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This article is part of a series:
→ Part 1 — Plan your training.
→ Part 2 — Design your training.
→ Part 3 — Review your training.
→ Part 1 — Plan your training.
→ Part 2 — Design your training.
→ Part 3 — Review your training.
Be the architect of your training. Part 3 of 3:
Review your training.
Thomas Solomon PhD.
6th Dec 2019.
In the previous parts of this three-part series, I outlined ‘exercise’ and ‘recovery’ as the two components of training and described how you might plan and then design your own approach. In this final part, I will address the last but perhaps the most important stage of your architectural journey: that is to review your training.
Reading time ~12-mins (2100-words)
Or listen to the Podcast version.
Or listen to the Podcast version.
In Parts 1 and 2, you learned how you might approach the planning and design stages of your training. Once your training is good to go, you must try it out to not only determine what effect it has on your fitness but also to see what impact it has on your life and well-being; after all, “real-life integration” must be close to seamless in order for the optimal training adaptation to be achieved. If your plan and design were sound, after several weeks you will adapt to the newly-imposed demands. During this time you would have collated sufficient data, through recording and observing, to be able to review your training. We strive for perfection but training is never perfect and it is the tweaking and fine-tuning that help manifest the optimal outcome. So, here in Part 3, I will explain how you might review your training.
Image Copyright © Thomas Solomon. All rights reserved.
My intent is not to provide you with rules of thumb and formulae by which you can “plugin” your fitness values to magically create a renewed training approach. Instead, I wish to provide some cerebral triggers to feed your thoughts about what to do next in reviewing your training. Please consider these questions:
Have you achieved your goal?
Has your overall fitness followed a general upwards trend?
Have you optimised your nutritional choices, hydration, and sleep hygiene?
Did you nail the planned effort level for each session?
Did you frequently give it large on easy days, or skip them all-together?
Did you constantly feel tired, sore, unrested, and ‘not recovered’ between sessions?
Were you constantly picking up injuries?
What have you learned about yourself?
Have you identified new weaknesses and strengths?
Did you find your training fun and engaging?
To help yourself build a framework to address your answers to those questions and to help keep your fitness on an upward trajectory, please read on…
Recovery, recovery, recovery. Remember, doing too much, too often, too soon, is often a route to feeling like the proverbial cow dung every time you lace up. The simple fix here is to do hard sessions less frequently and progress more conservatively. However, in addition to making tweaks to your exercise dose (i.e. your exercise frequency x intensity x time), you would be most wise to additionally consider your approaches to recovery. So, before adding or changing ingredients of the exercise training pie, first ask yourself this, “Are you feeling recovered between sessions?”. Or, more precisely, “do you always feel sore or tired, are your legs always trashed, or are you constantly getting injured?”. The topic of recovery will be addressed in detail in a future article but, in essence, enhancing your recovery from exercise comes down to optimising a few simple things: sleeping, eating, and relaxing. Yes, there is an array of incredibly well-marketed devices, pills, and potions available but, in reality, only a few legitimate devices, pills and potions actually improve physiological and/or psychological adaptations or, in some cases, even performance. At best, however, these will gain you a slight edge. On the other hand, low energy availability, dehydration, and inadequate or poor-quality sleep will each massively decrease exercise performance, even to the point of forced cessation. Consequently, optimal nutritional choices, hydration, and sleep hygiene are paramount. So, spend your well-earned resources on optimising these “biggest bang for your buck” recovery approaches first, before considering adding all the other “supplemental” approaches into the mix. Having optimised your sleep, your nutrition, and your restful habits, then during your review of your training turn your attention to the exercise elements of your training framework.
Get it right, every single day. During your training, did you nail the planned effort level for the sessions you planned? When you were supposed to be going hard, did you give it medium? When you were supposed to be taking it easy, did you give in to the sweat devil and give it large? Avoid falling into the trap of pushing your effort level as high as you can every single time you train. If such a trait is inherent to your approach to exercise, make a massive effort to change that habit now. Trust the journey, never go hard on easy days, and respect recovery. The gains will come if you get it right, every day.
