The Basics, Part 2
WTF is a high performance key workout?
Last time, I talked a little about my four overall principles for endurance training. This time I’m going to dig a little deeper into Principle 2: High Performance Key Workouts.
Let’s break this down a little:
Key workouts are workouts that have a specific focus that isn’t easy distance and/or overall volume. I use the term “key” instead of something like “high intensity” because in some cases, the key workout might not be particularly high intensity, it might instead be long, like for an ultra runner.
High Performance. Here’s where we get into the real meat of it. There are a lot of ways to talk about key workouts, things like “hard” or “high intensity” come to mind. And while there are absolutely times when those things might be the goal, most athletes most of the time are going to get more out of a different approach.
The Difference Between “High Performance” and “Hard.”
One of the key distinctions I like to make regarding training intensity is whether or not the variable that we’re measuring is an input variable or an output variable. Input variables are those that describe how hard the body is working, while an output variable is the external result of that hard work. For me, it takes an input of about 130BPM heart rate in order to get 200watts of output on the bike. It might take some other athlete 140BPM of heart rate to get the output of 8MPH running speed.
The distinction between input and output variables is important because the relationship between input and output intensity is not always the same. If I am really tired, it might take 135, or even 140BPM to get 200 watts. It takes MORE input to get the same output when the body is tired.
At higher intensities, this fatigue plays out slightly differently. Let’s say I want to do a threshold workout of 4X10-minute intervals at 300W. When I’m all rested up, it’s going to take about 170BPM to get 300W. If I’m tired, however, I might actually only get up to 165BPM, and I’m not going to be able to hold 300W for more than five minutes, and in order to actually do 4X10 minutes, I’m going to need to drop to perhaps 275W.
To bring this back together, one of the challenges with “hard” workouts, is that 4X10 minutes at 275W feels just as “hard” when I’m tired as 300W does when I’m not tired. In this situation it doesn’t take much more than common sense to see that intervals done with both a lower input AND a lower output isn’t as effective of a workout. Spending 40 total minutes at 300 watts is a much more effective workout than 20 minutes (4X5) or 40 minutes at 275 watts.
Thus, our goal with key sessions shouldn’t be to go hard, but instead to ensure that the performance (the numbers of watts or the pace that we’re putting out) is close to as high as we can do!
How-To High-Performance Key Workouts
We just talked a little about why, now let’s talk about how.
In order to have the best chance of having a high performance key workouts, you need to manage three main factors.
Freshness. Freshness is the opposite of fatigue. If you’re really tired from previous workouts, either because they were really hard, or because your recovery wasn’t very good, then you will be fatigued for this workout, and performance is can be low. This is where managing the intensity of your volume comes in (we’ll talk about that more in the next post): if you went too hard on yesterday’s easy workout, it’s going to be hard to perform well on today’s key workout.
Fuel. All the freshness in the world doesn’t mean shit if you skipped your last meal and had an egg white for breakfast. High performance key workouts (mostly) require carbs. You need to be fueled up properly for high-performance to happen.
Focused. You need to show up for the workout mentally and emotionally ready to do the workout. If you’re stressed out and can’t follow the workout, need to go harder (or easier) to support your mental health, or can’t pay attention to your intensity, then you’re not going to execute that workout well.
If you’re good at managing these three factors, making sure that you’re coming into workout fresh, fueled, and focused, then there’s a pretty good chance those workouts will be really high performance, and you’ll get a lot out of them!
Questions to ponder (extra points for answering them in a comment below):
How could you measure the intensity of your workouts in the next few months?
Which of the three F’s (freshness, fuel, and focus) are you best at? What do you need to work the most on?
What did I miss in this post? What questions do you have about it?