Breakthrough To The Best!
Breakthrough
to the Best of Your Stability
By John Sasso, Exercise Physiologist and Head Coach for TCR Sport Lab
As any coach or physiologist will tell you, human adaptations happen slowly. Fad diets and 8-minute-ab workouts often fail when facing the most essential of our biological characteristics: homeostasis. This simple, yet vital, tendency towards physiological stability helps to keep us warm in -40 degrees, cool in the scorching desert and healthy, despite our holiday food-fest. While it is this stability that keeps us going, it proves equally frustrating when we are faced against that pesky scale. For athletes, it means that improvements in strength and endurance happen over longer time periods; we walk before we run, we swim zipper-drills for months and increase mileage incrementally per week.
Nevertheless, a phenomenon, or rather a TREND in training adaptations occurs when a hard training block (often seen by a 'Training Camp' or 'Focus Week'), performed appropriately, adds a bit of a 'bump' to your training. Researchers in Lillehammer, Norway (who published an article in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports) have begun to identify this trend; what we sometime call Launchpad or Breakthrough workouts. If you've ever had it happen, you know what I'm talking about. There was "that one workout," which at first glance, seemed daunting and a big step beyond what you feel you could have accomplished.
But you did it anyway and somehow you finished it. Suddenly, the sets seemed to feel a little easier, or the next workout was not nearly as hard as the previous ones had been. You've gained some 'supernatural' strength and been launched into this new level of fitness, it seems. It's a heck of a feeling!
Most recently for me, was a few years ago in the pool, doing the ol' 5 x (5x100) at 3-5s faster than my 1500m time trial pace. I remember barely touching the wall before I had to head back off again barely able to hit the subsequent pace time. I could barely keep up with the others in my lane, but then around the 18th 100, I was starting to hang with them. This workout had me struggling and I was doing a bit of gut-checking every couple of laps. But sure enough, the workouts that followed brought about a new level of speed, where even my Easy pace was faster than my previous Tempo times.
No one really knows why this happens. An abrupt Supercompensation of the heart and skeletal muscles is unlikely; the body needs recovery, nutrients and appropriate fuel for that and it doesn't happen immediately. Improved neuromuscular recruitment may offer some solutions but scientists cannot seem to replicate this affect. Maybe a Central-overdrive and escalation of your "governor" could lead to peripheral adaptations from there. Nonetheless, we are getting close to finding answers and this article opens the door to why TRAINING CAMPS and Strong Training Blocks can facilitate this 'launchpad' in performance. The key is not to go searching for these, but to optimize the times within your season where these opportunities are built in. Finding the right timing and stresses is something very individualized and only you (and your genius-for-a-coach) can plan to optimize these workouts.
A focused training camp is a lot like an exercise vacation on steroids. The 'recovery' of being free and clear of the world and its stresses and your focus on performance and health often allows the body to do what it needs to in order to build upon your tendency towards stability. Focused heavy volume/load often provides the stimulus for these breakthrough's.
Don't worry if you haven't found that Breakthrough workout yet. Some people don't find it through their careers and some people just haven't YET. But as we begin to uncover the 'WHEN' and the "HOW", we will slowly discover the "WHY," which leads to repeatability.
It starts with setting yourself up for success. Recovering enough to allow yourself QUALITY workouts and not a QUANTITY of junk miles. It is further brought on by INDIVIDUALIZED training and not STANDARDIZED, cookie-cutter workouts. Too often we lose ourselves in the process, in the excitement, in the motions and you miss the raison d'etre. Allow yourself freedom from the momentum in order to make your move ON PURPOSE and WITH PURPOSE. That's one small step for practice, one giant leap for performance.