Performance Triathlon Plans!

Are you tired of under performing in a particular sport? Have you been sidelined by recurring injuries? Are you looking to get a head start for the 2012 season by addressing some of your specific limitations?

Our Foundation Triathlon Plans are for you!

What are the Performance Triathlon Plans?

Think of your endurance fitness as a house. All the time you spend training you fill in the rooms on the bottom story and as you grow fitter, you could build a new ‘fitness’ story above the last one making your house grow.

However, in order for your house to be able to support the new hard earned fitness and the new levels you add, you need a solid foundation. The footing, the floors, the walls, etc. of your house, need to grow at a similar rate than your fitness to be able to sustain it otherwise your house might fall apart. In this analogy, your house’s foundation relates not only to your aerobic fitness, but specifically, to your muscles, tendons, bones, cartilage, ligaments, etc.

If you don’t have a solid foundation, as your fitness improves and you can do more training, eventually a weak link in your house will be exposed and it will be unable to ‘support’ your fitness causing it breaking down.

In order to prevent this, we create a personalized training plan addressing your specific needs, sport-related weaknesses, time limitations and complement it with a resistance training program to build your fitness as well as your body’s foundation for the rest of your season.

We spend 4, 8 or 12 weeks addressing your particular limitations in a sport as well as any muscle imbalances and/or mechanical constraints. This will allow ‘build up’ your foundation to support your fitness as you move into specific training. This option is a great alternative for athletes seeking structured training and coaching support without the full integration of our one-on-one programs.

All our programs are evidence-based in sport physiology and proven training concepts. We don’t offer any marketing buzz, no magic ‘systems’ and no shortcuts. Our athletes succeed based on hard and consistent work.

Foundation Triathlon Plan 4, 8 or 12 weeks: $100 Account setup - $36 per 4/week personalized plan and coach support or Annual Membership (52 week commitment*): Personalized plan (foundation + season), season planner based on your main events and ongoing coach support $139 per 4/ week Sign up! -- The above offers are only valid if sign up before November 30, 2011 --

It includes:

1.       Initial Fitness Assessment

2.       Personalized training plan

3.       Training history analysis to determine

4.       Functional Strength screening and personalized resistance training program

5.       Online training log hosted on Training Peaks (basic account) to track log your workouts and track progress.

6.       Field testing to develop sport specific training zones based on Heart Rate or Critical Power/Speed

7.       Access to E3 Training Solutions Training Guides.

8.       Access to E3TS Team Club

9.       Discounts with E3TS Sponsors and Supporters

10. E3TS Racing T-shirt and water bottle

Coach Support: 

• Unlimited Training log feedback. 
• Email interaction with your coach; all questions/concerns will be responded within 24hrs during the week and 48hrs during the weekend 
• Access to E3TS multi-media content including webinars, webcasts, podcasts, etc. 
• Monthly conference call with your coach to address specific training questions (as needed)

Discounted Services:20% off Performance Analysis (Gait/swim analysis and bike fit optimization)
15% off Clinical Run Gait Analysis
30% off Personalized Racing/Fueling execution plans
30% Personalized Nutrition Plans
50% Coached Group Training Sessions (i.e. track workouts, long runs, group rides etc.)

Sign Up!

* Annual Membership requires a 52 week commitment; the payment will be set up through automatic billing charged on credit/debit card as $140 every 28 days for 48 weeks and you get 4 weeks free

- If pay upfront you get a 5% discount off -

Training Concepts - Part 3 – Specificity/Overload/Reversibility

It is been more than a few weeks since the part 2 of the training concept series, but I finally got around to writing part 3.

As a quick summary, in part 1 I discussed the concepts of stress/strain/adaptation (overload/supercompensation), some of the physiological adaptations that we generate with our training, and how some of those can produce positive, unchanged or even negative effects in our fitness.

On part 2 I discussed the training load concept, presented the simple formula we use to plan our training ( volume + intensity + frequency) and discussed why it is important.

Now I'll focus on specificity, overload and reversibility to complete this part of the series before moving to periodization and taper.

What is the Specificity Concept?
Specificity refers to the way our bodies adapt to a particular training load (stimulus). It means, the type of training load we do determines what kind of physiological adaptations various tissues and organs produced and maximized. For instance, if you do a great deal of long/steady training, your muscles will respond by mainly producing more of the chemicals that help during long/steady sessions; your muscles fibers adapt to become more fatigue resistant and you increase mitochondria density, at a lesser degree other adaptations occur such as increase in the efficiency of energy production, improvement in oxidative enzyme levels, etc.

It is important to notice training adaptations interlayer based on different training loads, hence while doing work at your critical power/velocity will maximize certain adaptations, others will also occur at a lesser degree. On the other hand, adaptations that are maximized during long/steady sessions will also improve other adaptations at a lesser degree. Specificity is a key concept because performing the kind of training that matches that which will be experienced during our key competitions will enable our bodies to adapt optimally for it. With that in mind, this concepts plays a fundamental role when we design a training plan.

What is the Overload Concept?
The main goal for any training programs should be to induce the necessary strain forcing our bodies to positively adapt and grow stronger/fitter after recovering. This involves a constantly management of the balance between optimum stimulus (training load) and methodically disturbing our body homeostasis. That simply means, doing enough load forcing our body to adapt, without doing so much it can adapt. This refers to the overload concept defined as "the stimulus that requires a greater physical effort than the body's current capacity to handle a particular load".

This concept is important because it can allow us to manage our programs by mixing up our training load based on our current fitness level, our specific needs and our training phase. If we also consider the specificity concept, it then will allow us to know when we should focus on particular training loads that will improve our fitness overall and specifically for our main event(s).

What is the Reversibility Concept?
Training load is how much training we do, overload is how we incrementally managed that load; reversibility refers to the loss of training adaptations due to the reduction of training load. It is defines as "organic and functional changes that can improve performance as a result of training will revert to the original level in the absence of of training stimulus".

We know recovery is an important aspect of our body's ability to cope and adapt to the training load we expose it to, however, same as with load, the recovery period has to be managed in a way for our body to constantly adapt without losing (at least significantly) the achieved training adaptations. In addition, when formulating a training plan, training reversibility has to be considered when setting long time goals to allow the athlete to improve over time while at the same time allowing for periods of rest for physical and mental regeneration. Fitness gains in this period will decrease, though the good news is those adaptations will return at a faster pace for previously trained individuals.

There you have it, 3 more concepts we frequently use when designing or discussing training programs. These are simple terms and pretty inherent to understand. yet, often neglected when formulating training programs. The good news is that if you are reading this, you will be among those athletes/coaches who won't do that.

All the concepts I have presented so far will set the tone for Part 4 in which I'll discuss the performance equation (fitness minus fatigue) and introduce the periodization concept. understanding training load and the different components I discussed so far will make rather clear as to how and why periodization is an effective tool when designing a training plan.