The Mind Over Matter Endurance training philosophy is built around the four pillars of fitness. These are endurance, strength, speed and stamina. Each of these four pillars will be built into your weekly TrainingPeaks program to ensure that you maximise your potential.
Endurance sessions will typically occur once per week, rotating through each week's focus sport. These are generally ‘over distance’ workouts, working at low heart rates to build your aerobic capacity. Your ability to go forever at a constant steady state will be improved in these sessions.
Strength sessions will include paddle sets in swimming, high resistance, low cadence sets in cycling and hill work in running. Strength is vital in endurance sport as it gives you the ability to get up hills and explode away from the pack. But it comes at an expense, usually in terms of nutrition burned and lactic acid gained. At Mind Over Matter Endurance we will deliver you a program which helps you build a strong engine that will see you get the most from any explosive efforts during your race.
Speed sessions will incorporate 25m sprints in the pool, 100+ cadence interval cycling drills or sprint repeats with full recovery. It is important to note that just because you are an endurance athlete does not mean you can neglect speed work. If you train for an endurance event without speed work your endurance will improve, but you will be performing at a significantly slower pace than if you train for both. These sessions will give your body the fast twitch muscles which are needed for your body to go forever, but at a faster pace than if you just did endurance sessions alone.
Stamina sessions will work on your body’s ability to expend explosive energy and keep on producing more. Be careful not to confuse stamina with endurance. Endurance is steady state, stamina is persistence through change of state. The sessions you can expect during stamina sessions will be medley sets in the pool, interval work in both indoor and outdoor road based cycling sessions and fartlek run work.
Recovery and nutrition support the four pillars of fitness. These two supporting elements are essential as they are the keys for ensuring that you return healthy and ready to go for every one of your sessions. They also ensure that you are in peak shape for your race. An athlete who is recovered fully and has fuelled their body well during and after training will always outperform an athlete who does all the same training sessions but pays little attention to recovery or their nutrition.
Designing and reflecting on a training program can be a delicate balancing act, where individual elements have to be compared against the holistic goal. At Mind Over Matter Endurance we want to help you make sense of the minefield and take the guess work out of your programming. The four pillars will be interweaved throughout your personalised program and will be intelligently modified depending on your current level of fitness and weighed against your ultimate race goal and its proximity. Your program will be a one of a kind program that will be unique to you because there is only one athlete like you in the world. Ultimately we want to help you help yourself! Your goal, our journey.