach

Athletes who hire a coach to help them achieve their best results can pay thousands of dollars a year for the guidance. The coach designs a training program and then monitors the progress. The most important benefit they provide is knowing when to dial back efforts to avoid burnout or injury and when to push an athlete through a mental block to reach their full potential. The difference between the two is what makes an effective coach. Data helps the coach determine whether a bad training day came from a poor night’s sleep, a bad mood, or over-training. 

Artificial intelligence can process the same data to arrive at the same conclusions. And like the coach, AI can adjust an athlete’s training program to compensate for that poor training day, a sick day, or a week where an athlete can’t train for some reason. A 2022 study published in the online journal PLUS One found that AI coaches were as effective as human coaches in helping people reach a goal. The caveat is that this goal has to be focused and specific, with a clearly identified pathway to success and easily obtainable data to measure progress — exactly what training plans deliver. 

The Novice Athlete’s Shortcut to Their Best Performance

Put simply, endurance training — and coaching — is about managing fatigue. Building endurance means pushing back the moment when fatigue sets in. Most free training plans, even the best-designed ones, factor in a perfect training program where the athlete eats well, sleeps well, and never misses a workout. Unfortunately, life never works that way. A work trip blows a hole in the week’s most important workout. A bout of COVID knocks out weeks of fitness. Managing these setbacks is where coaches really earn their pay.

But cost is the main benefit of the AI endurance coach. Instead of spending thousands of dollars a year, motivated athletes can deploy an AI coach to guide them through their training for a fraction of the price, flu bugs and family vacations be damned. And because of the low cost, novices and beginners to the sport can employ AI to train smarter instead of following the usual years of trial-and-error until injury or simple frustration leads them to invest in a coach.

AI Coaching Still Needs Real Coaches

This new AI-powered era won’t bring the end of human coaching. Successful coaches will always retain the unquantifiable soft skills that no data set can capture. The word of encouragement spoken at the right moment to push an athlete out of their comfort zone or the confident command to take a day off and not feel guilty about it, these are the subtle nuances that require the human touch. Still, AI puts a powerful tool in the coach’s toolbox. AI can now review data quickly and handle the tedious and time-consuming process of rejiggering a training program based on the results. In short, a human coach assisted by an AI coach should be a more effective and efficient coach. That’s a win-win for everyone involved.

A half marathon is quite a step up from a 10km race! Although it is just over double the distance, the fatigue accumulation for the distance is not exactly double. 

Step 1

One of the most effective things you can do to prepare yourself for the full 21.1 km (13.1 miles) is to train the majority of the time in your Endurance or Zone 2 training zone. This is the zone that will optimize your fat utilization, improve your capillarization (oxygen-carrying capacity) and increase your heart and lung capacity. If you spend around 80-90%% of your time training in this zone, and the other 10-20% in Zones 3 and 4 you will be well prepared for this distance. 

Step 2

Ramp up gradually. Everyone starts where they are at! This sounds so obvious – but not everyone will be honest about this! Make sure your training plan is the best plan for you given your own training, sport, injury, resources available, and life balance history. Humango takes all these aspects into consideration to deliver an optimal personalized training plan – all you have to do is follow along.  While training with Humango is the ideal scenario, if you aren’t in a position to customize your training – be honest about your starting point, and check that your training meets you where you are at – not beyond, nor behind. 

Step 3

Explore your prehab options. Training for a half marathon can be grueling on your body. Your soft tissue, your joints, and your organs (especially your heart) will be working hard. Pre-hab is all about staying ahead of any injury and building a strong and resilient machine. Choose what fits your lifestyle best, but, basically, anything from the below list will ensure you are incorporating self-care, prehab, and recovery into your routine; massage, hot/cold therapy, rolling, yoga, pilates, strength and functional training, compression boots, trigger point therapy, Physical Therapy (especially if you have a pre-existing or known pre-injury state), sleep and even swimming where the impact is low but total body recruitment is high. Create a specific routine around your pre-hab and schedule it. By scheduling it, the probability of you following through increases, and so does the likelihood of training safely and having a great race day!

