Short n’Fast All Year

Well, almost all year.  No, I am not talking about myself.  I still believe I am tall. 

In almost every program I right now, it will have running strides in it, pickups on the bike, 20-30s sprints, sprints in the pool or even fast 25’s.  This is not uncommon in most single sport programs but it is not talked a lot about in tri training.

Why do I like them?  Part of my reasoning was stated in my previous post on short interval training. 

However, doing a 10 to 30s pickup is much different than doing a 30s best average set of sprints.  The number one reason I like short pickups in speed is because it gets the body used to a higher degree of stress and thus prevents athlete’s from getting injured when they move from base training into tempo, hard or sprint training.

The body has a fairly complex neuromuscular system that coordinates our movements.  I think you will agree that the first time we do a fast sprint it is fairly awkward and clumsy.  As you do more, you get better at it.  Awkward and clumsy is not the best way to start doing 15 X 100 Hard sets in the pool if you get my drift.  A good recipe for injury.

Your muscle, tendon and ligament fibers also need to be prepared for intense activity.  They will get as strong as they need to become in order to handle recent stresses.  In other words, by doing higher stress activities we actually damage these fibres.  The body reacts and rebuilds the fibres but stronger.  So, now they are ready to handle that stress without damage.  These micro (perhaps nano) tears are essential in order to get stronger. 

The number two reason I like these is that in order to swim/bike/run fast you need to learn how to swim/bike/run fast.  This goes back to having good neuromuscular coordination.  It is simple to keep your coordination at a high level all season.  Just do these short pickups.  Then when you go to do the harder workouts your body already knows how to swim, bike or run that fast.  Thus you start your harder training at a higher speed which can only be a good thing.

The number 3 reason is that it reminds me of hockey training (personal reason I guess).

Number 4 is that you awaken muscle fibres early in a workout.  This is important because it stimulates mitochondrial growth in more fibres.  Olbrect (PhD exercise physiology and consultant with National Dutch Swim team and other world class athletes like Luc van Lierde back in the day) wrote in his book Science of Winning that

“Muscle biopsy research has underlined the importance of the intensity as well as the duration of the training exercises for increasing the number of mitochondria.  It was found that the peak adaptation in mitochondria content seems to occur with shorter but highly intensive training exercises.”…

“Thus, not only long extensive (slow) workouts but also short, intense exercises are essential for the improvement of the aerobic energy supply process.”

In other words, do your strides, bike pickups and pool sprints!  Mitochondria supply energy to your muscle cells.  More mitochondria = more endurance.

What if you are training for an Ironman?  The answer is still yes.  If not for reasons #1, 2 or 3, at least for reason #4 you should.

Popular authors years ago wrote that long endurance riding for triathletes should include 20s sprints every 20 or so minutes (check Serious Training by Sleamaker and Brown).  I have seen similar articles by Matt Fitzgerald.  I just wanted to let you know that I am not making this stuff up.

Later,

-Scott