Steve Paladino created a great list that he posted on Facebook about the 10 most common mistakes that non-professional athletes make. While he wrote specifically about runners, the same applies to cyclists and other endurance athletes as well.
Ten common mistakes of less experienced runners and recreational racers. (in no particular order after #1)
- Running too hard on easy days.
- Running too hard on intervals and tempos (over-powering targets) (eg, no pain, no gain mentality)
- Ramping training load too aggressively.
- Not ramping training load at all / taking too many days off.
- Going out too hard in races (over-power early, fade late).
- Trying to run through emerging illness or emerging injury.
- Racing too many marathons (and even half marathons)
- Not allowing sufficient recovery time (week(s)) after a HM or FM.
- Trying to copy elite runners’ training.
- Thinking that “adjusting” running form/mechanics is more productive for improving performance than “adjusting” training.
Each workout has a purpose
I have seen all of these many times. Sometimes I wonder why an athlete would pay for coaching, endure rigorous testing, upload data faithfully and ask their coach to develop a plan to simply decide not to follow it. I get it. Sometimes an athlete new to coaching wants to impress the coach with, “Hey, I know you wanted three tempo intervals but I did six threshold intervals. Aren’t you proud of me?” Not really, those intervals were planned at this point in your training for a reason.
Consequently, your coach or plan scheduled the rest days because they are SUPER important. Do not overlook them or substitute a hard workout. Follow the plan, if its a rest day, then rest – completely. If its an easy day, just go easy. Your coach or plan will prescribe other types of activities as well. For example, a coach will prescribe tempo interval to create a specific kind of stress that a VO2 interval won’t produce. if your coach planned a specific type of workout, then do what is on the schedule. Trust your coach.
Speaking of plans, if you’ve got a coach who writes an individual plan for you, you’ve got the best situation. Prepaid premade plans are okay but nothing beats a coach who personalizes a plan just for you. A coach who adapts to your specific needs and progression. This speaks directly to a number of the points above. A plan that works for an elite athlete will generally not work for most of us. Heck, a plan for a 20 year old is probably too aggressive for a 60 year old. I could go on about this. Don’t get me wrong, having a prewritten plan and following it will probably do more to get you to your goals that just going out and hitting the road on the same route at the same intensity X number of days per week.
Too hard, too much, too fast
Let’s face it, many people want results now and they feel the best way to get those results is to just do more work. It takes a significant amount of time for a rank beginner to build up to participate in most endurance sports. I wouldn’t expect an untrained person to run a 10K or bike 50 miles without working up to it. Besides, to do so might cause injury if it wasn’t just miserable. You have to build the aerobic capacity to do the work. Your heart and lungs need time to adapt to providing more oxygen to your muscles. In the same way, your muscles need to develop the mitochondria to do the work that you want. Your connective tissues (ligaments and tendons) need time to develop to handle the work.
If you want to fail early, then do too much too early in training. To ensure failure on top of that, start out going as hard as you can all the time. You will surely end up on the injured list and quite possibly will feel defeated and want to quit. A good plan will start you slowly and build up slowly. There isn’t a one-size-fits all formula for how fast you can progress. You and your coach should evaluate all of the data. I don’t mean just look at your stats recorded on your watch. How do you feel? Do you have any aches and pains? Are you tired or having difficulty sleeping? There are many other factors to consider as well. One of the newest is Heart Rate Variability or HRV that is quite useful to determine training readiness. Even HRV has its limitations. I’ll leave that for another post.
What does it all mean?
As Steve Paladino suggested in his Facebook post, using power to inform your training is a good start. Hire a coach who knows how to develop and adapt training plans to your specific goals and needs. Follow that plan and provide good qualitative data to go along with the quantitative data.
