Two pillars,
six ways in.
I am going to shortcut this for you. I have had a lifetime of endurance sport experience, and the good fortune to watch young athletes grow into world-class performers. Along the way I kept seeing the same handful of things that mattered. These are them.
Every athlete I coach is working on two things at once. The body, so it can go faster for less effort. And the mind, so it lets the body do what it has trained to do. I call these the two pillars: physical progression and mental progression.
Each pillar has three parts, so there are six ways in. Most athletes are stuck in one or two of them, not all six. You do not need to read this page top to bottom. Start with the one that sounds most like you, and each section below explains what it is, why it matters, and how we work on it together.
How this works in coaching
- 01We find where you are. Your training, your racing, and how you think on the hard days.
- 02We choose the way in. Usually one physical and one mental piece at a time, not everything at once.
- 03We build it slowly. Consistency before intensity. The work compounds.
The body does what it is taught. Three qualities, built slowly, honestly, in that order.
The mind decides what the body is allowed to do. Three skills, worked on like any session.
Short and sharp on top. Patient and deep underneath. Most athletes have it the wrong way round.
01 · Speed
Speed is the
first layer.
Most endurance athletes skip this, and pay for it later. You need a short, sharp top end before you earn the right to hold a pace for a long time.
Neuromuscular speed is the one quality that trains your body to move efficiently at any effort below it. If the top end is rough and heavy, everything underneath will be too. We build it first, in small doses, and we keep it there for the rest of your career.
In practice, that is short reps, a little strides work off the run, explosive starts off the bike, over-speed swim sets. Ten minutes of sharp work in a week can change how a whole block feels by the end of it.
The full piece on Speed →02 · Aerobic Speed
Aerobic speed is the
middle gear.
Once you have a top end, you learn to hold the fast end of easy for longer. This is the quality most people call “feeling good”, and it is the one that makes long days in a race stop feeling so long.
It lives just under threshold. We spend a lot of time here, because this is the pace you will race most of your kilometres at, and the body adapts well to it when the work is consistent and the recovery is honest.
If you want one pillar to point at and say “that is the triathlon pillar”, it is this one. But without the speed work above it, and the strength below it, aerobic speed plateaus within a year or two. That is the whole point of three layers.
The full piece on Aerobic Speed →03 · Aerobic Strength
Aerobic strength is the
engine underneath.
The quiet layer. Long, slow, steady. This is what lets you race a long day without falling off it, and it is what keeps you healthy for another year of training.
Aerobic strength takes years to build, which is a hard sell in a culture addicted to hard sessions. But the athletes who last, and the ones who keep improving after thirty, are the ones who have stayed patient here. The body remembers every honest long day you put in.
In practice, it is long rides, long swims, long runs, hill strength, and not letting ego turn any of those into a race. The hard bit is not the effort, it is keeping the easy easy for long enough that something good happens.
The full piece on Aerobic Strength →None of the physical work lands if the mind is somewhere else. So we train that too.
01 · Automaticity
You are what you
practise.
Whatever you repeat in training becomes what you are on race day. So we pay attention to what you are actually repeating. Not the plan, the reality.
Most athletes have a set of default states they practise without knowing it. Rushed warm-ups. Internal chatter at the first sign of effort. A particular way of holding the shoulders when tired. Your thinking works the same way. Notice what you think in training and you know what you will be thinking on race day.
Race day is the sum of your attention in training. Ticking sessions off does not build anything; being present with them does. Let the impulse to react be there without acting on it, and you will race without reacting.
The work here is to notice, then to change what you rehearse. Then trust it. Champions race on instinct because the work is already in them. If you lack the trust, you will lack the thrust.
The full piece on Automaticity →02 · Thrive
Thrive, rather than
survive.
There is a version of endurance sport that is all grimace and gritted teeth, and it will get you to the finish line for a while. But it is not the one that keeps you in the game for thirty years.
Consistency is the absolute king. Over days, weeks and years it builds on its own platform, so never do something today that costs you tomorrow. Go slow to go fast. If you cannot hold good form slowly, you will not hold it at speed.
In the dark little shadows of a long session or a long year, a whole bunch of small skills hide. How you eat on a long ride. How you talk to yourself at kilometre 32. How you come home and be a normal person again after a hard block. And how you take the hit. The bad session and the bad race are your best teachers. Miss the lesson and you are bound to repeat it.
Thriving is the sum of the small things done kindly. We work on them deliberately, and the work compounds in a way nothing else does.
The full piece on Thrive →03 · Discomfort
Discomfort is a
friend, not the enemy.
You cannot avoid what you do not understand. So we get curious about pain and discomfort instead of bracing against it.
Discomfort in endurance sport is a signal, a teacher, and occasionally a liar. Most of it is not physical at all; it is how you judge what is happening. The degree of pain you feel matches how hard you resist the moment you are in. And judgment is like velcro. The more you throw at the weather, the course or the athlete beside you, the more discomfort sticks.
Embracing the suck is not a slogan, it is a skill. Built in training, tested on race day. Check your tension in the hard efforts and see how relaxed you can become at speed. Smile into it. It tells your nervous system to settle and saves energy you would otherwise burn on tension.
The shift most athletes describe is from running from the feeling, to sitting next to it. It sounds small. It changes the whole experience of racing.
The full piece on Discomfort →A minute, before you keep reading.
Four in. Hold four. Four out. Hold four. We call it box breathing; athletes I coach call it, quieting the noise. Do one round and carry on.
“Train the body. Starve the mind, and it all stops working. Every plan I write is for both, at once.” Coaching notebook, 2019
If this is the way
you want to train.
I take on a small number of athletes at a time. It is better that way, for them, and for me. Have a look at how we might start.
A letter, every couple of weeks.
Slow writing on training, psychology, and the things I’m quietly working on. Five hundred or so kind people read it. No spam, unsubscribe any time.