Increased training seems to have nothing but benefits up to a point: better health, better sleep, and generally increased energy levels. But as we increase training load, we eventually reach a point where the extra hours or intensity have the effect of turning us into walking zombies.
All of us who've experienced this state know that any attempt at innovation, critical thinking, or creativity is close to hopeless. Looking at the big picture, this is very bad news for our job performance and, consequently, livelihood and quality of life. If this is happening, the training load is just unsustainable.
So how do we get the hard training in without wrecking the rest of our lives? Here's how I do it.
Stack the intensity into weekends and evenings. If I'm training twice a day, I do the day's low intensity session in the morning, do a day's work, and save the hard session until the evening, then chill out for the day.
Save up all my automaton work. Sometimes, I've only got morning or lunchtime available to do a tough session. It's great to have a bunch of work saved up, which requires no creativity, that I can do perfectly well with my brain on autopilot. In fact, it's kind of satisfying. Without it, I'd have about 500 emails in my inbox, never oil my bike chain, and have a year's worth of unclaimed expenses.
Listen harder. It's fine to feel tired after a tough session, but you shouldn't be constantly tired. If you are, then it means your body is constantly in regeneration mode. If you're not a pro, then you're training too hard. When I ramp up the volume or intensity, I take extra notice of my general non-training energy levels, and peg it back if I'm feeling 80% or less.
Get enough sleep. This is one of those obvious ones that we all know but here's my take on the trade-off. More training seems to increase the need for sleep. If I don't get the sleep, and I'm constantly tired, then my day is pretty much ruined; so that extra hour in bed is one of the best investments of time I can make.
Enjoy the zombie time. When you've done that three hour, multi-leg brick, with Tabata intervals, and threshold hill repeats you will feel like a zombie. It's going to happen. My approach - relax and enjoy the afterglow - you deserve it, and as your parasympathetic kicks in, you'll recover faster to come back for more.
Monday, 12 October 2009
Friday, 9 October 2009
How to Find 20 Hours
Total training hours seems to be a good indicator of racing success, i.e., the more you train, the better you do. Advocates of this range from great man Lydiard to the modern breakthrough thinker Matt Fitzgerald. To paraphrase coach Chuckie V, you can bet that the guys who are kicking your ass are doing more hours than you.
Sure, genes are crucial, but I'm not sure many of us can do much about the ones we're given. Sure, training smart, focusing on areas of biggest gain, etc, etc, are all critical. But I'm confident that 20 hours per week of training smart is better than 10 of training smart. I'm not sure where the diminishing returns kick in, but 20 hours seems to be the benchmark for the people who kick my ass on a regular basis. If the number for you is 5 or 10 or 30, the principle is the same.
So here's the big question. Where to get 20 hours from, and still grow the business, improve the professional competence and reputation, have a good time with family and friends, stop the garden turning into a jungle, and follow a hundred other interests?
Before getting onto the "how", I want to establish a few things as given. First, of the 20, only an hour (max two if I'm racing) is going to be full-on, spit-and-snot, world-of-pain stuff. Some of the rest is going to be quite hard, but most is going to be moderate to easy. Second, most of the time and excluding the world-of-pain hour, we enjoy the training, and don't suffer misery 20 hours per week to fulfill the dream of a Gaylord Focker style trophy cabinet with which to impress our long-suffering family and friends. Third, you're a busy person who's not giving up cricket or golf, in which case the 20 hours is already yours.
Here's how I did 10-12 hours per week last year, and how I'm going to do about 20 this year.
1. Replacement
There are many things I would like or need to do with my time if I wasn't training. The "like" category includes reading (magazines, novels, blogs) and thinking about my blogs; the "need" category includes reading again (the business news, technology developments), commuting, and thinking about business problems. Wherever I can achieve the same result and train at the same time, I do it. I cycle to work three days a week; it takes 90 minutes each way, which is ridiculously long but about 5 minutes longer than taking the train. When I'm cycling or running, the iPod is my friend, and takes the place of all the news, novels, magazines, etc that I'd otherwise read. Last year, I took in the political, business and tech news every day, listened to 10 classic novels, heard daily in-depth interviews with some of the greatest economists of our time, audited the Stanford rhetoric course, and laughed at hours of the brilliant meaningless banter of the Two Johns. That doesn't include the thinking time that turned my previously 12 hour working days into a 10-hour ones.
That's 9 hours for me and a big improvement in my quality of life.
2. Creating moments.
Do you remember hours with the family, on the couch, watching Strictly or Masterchef? Or do you remember evening walks by the canal with your loved ones? I reckon I can trade five to six hours of comforting zombie time for two of proper, undistracted, enjoyable moments and still come out two hours ahead. This is important stuff - have a date night, play night, whatever, but make it about you, not Bruce Forsyth
That's another 3 hours for me, and 2 for my wife.
3. Cutting out nonsense
Assuming you've already done something about the commuting if you can, I'll bet you're still wasting crazy amounts of time in pointless meetings, on Facebook, discussing politics (as if that's going to make any difference) or other stuff that gives you the hedonism without the enjoyable bits.
I reckon I save at least two hours wasted time every week by insisting on having telephone calls instead of trecking over to people's offices, signing in, waiting at reception, waiting in the meeting room, and then doing the same thing in reverse. I know many people who would save about 20 hours (my entire target time) if they followed the same path.
And let's not fall into the trap of filling up that same time with work. There's growing evidence that shows our brains can do about 4-5 hours of work per day, for 5-6 days per week. If we're smart enough to save the wasted time, let's not be stupid enough to use that time with pointless, unproductive busy work.