Are you happy?
Photo by Mi Pham on Unsplash.
Are you happy with your training? Asking yourself how you feel about your training during this review stage is a very simple and effective way to determine whether or not it is optimal. Keeping the mind engaged will help your training remain fun. Now, it is best not to judge whether you feel happy with your training if you have just completed a beastly 20 x 400m workout or you are recovering from a marathon or a 50-km mountain race. Rather, think about your most recent mesocycle (i.e. the last couple of months). Did you enjoy and feel positive about the majority of your sessions? Most importantly, are you generally enjoying your sport? If it isn’t fun, make a change, try something different, try a new approach.
Refresh your training. As Nick the Greek once said, “People like a bit more range these days”. Although seemingly not in his athletic prime, under his trench coat of illicit deals, Nicolas of Greece certainly had some smart knowledge about training stashed in his sky-rocket. To keep things fresh and fun, during this review phase consider spicing things up a little. Employ a variety of paces, durations, and elevations; sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes high, sometimes low. You don’t have to pound the road every day; you don’t have to run intervals on a track. Try running on different terrain. Run in different locations. Try different strength exercises. Call yourself Billy No Mates for a day and train alone. Train in a group. Train with strangers, just don’t eat their candy. Why not occasionally train with no goal, no watch, no devices, if you are feeling good, go hard; if you feel calm, go easy. But, if you feel terrible, go home.
Keeping the stimuli varied will keep the mind engaged, maintaining the fun, thus prolonging the enthusiasm to maintain adherence to said stimuli. Running the same session around a running track every week may allow you to track changes in performance over time but training adaptations are not defined by single sessions so steady improvements are unlikely to be made every week. Searching for constant improvement is futile and seeking constant reward is not a healthy pursuit. Furthermore, repetition day after day, week after week, is for want of a better word, boring. If your training is "boring" make a change; rediscover the fun. I have coached folks who have requested “boring” training. Have I acquiesced their request? One big cup full of nope. I embrace variety; I implement range. So, during your training review, if your training feels stale, add some variety, enhance your range, and have fun doing it. “Variety is the spice of life” may be an age-old cliché, but learn to embrace it.
Add these into the mix.
Photo by Tiard Schulz on Unsplash.
If the fun has been completely lost, take a break. Training is an elective pursuit. Being coached is a voluntary choice. No one should be forcing you to train and compete. It is your decision; you own your decisions. Yes, physical training conditions our cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems to the imposed demands, but it is our neurons that are in control. If your mind isn’t in it, the muscles will not follow. An athlete shows great maturity and self-awareness when they make a bold decision to walk away from a sport when they’re at the top of their game. But if the fun is lost, that is often an excellent decision. In 2019, one of the biggest names in British obstacle course racing, Conor Hancock, announced that he was going to pursue other things. He was in his early 20s but, despite his youth, had dominated the domestic and international scene for several years, including podium placings at European and World Championship events. Even while at the top of his sport, this fine athlete’s spark had disappeared. Alas, after several months of enjoying exercise without competition or pressure, said athlete announced his return to competition. Refreshing the mind is very important at any level. Be self-aware, be mature, be like Conor. A certain, carbon spring-wearing Kenyan marathon legend once said, “Training is a state of mind”. I couldn't agree more.
Evolve your training. A fine gentleman with a fine beard, named Charles Darwin, once noted that fitness was dictated by a species’ cunning ability to adapt to their environmental pressures in order to remain “attractive”. Those who did not adapt, perished before they could throw their sexy shapes on Mother Nature’s dance floor. The theory of evolution dictates that doing the same ole shit doesn’t get a species very far. Darwinian fitness and physical fitness are indeed two rather distinct entities but I draw a parallel because we can learn much from Darwin’s observations… Learn from your successes and your failures as well as those of others. To apply that to the review of your training, continue to exploit your strengths, identify remaining weaknesses, plan to train those weaknesses and turn them into strengths. “Survival of the fittest” is not just a cliché, it is how you got here. Learning from that will help you interpret your needs and thereby design the training that helps you achieve your goal.