Step 4

Practice the race day process every opportunity you have. Every aspect of training can mirror your actual race day. Practice (and refine) your hydration and nutrition plan, pacing, visualization, race day warm-up, and morning routine, and wear what you will be wearing on race day – practice everything in training that you will be implementing on race day. Make your training as similar to racing as possible. Continually learn from your training and refine what went well and what you would do better. Then, when race day arrives, your plan is already well rehearsed – and all you have to do is implement it. Note – don’t be tempted to change your race plan last minute based on something you haven’t practiced. A well-known race day rule is “nothing new on race day.” It’s a good rule 🙂

Step 5

Choose equipment that is right for you. Considering equipment ranging from shoes to shorts and even tops and socks, we are all built differently. What is a good shoe for one athlete for example is not necessarily a good shoe for you. Avoid getting caught up in marketing and hype – do your research and get clear on what you need. It might be that you need a 3mm drop shoe with high stability but your training buddy runs best in a 5mm drop with a high cushion. Take the time to do your “educated buying.” Try out your equipment, get fitted, and talk to the professionals who care about your well-being – not just selling you the next new thing! Be mindful, you can’t always get it right. There might be some trial and error in this process – but you will be continually learning and gathering information as you go, fueling you for better choices in the future. 

You might be following an endurance training plan, or maybe you’re thinking about getting started on one. No matter what your level of commitment towards your goal, you are likely thinking about how you will stay motivated and see your goal come to life! Read on for seven practical yet powerful tips to stay motivated (and inspired) toward your goal and improve your performance.

1. Know your “why”. This is top of the list because nothing else happens until you are clear on the reason/s you are aiming for the goal you have set. This is not the reason a friend, family member, or fellow athlete thinks you should do this BIG thing – it is YOURS and YOURS only. In fact, the more personal your “why”, the more likely you are to achieve your goal. Dig deep, be honest with yourself, make it as detailed as possible, and then write your reasons down. You can even create a picture board to keep you motivated.  

2. Connect with like-minded people. Create training groups, connect with training buddies, and meet up with clubs and social programs that support your goal. The juxtaposition of endurance racing is that it is quite often performed solo, yet training can be quite social. Connect with supportive people and see your motivation rise.

3. Recruit a coach. For all the time you spend training, and the money you spend on equipment and racing, don’t leave the most important things out. A coach will hold you accountable, facilitate the personalization and optimization of your training, and help with hydration, equipment, nutrition, race strategy, psychology, strength and function, workout reviews, etc. 

4. Visualize the achievement of your goal. See it (literally) in your mind’s eye. See yourself achieving it. How does it feel  – how does it really feel – what emotions are present? Who is around you, who are you celebrating with, and how are you celebrating? What does it smell like, does it even have a taste? What is the weather like, what do your surroundings look like? What are you wearing? Make it as detailed as possible – include all the senses and emotions you can. Practice seeing your goal become real every day!

5. Break it down. How do you eat an elephant? And what does that have to do with endurance training and racing you might ask?! You would never sit down and eat an elephant in one sitting now, would you?! Neither would you set out to complete your first Olympic Triathlon or 50-mile ultra run off the couch. You break it down into bite-size pieces you can digest every day. You don’t have to see the end point from the beginning – you just need to see the next day, then the next week, and so on. Oh, and on the above point – a coach will help you do this! See your goal clearly – but then focus on the next step. 

6. Have clearly defined processes. These are mini goals that are action based ensuring your daily routine is (relatively speaking) effortless. Examples include laying out your clothes and equipment the night before an early morning training session, setting up your weekly calendar a week in advance so there are no last-minute surprises, or even leveraging point 2 above, and connecting with your support system in advance and know you will be there for each other. Every opportunity you have to reduce friction between an idea and action – do it! Every athlete’s process is different, and it takes some time to establish a routine, yet by making this a priority you will find very quickly you fall into a manageable schedule that brings you closer to your goal. 

