You Are Disciplined to Train, But Do You Have Training Discipline?Written by Matt Russ
I have privilege of working with motivated athletes and they all exhibit a high degree of self discipline. Often, one of hardest things to do is to get them not to train, or to rest and recover. Training can be a slippery slope. You have to balance right amount of stress with right amount of rest. Even though you may be a disciplined athlete, training discipline means performing right volume, intensity, and work out and then allowing your body to recover from it. It also means knowing when not to train. Training too hard can be more detrimental than not enough.Too many athletes confuse high volume training with high quality training. Just increasing amount your run or ride will not necessarily get you faster. You have to choose right work outs to train your weakness and capitalize on your strengths. Training should be a slow steady progression. If you add 10 more intervals to what you accomplished last week, first 3 may have been beneficial, and last 7 counter productive. A proper plan will not increase overall volume more than about 8% per week with a maximum of 10%. Try to keep these numbers in mind when you design your plan. Another common mistake is training too hard in weeks leading up to a race. Depending on your event you should taper your training for 1-2 weeks or more. In this time overall volume goes down while intensity stays up. The purpose of this is to have you fully rested while maintaining a high level of fitness. Some athletes find it hard to taper their training and feel they are under training before their event. As Chris Carmichael once told me, “there is nothing you can do week of a race to increase fitness, but there is everything you can do to screw it up.”
| | Relieving Stress with Exercise... and Losing Body Fat in the Process!Written by Jamie Clark
Feeling stressed out lately? Don't worry, there is a simple and incredibly effective solution -- one that will help you lose weight in more ways than you might think!Relieving Stress with Exercise Research has proven that relieving stress with exercise is one of best ways to improve your overall health. Regular exercise provides an amazing array of anti-stress benefits to human body -- including reduced muscle tension, improved cardiovascular functioning, increased blood oxygen levels, and reduced cholesterol and triglyceride levels, just to name a few. Relieving stress with exercise also, of course, burns calories and helps to reduce body fat. Since most other anti-stress 'remedies' (especially pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and overeating) cause you to gain weight it's obvious that exercise is best option. Control Cortisol, Lose Weight But, besides burning calories, there's another reason relieving stress with exercise helps you to reduce body fat. Exercise produces chemicals that help to lower cortisol production. Cortisol is a "stress hormone" that has gotten a lot of press lately because many new diet products claim to block it.
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