Gearing Up

The school year is fast approaching, and things will be getting started soon. Things will be a bit different this year: Jon's gotten a level one certification, and we may have some new things going on in terms of the facilities and equipment available to us. Hopefully we'll be able to make good use of it all and everyone will be able to get some benefits and make some advancements. I thought I'd start things off with a thoughtful piece on training written by Rob Shaul, owner/trainer of Mountain Athlete, in Jackson Wyoming:

"When the roads are dry enough, I favor a running-based, power endurance effort over a rower, or gym based effort. One of the many conflicting things I find in the literature from the "experts" is the transferability of cardio-modes to one another.

By "cardio-mode" I mean running, rowing, swimming, biking - or non-gym based ways to make athletes breath.

Part of the goal is to train energy systems. Expert Endurance coaches describe training our aerobic energy system buy doing long, slow, distance training. We burn fat for energy on these efforts, and the more we do, the more efficient we become. This is bad for losing weight, but great for performance on endurance efforts.

Heart rate training experts like Joe Friel, however, note that the aerobic "zone" and other heart rate zones differ between modes. In other words, working hard while running occurs at a lower heart rate than at biking and swimming.

Glassman says aerobic conditioning is definitely "mode specific" - which is why great endurance athletes will "blow up" aerobically when subjected to their first intense CrossFit-inspired circuit which includes a barbell or dumbbell exercise.

So, we need to train mode specifically - according to our sport - in addition to general conditioning.

I've had big guys who could crush the rower, but get crushed by a run. Thing is, rarely do you row anywhere in the mountains. So the rower is a great general conditioning tool, but its transferability to running and hiking uphill is not perfect. And I've had guides who can run and hike uphill fast and forever, likewise "flail" when subjected at first to the rower.

One of the dangers of our programing is we can lose site of the goal. We train in the gym to complement and improve our training and performance in the field, or for our sport. The gym training can become its own "sport" - which can lead to neglect of our sport specific training and practice.

The CrossFit advocates argue that their approach is the best preparation for many sports and they point to how well CrossFitters do in competitions as proof.

They could be right, but this has not been my experience. Hybrid training may take you far down the competition road, but to truly be elite, I believe most athletes need to more and more sport specific in their training the closer they get to the competing season."

He runs a great, thoughtful site, and the url for this quote is here: http://www.mtnathlete.com/id198.html.

Anyways, once we get an idea for when everyone gets back, we can start things up again.