The Triathlete's Training Bible by Friel Joe

Author:Friel, Joe [Friel, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Velo Press
Published: 2012-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

IMPROVING ECONOMY

This last point, subtle variances in technique, is worth further discussion. By consciously modifying your movement patterns to resemble those of elite swimmers, cyclists, and runners who typically have excellent economy, it may be possible for you to improve your fuel usage. Unfortunately, scientific studies nearly always find that changing technique has little or no positive effect on economy. It’s important to understand, however, that testing in economy research is usually limited in ways that could produce misleading findings. Most of the research subjects are college students, for example. This means the study must coincide with the length of a school semester. The motivation of the subjects to carry out the required training may also be a factor. The body’s adjustment to changes that could affect economy may take months to fully realize, since many slowly occurring adaptations are required of the nervous system and muscles before the gains are appreciable enough to even be measurable. At first, during that period of adaptation, economy may even worsen.

Experience tells us that it is possible to boost economy, even in elite athletes. A case in point is the experience of American miler Steve Scott, who in the early 1980s, at the height of his running career, broke the American record for the mile after improving his economy by a whopping 5 percent.

There are three principles you must adhere to in training if your economy is to steadily and rapidly improve. The first is to practice the new technique frequently. If your swimming skill needs correction, getting in the pool only once a week is not enough. Three swims spaced evenly throughout the week are probably a minimum, and more is better. The second principle is that once you’ve mastered the new skill at slower velocities, you must regularly practice it at goal race pace. These race-pace repetitions are kept quite short—on the order of 20 to 30 seconds—to allow you to focus all your concentration on the new skill and to prevent fatigue from interfering as you practice the new movements.

The last principle is perhaps the most important: Complex skills are best learned when the desired movement pattern is broken down into manageable units that are mastered individually before being gradually combined into more complex movements. This means that technique drills are best for helping you learn new skills. You are essentially training the nervous system to choose the best pathways to the exact muscles that need activating. The more often you employ the new technique, the better your nervous system becomes at producing the desired movement pattern. This can be compared to making a path across open land. If enough people take the same shortcut often enough, a path results. This principle is obvious on most college campuses, where students have produced “economical” pathways across the spacious lawns regardless of where the sidewalks are. They walk on the improvised pathways in order to reduce the distance between destinations. In the same way, when you learn a more economical technique, you are forging shorter pathways between your brain and your muscles.

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