Evolve your training
Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash.
To summarise the framework of planning, designing, and reviewing your training and to help you become the master of your journey, I have provided a figure below. Some of the topics discussed within this mini-series will be the focus of future articles. In the meantime, go forth and become the architect of your journey.
Thanks for reading! Until next time, stay nerdy and keep empowering yourself to be the best athlete you can be by training smart...
Image Copyright © Thomas Solomon. All rights reserved.
Part 3: Review your training.
The first obvious question to ask yourself is, “Have you achieved your goal?”. Whether the answer is “yes” or “no”, take some time to consider how you feel about the outcome. When you have processed those feelings, you can begin to reflect on your journey and think about the nuances of how you might maintain, improve, or totally change your approach or specific aspects of your approach.
×
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In simple terms, if you had a general upward trend in your fitness while maintaining a healthy body and a healthy mind, then pat yourself on the back, for you planned well and created a fine design. In this case, since your fitness is improving, you might consider continuing with the approach you are implementing with only minor tweaks. If, however, your general fitness has either fallen away or hit a plateau, while it is indeed possible that you have found your genetic maximum, it is far more likely that your training approach needs some tinkering. If you fall into the latter of these categories, it is time to review, and then re-plan, and re-design. In doing so you will reinvigorate your motivation to continue your training journey.
My intent is not to provide you with rules of thumb and formulae by which you can “plugin” your fitness values to magically create a renewed training approach. Instead, I wish to provide some cerebral triggers to feed your thoughts about what to do next in reviewing your training. Please consider these questions:
Have you achieved your goal?
Has your overall fitness followed a general upwards trend?
Have you optimised your nutritional choices, hydration, and sleep hygiene?
Did you nail the planned effort level for each session?
Did you frequently give it large on easy days, or skip them all-together?
Did you constantly feel tired, sore, unrested, and ‘not recovered’ between sessions?
Were you constantly picking up injuries?
What have you learned about yourself?
Have you identified new weaknesses and strengths?
Did you find your training fun and engaging?
Recovery, recovery, recovery. Remember, doing too much, too often, too soon, is often a route to feeling like the proverbial cow dung every time you lace up. The simple fix here is to do hard sessions less frequently and progress more conservatively. However, in addition to making tweaks to your exercise dose (i.e. your exercise frequency x intensity x time), you would be most wise to additionally consider your approaches to recovery. So, before adding or changing ingredients of the exercise training pie, first ask yourself this, “Are you feeling recovered between sessions?”. Or, more precisely, “do you always feel sore or tired, are your legs always trashed, or are you constantly getting injured?”. The topic of recovery will be addressed in detail in a future article but, in essence, enhancing your recovery from exercise comes down to optimising a few simple things: sleeping, eating, and relaxing. Yes, there is an array of incredibly well-marketed devices, pills, and potions available but, in reality, only a few legitimate devices, pills and potions actually improve physiological and/or psychological adaptations or, in some cases, even performance. At best, however, these will gain you a slight edge. On the other hand, low energy availability, dehydration, and inadequate or poor-quality sleep will each massively decrease exercise performance, even to the point of forced cessation. Consequently, optimal nutritional choices, hydration, and sleep hygiene are paramount. So, spend your well-earned resources on optimising these “biggest bang for your buck” recovery approaches first, before considering adding all the other “supplemental” approaches into the mix. Having optimised your sleep, your nutrition, and your restful habits, then during your review of your training turn your attention to the exercise elements of your training framework.
Get it right, every single day. During your training, did you nail the planned effort level for the sessions you planned? When you were supposed to be going hard, did you give it medium? When you were supposed to be taking it easy, did you give in to the sweat devil and give it large? Avoid falling into the trap of pushing your effort level as high as you can every single time you train. If such a trait is inherent to your approach to exercise, make a massive effort to change that habit now. Trust the journey, never go hard on easy days, and respect recovery. The gains will come if you get it right, every day.