7. Make it fun! Unless you are a professional athlete and HAVE to do this, I am guessing you do this for the joy of it. Pay attention to what brings a smile to your dial and do more of that! The more fun it is, the more you will want to do it, and the more you want to do it, the more fun it will be! Success in endurance training and racing is first, and most importantly, about consistency. Whatever you can do to maintain a consistent training routine (such as enjoying the ride) the more success you will have, not just on race day but along the way to it!

As the name implies, a sprint triathlon is the shortest of the race categories. This makes it a good entry point for beginners, those with limited training time, or even more experienced athletes looking for a change or to test a new approach out. That said, you don’t prepare for a sprint triathlon the same way you prepare for a full-distance tri! Here’s why!

1. Energy systems

A sprint triathlon usually comprises a 750-meter swim, a 20 km bike ride, and a 5 km run, although this might vary slightly from race to race. In the overall scheme of things, this is on the shorter side with the race being completed by most athletes in an hour to an hour and 45 minutes. As the race time is on the shorter side, the percentage of time spent in higher-intensity zones is greater and your training should reflect this. Consider spending more time in training in Zone 4 otherwise known as threshold. This will train your body’s speed endurance including your ability to utilize glycogen while also training you mentally for being in that “comfortably uncomfortable” zone during your race. You will still want (and need) to incorporate a high percentage of Zone 2 training, otherwise known as endurance training, as this has its own set of important adaptations that ALL endurance athletes need. 

2. Duration

Your training sessions don’t need to be as long as they would be if you were training for an Olympic or long-distance event, but here is the clincher. Because you will spend more time training at a higher intensity for a sprint triathlon, you will also need to focus more on recovering between sessions. Effectively as time spent in training goes down and intensity goes up, recovery time becomes more important. This is a fine balancing act between optimizing training adaptations and avoiding injury or overtraining, and one area a coach will help a great deal. In general, swim sessions will be in the 20 to 30-minute range, bike rides will be anything from 40 to 90 minutes and runs will fall in the 20 to 60-minute range depending on intensity. 

3. Fueling and hydration

In a sprint triathlon, the percentage of glycogen required to generate energy increases, and your fueling has to support this. The time spent in a race in a sprint triathlon is about half of the Olympic distance. So rather than focusing on the longer “in-race” strategy, it becomes more important to be well-prepared prior to your event. This includes a complete breakfast 3 hours before your race start, topping up your glycogen stores between breakfast and your race start, and maintaining your hydration during this window. Experiment with this during training, also making sure you have practiced your hydration and nutrition strategy during higher intensity sessions. Come race day, your heart rate will be high, blood flow to working muscles is prioritized and your gut will be more sensitive to anything you take in. By practicing and refining your hydration and nutrition during training (especially the higher-intensity sessions) you will set yourself up for a great sprint race! 

4. Recovery time

This is closely related to point 2, above. There is one other factor to consider over and above recovery between training sessions, and that is the recovery time after races. Due to sprint triathlons having a lower impact on your body, it doesn’t take as long to recover from racing and you can race more frequently allowing you to improve your racing performance reasonably quickly over a season. In contrast, most athletes will race 1 full-distance triathlon or 2 to 3 half-distance events, but a sprinter can race up to 4 or 5 times in a season. 

5. Equipment   

There is one major advantage to this shorter race when it comes to bike choice. A road, or even touring bike (the choice for many a beginner triathlete regardless of distance) will be less efficient than a time trial bike. The impact of this is magnified as race distance increases. Say for example a TT bike is 2 minutes quicker over the sprint distance. This gap gets magnified as the race distance goes up. Running efficiency might go down by 2% running off a road bike versus a time trial bike, but again, over the sprint distance, this is minimized. There is no question, a TT bike will always be quicker in a non-draft legal race than a road bike, but this advantage is limited due to the race being over a shorter distance. This is a clear advantage for racers new to the sport, for those who have a road bike (not a TT bike), and for those who generally feel more comfortable on a road bike.

These are just some points to consider when training for a sprint triathlon. There are many nuances and specifics to drill into as you prepare for a sprint triathlon. For example, intensity ramp, specific recovery modalities and techniques, strength and conditioning, mental training, and more to master. Getting a coach just might be my #6! 

Happy racing!