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Crunchy Time...

Saturday, 09 January 2016 00:10

By Dr. Michael Williams

Hello again! As I write this, I’m sure the majority of you are either: just finishing a workout, just heading to work out, or rationalizing another way to justify taking another day off…either way, every one of you can benefit from tying in the touted importance of periodization to your exercise routine to maximize your potential and help you reach your individualized goals. Before I go into the details of the importance of periodization and recovery, make sure to skim through yesterday's post if you haven’t already. And for those out there who have already seen it, a little reminder never hurts!

As a summary, we’ve now entered ‘Crunch Time.’ It is that time of year where we’re all trying to re-establish and improve old routines. It almost seems...

overwhelming as it is easy to take on too many obligations at this time of year. Perfectly fitting into this re-vamp of old habits and tweaking them to make you achieve your best, is the importance of rest and recovery.

Periodization

In line with yesterday's topic, I can not re-iterate enough that this is important! The need for shorter, more focused periods of higher intensity followed by periods longer than you may think (4 weeks) focused on recovery and moderate-intensity rides. But don’t underestimate the body’s physiological needs and abilities, and be sure to maintain your volume during these periods between builds. What this looks like: an 8-9 week period of progressively increasing your workload (Not Volume!) with 1 rest week in the middle, followed by a 4-week endurance focused period.

Seem simple? It is! Seem different? It kind of is!…as mentioned before, this is definitely the new way of training to get your best result with the more busy schedule that most of us face today aka reality! With each cycle of this training model, incremental improvements in sustainable power at race pace will result. Now you can’t argue with that: a better result from your ‘old-fashioned’ training model in likely less training volume.