Posted: December 3, 2004

Multisport: Effortless, Intuitive Training

By Brad Kearns (www.bradventures.com)

Note: This article was originally published in the September 2004 issue of Triathlete.

As a coach, I often counsel my athletes to strive to "make every workout feel easy and effortless." This statement certainly deserves more clarification. Success in triathlon requires hours of difficult training, but only when you preserve your health and lead a balanced life will you be able to reach high fitness levels. With overtraining being the worst and most common mistake among triathletes of all levels, I advocate an enlightened approach called 'effortless, intuitive training' - where every workout feels comfortable, muscles strong and relaxed instead of sore or tight, breathing natural and steady instead of labored, mind strong and willing instead of suffering.

Even when training intensely, the principle still applies. First, a strong aerobic base must be present before anaerobic training should be introduced. Second, anaerobic training should only be conducted when you are 100% rested and motivated. Thus, even an intense workout is effortless in a way. Your mind and body are strong and eager to thrive on the challenge every time you work hard. Is this distinction clear? Think of the difference between these two statements that describe a tough workout:

· "I was really suffering, just hatin' life, on that hill"

· "I was really pushing it to maximum effort on that hill".

Suffering implies that you would rather not do it or that you're not ready and willing to do it. Even in a race, you should not have to suffer as much as strive to get 100% effort from your body. If you watch the Tour or the Ironman on television, it sure looks like Lance, DeBoom and the rest are suffering. Yes, but their stance, their mindset, remains aggressive. As in, "bring on the suffering, the pain. I am ready and willing to accept it and test myself"

So when the going gets tough, replace the word "suffer" with a word like "push". If you are truly suffering on a workout, go home and take a nap!

When I think back to my greatest victories, many of them took on an interesting characteristic: I felt absolutely no pain, no suffering, during the entire race. Sure the races were brutal, but the intensity and the effort were totally welcome - I can't characterize the efforts as painful or suffering.

Use visualization to cultivate intuition

Ask yourself this question before every workout:

· "Is my mind, body and spirit ready and willing to conduct this workout?" Often when I was unsure, I would visualize a certain planned workout before I conducted it. For example, my 12-mile "Stagecoach" run loop in Auburn. I'd sit on the edge of my bed, visualize running down the street to the trailhead, descending into the canyon, crossing the bridge over the American River, running up the Manzanita switchback trail, joining the old Stagecoach trail, cresting the canyon and running along the railroad tracks back to the neighborhood.

Sometimes just visualizing this run was a struggle ("oh Manzanita, sooo steep..."). Sometimes the visualization would be a series of rapid-fire images of me speeding through the loop effortlessly. At these times I was up and off to do the loop for real with no hesitation. When I struggled with the visualization, I would instead picture an easy 3-mile jog along the railroad tracks and back. This felt intuitively better, so that's what I would do. You can use visualization to help cultivate a powerful intuition about how you should train when in doubt.

Intuition is the most important training concept I have EVER discovered. Any time a workout does not feel easy and effortless, slow down, cut it short and let your body progress when it is ready to. From day one in my running and then triathlon career, I constantly struggled to keep up with training partners who were actually slower than I was in racing. I was generally unwilling and uncomfortable pushing my body beyond what felt natural and effortless on any particular day. I attribute this to an intuitive ability to harness my will, my deepest form of motivation, to the times when I really needed it in the competitive arena.

With this type of training attitude, you establish a pace at every workout that feels comfortable. You adjust the distances of your workouts so that they feel comfortable. Then, because you are constantly cultivating energy with sensible, effortless, intuitive training, you are fully ready to conduct killer key workouts when the time is right. On those days, going ballistic feels like the intuitively right thing to do.

It's obvious that your body responds better to a sensible cycle of stress and rest than it does to overtraining. With effortless, intuitive training, you will likely reduce the length and intensity of many workouts, as well as total weekly volume. The positive, performance-enhancing tradeoff is that when you push yourself with key workouts, you will perform at a higher level with less physical and psychological stress. This approach will not only improve performance but prolong and enhance the enjoyment of your career.

I used to swim with a national-caliber age group team, spending most workouts in the 'slow' lane with the 12-year-old girls. Occasionally when I felt awesome, I'd jump all the way across the pool to push the pace with the superstar high school guys. My coach and friend Bud McAllister called me a flake - he said if I can swim with the studs today, I should be able to swim with them every day. Certainly I could have handled swimming in the middle lanes at every workout, but that would foster mediocrity and a high risk of overtraining instead of progressive, intuitive improvement. It might feel better to the ego to say goodbye to the 12-year-old girls and swim with the studs, but my intuition kept telling me otherwise (and I kept telling the coach how awesome my bike and run workouts were earlier in the day…)

If your training schedule is straining your work, relationships, physical or mental health, you will not succeed. I had to learn the hard way that you cannot force improvement - it has to happen naturally. As former top professional Andrew MacNaughton said, "You only have so many peak performances in you and after that you lose your will." You have to cultivate this will by living a healthy, balanced lifestyle and pushing your body occasionally instead of constantly. Overtraining and compulsive training will break your will and leave you with an empty tank when you need it most: on race day. Over the years I've noticed many athletes experience surprising and devastating breakdowns at their most important races. My theory is that the accumulated stress of overtraining weakens the body and the spirit to the point that random breakdowns (unfamiliar digestive problems, muscle spasms, psychological 'cracking', etc) occur when maximum effort is called for.

You can follow these three simple, immediate techniques to enjoy the benefits of effortless, intuitive training:

1) Eliminate ego driven, compulsive training: Many triathletes follow robotic training schedules with workouts planned far in advance. While planning workouts can be highly effective, you must always give yourself the freedom to make intuitive changes based on lifestyle variables like other forms of stress or varying levels of energy, motivation or health. One sore throat can render your expensive, custom-designed 12-week Ironman peak performance training program worthless.

2) Cultivate Intuition every time you exercise: Govern your training decisions by asking yourself, "Is this healthy?" Be sure that every workout has a specific purpose - recovery/rejuvenation, fitness maintenance or fitness improvement. If you are unclear or unfocused on the purpose of a workout, the workout is not likely to be effective.

3) Score workout stress levels from 1-10: Include all forms of stress - difficulty of pace, duration or weather as well as psychological stress (a hurried lunch hour swim, 5am wakeup call or blowing off your kids soccer game for a workout is stressful beyond the actual physical workout effort). If 1 is a 20- minute warmup and 10 is a peak performance competition, strive to keep 80% of your workouts at a stress score of 6 or less. Make necessary adjustments to schedule or workout type to reduce the overall stress of your training program. These techniques will help you focus on balancing health and fitness, making every workout effortless and letting improvement happen naturally, allowing you to race at peak level and actualize your highest potential as an athlete.

Brad Kearns is a former national champion and #3 world-ranked triathlete and noted author, speaker and coach in the multisport world for the last 17 years. His www.bradventures.com website features a hand-picked, premium quality selection of healthy nutrition and lifestyle products for endurance athletes, with extensive supportive information. Kearns's Power Month book+audio CD kit outlines a 30-day program to "Change Your Life" with daily Action Plans for one week each in the areas of Diet, Exercise, Health and Personal Growth. Mention the Tri-Hard newsletter and Brad will give you a free gift when you place your first order at bradventures.com – a 1.5lb Cytomax (retail $21.50) or healthy energy bar sampler kit ($9.95). Just mention your gift and flavor choice in the order notes.