Photo by Mi Pham on Unsplash.
×
![]()
Are you happy with your training? Asking yourself how you feel about your training during this review stage is a very simple and effective way to determine whether or not it is optimal. Keeping the mind engaged will help your training remain fun. Now, it is best not to judge whether you feel happy with your training if you have just completed a beastly 20 x 400m workout or you are recovering from a marathon or a 50-km mountain race. Rather, think about your most recent mesocycle (i.e. the last couple of months). Did you enjoy and feel positive about the majority of your sessions? Most importantly, are you generally enjoying your sport? If it isn’t fun, make a change, try something different, try a new approach.
Refresh your training. As Nick the Greek once said, “People like a bit more range these days”. Although seemingly not in his athletic prime, under his trench coat of illicit deals, Nicolas of Greece certainly had some smart knowledge about training stashed in his sky-rocket. To keep things fresh and fun, during this review phase consider spicing things up a little. Employ a variety of paces, durations, and elevations; sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes high, sometimes low. You don’t have to pound the road every day; you don’t have to run intervals on a track. Try running on different terrain. Run in different locations. Try different strength exercises. Call yourself Billy No Mates for a day and train alone. Train in a group. Train with strangers, just don’t eat their candy. Why not occasionally train with no goal, no watch, no devices, if you are feeling good, go hard; if you feel calm, go easy. But, if you feel terrible, go home.
Keeping the stimuli varied will keep the mind engaged, maintaining the fun, thus prolonging the enthusiasm to maintain adherence to said stimuli. Running the same session around a running track every week may allow you to track changes in performance over time but training adaptations are not defined by single sessions so steady improvements are unlikely to be made every week. Searching for constant improvement is futile and seeking constant reward is not a healthy pursuit. Furthermore, repetition day after day, week after week, is for want of a better word, boring. If your training is "boring" make a change; rediscover the fun. I have coached folks who have requested “boring” training. Have I acquiesced their request? One big cup full of nope. I embrace variety; I implement range. So, during your training review, if your training feels stale, add some variety, enhance your range, and have fun doing it. “Variety is the spice of life” may be an age-old cliché, but learn to embrace it.
Photo by Tiard Schulz on Unsplash.
×
![]()
If the fun has been completely lost, take a break. Training is an elective pursuit. Being coached is a voluntary choice. No one should be forcing you to train and compete. It is your decision; you own your decisions. Yes, physical training conditions our cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems to the imposed demands, but it is our neurons that are in control. If your mind isn’t in it, the muscles will not follow. An athlete shows great maturity and self-awareness when they make a bold decision to walk away from a sport when they’re at the top of their game. But if the fun is lost, that is often an excellent decision. In 2019, one of the biggest names in British obstacle course racing, Conor Hancock, announced that he was going to pursue other things. He was in his early 20s but, despite his youth, had dominated the domestic and international scene for several years, including podium placings at European and World Championship events. Even while at the top of his sport, this fine athlete’s spark had disappeared. Alas, after several months of enjoying exercise without competition or pressure, said athlete announced his return to competition. Refreshing the mind is very important at any level. Be self-aware, be mature, be like Conor. A certain, carbon spring-wearing Kenyan marathon legend once said, “Training is a state of mind”. I couldn't agree more.
Evolve your training. A fine gentleman with a fine beard, named Charles Darwin, once noted that fitness was dictated by a species’ cunning ability to adapt to their environmental pressures in order to remain “attractive”. Those who did not adapt, perished before they could throw their sexy shapes on Mother Nature’s dance floor. The theory of evolution dictates that doing the same ole shit doesn’t get a species very far. Darwinian fitness and physical fitness are indeed two rather distinct entities but I draw a parallel because we can learn much from Darwin’s observations… Learn from your successes and your failures as well as those of others. To apply that to the review of your training, continue to exploit your strengths, identify remaining weaknesses, plan to train those weaknesses and turn them into strengths. “Survival of the fittest” is not just a cliché, it is how you got here. Learning from that will help you interpret your needs and thereby design the training that helps you achieve your goal.
Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash.
×
![]()
You have reached the end of this series of articles on planning, designing, and reviewing your training, I hope my intent to arm you with additional knowledge to facilitate the optimisation of your own training journey has been fulfilled.
To summarise the framework of planning, designing, and reviewing your training and to help you become the master of your journey, I have provided a figure below. Some of the topics discussed within this mini-series will be the focus of future articles. In the meantime, go forth and become the architect of your journey.
Thanks for reading! Until next time, stay nerdy and keep empowering yourself to be the best athlete you can be by training smart...
×
![]()
Disclaimer: I occasionally mention brands and products but it is important to know that I am not affiliated with, sponsored by, an ambassador for, or receiving advertisement royalties from any brands. I have conducted biomedical research for which I have received research money from publicly-funded national research councils and medical charities, and also from private companies, including Novo Nordisk Foundation, AstraZeneca, Amylin, A.P. Møller Foundation, and Augustinus Foundation. I’ve also consulted for Boost Treadmills and Gu Energy on their research and innovation grant applications and I’ve provided research and science writing services for Driftline and Examine — some of my articles contain links to information provided by Examine but I do not receive any royalties or bonuses from those links. These companies had no control over the research design, data analysis, or publication outcomes of my work. Any recommendations I make are, and always will be, based on my own views and opinions shaped by the evidence available. My recommendations have never and will never be influenced by affiliations, sponsorships, advertisement royalties, etc. The information I provide is not medical advice. Before making any changes to your habits of daily living based on any information I provide, always ensure it is safe for you to do so and consult your doctor if you are unsure.
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About the author:
I am Thomas Solomon and I'm passionate about relaying accurate and clear scientific information to the masses to help folks meet their fitness and performance goals. I hold a BSc in Biochemistry and a PhD in Exercise Science and am an ACSM-certified Exercise Physiologist and Personal Trainer, a VDOT-certified Distance running coach, and a Registered Nutritionist. Since 2002, I have conducted biomedical research in exercise and nutrition and have taught and led university courses in exercise physiology, nutrition, biochemistry, and molecular medicine. My work is published in over 80 peer-reviewed medical journal publications and I have delivered more than 50 conference presentations & invited talks at universities and medical societies. I have coached and provided training plans for truck-loads of athletes, have competed at a high level in running, cycling, and obstacle course racing, and continue to run, ride, ski, hike, lift, and climb as much as my ageing body will allow. To stay on top of scientific developments, I consult for scientists, participate in journal clubs, peer-review papers for medical journals, and I invest every Friday in reading what new delights have spawned onto PubMed. In my spare time, I hunt for phenomenal mountain views to capture through the lens, boulder problems to solve, and for new craft beers to drink with the goal of sending my gustatory system into a hullabaloo.
Copyright © Thomas Solomon. All rights reserved.
I am Thomas Solomon and I'm passionate about relaying accurate and clear scientific information to the masses to help folks meet their fitness and performance goals. I hold a BSc in Biochemistry and a PhD in Exercise Science and am an ACSM-certified Exercise Physiologist and Personal Trainer, a VDOT-certified Distance running coach, and a Registered Nutritionist. Since 2002, I have conducted biomedical research in exercise and nutrition and have taught and led university courses in exercise physiology, nutrition, biochemistry, and molecular medicine. My work is published in over 80 peer-reviewed medical journal publications and I have delivered more than 50 conference presentations & invited talks at universities and medical societies. I have coached and provided training plans for truck-loads of athletes, have competed at a high level in running, cycling, and obstacle course racing, and continue to run, ride, ski, hike, lift, and climb as much as my ageing body will allow. To stay on top of scientific developments, I consult for scientists, participate in journal clubs, peer-review papers for medical journals, and I invest every Friday in reading what new delights have spawned onto PubMed. In my spare time, I hunt for phenomenal mountain views to capture through the lens, boulder problems to solve, and for new craft beers to drink with the goal of sending my gustatory system into a hullabaloo.
Copyright © Thomas Solomon. All rights reserved.