HOW TO KEEP YOUR TRAINING EFFECTIVE

Is your training plan looking a bit samey? Then you need to inject some variation or else risk a performance plateau. Our resident coach Ben Bright explains...

- Ben Bright

Many years ago, I remember reading a story about a Japanese marathon runner who had performed the same run session every day for more than two decades. By this time he was in his late 40s but was still running some really impressive times, around the 2:40 mark as I remember. In some ways this example goes against what I’m about to write, but it also confirms that there are many ways to achieve great performance.

One of the reasons we train is to improve our performance. Ideally, training should stress the system enough to illicit an adaptive response that means we become more efficient. If the stress load is not enough the adaptations won’t be significant and improvement will be minimal. If the stress load is too high the body will begin to break down and we become overtrained, ill or injured (or all three if you’re really unlucky).