That's an other 2 hours for me and a general reduction in bitterness.
4. Racing and training choices
How often do you race? How often do you train with other people? How far do you go to do it? How often do you go to the gym? And how long does all that take?
Unless you're sponsored or are dedicated to the local TT league, the chances are that your performance won't benefit from racing more than six or seven times a year. Chances are also that only four or five of those are big races that you need to travel to. Add up the time you spend getting to the local TT, signing in, waiting to go, and traveling back, versus the actual time you spend cycling. Do the same for the gym, the race in the West country, and the group ride with the cafe stop. You'll be amazed how little cycling or running time there is in there.
I've got another 2 hours' saving from that, plus less time spent with men in gym shower rooms. And don't call me a miserable, anti-social curmudgeon - socialising is for mates and family, training time is for training. Right?
OK, that's it, a total of 16 hours more training time, a big uptick in quality of life, and no difficult choices or trade-offs. I'm assuming that we've all had 4 hours available beforehand, and we weren't back-to-back TV, gossiping and commuting. So 20 hours is there for the taking.
Whether 20 hours is right, and what to do with it is a subject for another day.
Sure, genes are crucial, but I'm not sure many of us can do much about the ones we're given. Sure, training smart, focusing on areas of biggest gain, etc, etc, are all critical. But I'm confident that 20 hours per week of training smart is better than 10 of training smart. I'm not sure where the diminishing returns kick in, but 20 hours seems to be the benchmark for the people who kick my ass on a regular basis. If the number for you is 5 or 10 or 30, the principle is the same.
So here's the big question. Where to get 20 hours from, and still grow the business, improve the professional competence and reputation, have a good time with family and friends, stop the garden turning into a jungle, and follow a hundred other interests?
Before getting onto the "how", I want to establish a few things as given. First, of the 20, only an hour (max two if I'm racing) is going to be full-on, spit-and-snot, world-of-pain stuff. Some of the rest is going to be quite hard, but most is going to be moderate to easy. Second, most of the time and excluding the world-of-pain hour, we enjoy the training, and don't suffer misery 20 hours per week to fulfill the dream of a Gaylord Focker style trophy cabinet with which to impress our long-suffering family and friends. Third, you're a busy person who's not giving up cricket or golf, in which case the 20 hours is already yours.
Here's how I did 10-12 hours per week last year, and how I'm going to do about 20 this year.
1. Replacement
There are many things I would like or need to do with my time if I wasn't training. The "like" category includes reading (magazines, novels, blogs) and thinking about my blogs; the "need" category includes reading again (the business news, technology developments), commuting, and thinking about business problems. Wherever I can achieve the same result and train at the same time, I do it. I cycle to work three days a week; it takes 90 minutes each way, which is ridiculously long but about 5 minutes longer than taking the train. When I'm cycling or running, the iPod is my friend, and takes the place of all the news, novels, magazines, etc that I'd otherwise read. Last year, I took in the political, business and tech news every day, listened to 10 classic novels, heard daily in-depth interviews with some of the greatest economists of our time, audited the Stanford rhetoric course, and laughed at hours of the brilliant meaningless banter of the Two Johns. That doesn't include the thinking time that turned my previously 12 hour working days into a 10-hour ones.
That's 9 hours for me and a big improvement in my quality of life.
2. Creating moments.
Do you remember hours with the family, on the couch, watching Strictly or Masterchef? Or do you remember evening walks by the canal with your loved ones? I reckon I can trade five to six hours of comforting zombie time for two of proper, undistracted, enjoyable moments and still come out two hours ahead. This is important stuff - have a date night, play night, whatever, but make it about you, not Bruce Forsyth
That's another 3 hours for me, and 2 for my wife.
3. Cutting out nonsense
Assuming you've already done something about the commuting if you can, I'll bet you're still wasting crazy amounts of time in pointless meetings, on Facebook, discussing politics (as if that's going to make any difference) or other stuff that gives you the hedonism without the enjoyable bits.
I reckon I save at least two hours wasted time every week by insisting on having telephone calls instead of trecking over to people's offices, signing in, waiting at reception, waiting in the meeting room, and then doing the same thing in reverse. I know many people who would save about 20 hours (my entire target time) if they followed the same path.
And let's not fall into the trap of filling up that same time with work. There's growing evidence that shows our brains can do about 4-5 hours of work per day, for 5-6 days per week. If we're smart enough to save the wasted time, let's not be stupid enough to use that time with pointless, unproductive busy work.
That's an other 2 hours for me and a general reduction in bitterness.
4. Racing and training choices
How often do you race? How often do you train with other people? How far do you go to do it? How often do you go to the gym? And how long does all that take?
Unless you're sponsored or are dedicated to the local TT league, the chances are that your performance won't benefit from racing more than six or seven times a year. Chances are also that only four or five of those are big races that you need to travel to. Add up the time you spend getting to the local TT, signing in, waiting to go, and traveling back, versus the actual time you spend cycling. Do the same for the gym, the race in the West country, and the group ride with the cafe stop. You'll be amazed how little cycling or running time there is in there.
I've got another 2 hours' saving from that, plus less time spent with men in gym shower rooms. And don't call me a miserable, anti-social curmudgeon - socialising is for mates and family, training time is for training. Right?
OK, that's it, a total of 16 hours more training time, a big uptick in quality of life, and no difficult choices or trade-offs. I'm assuming that we've all had 4 hours available beforehand, and we weren't back-to-back TV, gossiping and commuting. So 20 hours is there for the taking.
Whether 20 hours is right, and what to do with it is a subject for another day.
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