I’m feeling like your program has too much rest and recovery time for me. How am I going to become a stronger stand up paddler if I keep having to take a “week off” every 3rd week? I was pretty well trained when I started this program, and I almost feel like I’m going backwards.

Also, I’m doing the workouts according to your assigned Heart Rates from the testing, and the HR1 workouts feel like I’m piddling around, and the paddles are sooo slow. The HR2 workouts are marginally better, but I still feel like I’m slacking.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger!

- Anonymous, CA

We hate to do it but we’re going to have to ask you a few questions to make sure we understand your situation accurately. We never like answering a question with a question but, in this case, it’s impossible to respond accurately unless we understand exactly where you are in your preparation.

We’ll go ahead and respond to your question with some assumptions from the outset:

• You’re preparing for a major race such as Catalina or the Molokai crossing
• You have significantly more time available to train than the hours currently given.
• You’re younger than 40-years and probably even 35-years of age.
• You’re male.
• Your race is at least 6 months in the future

First, let’s address your issue of “too much rest and recovery time.” Remember, during a periodized training year, you spend your base phase preparing yourself to handle the final 9-weeks of training volume and intensity. Your body needs to adapt to the physiological changes that will come from “training slow to get fast.” You are in the slow phase. If you cook yourself now you wont be able to handle the training that will come in the future as you near your race. As a general rule you will need:

• 15-weeks to prepare your body to handle the 9-week period of race specific training volume.
• 9-weeks of race specific volume and intensity – including the final 3-week taper into race day.
• 3-weeks of post race recovery & support.

We realize we’re not the only ones who have ever prepared for a major paddle race and that, when it comes to endurance training there are many ways to go about it BUT, at the same time, we feel like we have designed a program that is based on years of endurance racing and training experience at all levels of performance. We’ve worked with hundreds of athletes and witnessed every variation of training based on as many variations in backgrounds, goals, and time constraints. We’ve come to the conclusion that it’s definitely better to toe the line of any given race, especially a race that will last 5+ hours 20% under trained than even 1% over trained. This isn’t to say that we feel that our program leaves anyone under trained.

On the contrary, if an individual is able to complete all of the given workouts in the program and faithfully follows the periodization given, we firmly believe they’ll give themselves the best possible opportunity for their best performance ever. Can we guarantee this? No. There are too many variables in every individual’s life to guarantee anything.

Knowing what we have said previously, we encourage you to take one season and trust the program. If you handle things and you have picked a program that suits your level of ability and you are still chomping for more…it is possible that you are what we call a “responder.” We have said time and time again that there are probably loads of Lance Armstrongs out there (no not dopers) but they are sitting at a desk somewhere and never stumbled on to their potential. It is possible that you are one of them. To find out, we strongly encourage you to stick with the program for one season and see if your racing improves. Most athletes are not the 1% that will benefit from more. Most are the 99% who gauge their training by how far they beat themselves into submission day to day NOT by how well they do at the races. You need to make sure that you are training to get faster and not to deal with your desire to murder yourself each time you pick up a paddle.

If you feel like you’re getting out of shape using our program we’re assuming that your day-to-day and week-to-week training volume is significantly more than our first 12 to 15-weeks of preparation and that you’re accustomed to a 3-week build/1-week recovery microcycle as opposed to our 2-week build/1-week recovery cycle. Maybe you’re not accustomed to the concept of a recovery week at all – we know we certainly weren’t in our first 5 to 10-years of our “careers”. Why have we chosen this more conservative cycle? Because, in our experience, if an athlete becomes injured, ill, divorced, fired from their job, and/or friendless, it will happen in the third week of a 4-week build/recovery cycle.

That made us ask, “is it worth it”? In our opinion, no, it’s definitely not worth getting sick or injured for the sake of that final percentile of fitness. If the athlete is a professional who is racing for their very livelihood, then perhaps, yes, it’s worth it but in most individual’s lives, SUP is recess in their daily grind of “school.” It’s a hobby. Granted, in the case of competitive SUP, it’s a very serious hobby and/or challenge and there are many athletes who are every pursuing higher performance every bit as intensely as a professional but, even in these cases, we believe that the ability to train consistently over time will give any endurance athlete the best possible chance at their best performance.

If you feel like you’re losing fitness, what are you basing this on? Have you performed any sub-threshold time trials that have indicated that you’re losing fitness? Are you starting to go slower in race situations? Since experienced athletes tend to know their bodies well, it may well be true but we’d like to ask for some conclusive proof before giving you significantly more work. Keep in mind that many athletes become accustomed to a general fatigue from training that they begin to perceive as “normal”. Ever go up a flight of stairs only to have your legs respond with screaming pain after the first flight? You’re the fittest person in your office but you find yourself with hands on knees getting recovered in the privacy of the stairwell after two flights? This isn’t “normal.” Normal is being able to run at full speed up 6-flights with no burn whatsoever. Winded at the top? Yes. Legs on fire from the 3rd step? No. Perhaps you’re accustomed to the sweet warmth of general fatigue that we sometimes refer to as a “training fog.” For many athletes this feeling tells them that they’re working hard. They feel the virtue of being completely whacked as they try to stay awake at their desks during the daylight hours. The work ethic of most paddlers is unassailable – sometimes to their own detriment.

All of that said, there’s no question that, in order to make gains in fitness and endurance performance, you must overload your body with volume and/or intensity. It’s a well documented scientific principle. Our goal as coaches is to prepare you to be able to handle this period of overload optimally with minimal risk of injury/illness while putting you at the finish line in an upright posture with a smile on your face and a new personal best time above your head. Ideally this result will come with no risk of illness/injury, divorce, joblessness, and/or other negative physical, social and/or economic consequences.

What about your HR zones? My experience is that with athletes in your situation you also feel like your zones based on the estimated AT test are a bit on the low side and/or there is too much training in zones 1 & 2 and not enough in 3 & 4. Again, perhaps we’ve based our zones on the low side of things knowing that, a) most competitive paddlers will fudge to the higher end of the given range and/or duration and, b) we’re in adaptation/base period of the Northern Hemisphere’s race season and the intensities should reflect this. Perhaps it’s become a case of trying to save you from yourself when we should trust that our athletes are adults who can follow our prescribed program without deviating to the upper end.

That said, we are also endurance athletes who have lived the unbridled enthusiasm of the first 1 to 3-years of training and racing – to the periodic over-trained doldrums of the next 4 to 10-years – to the hard own self-knowledge that leads to the balance of training and recovery that, in turn, leads to all-time personal bests that comes in the next 11 to 18-years.

So, in the end, it is up to you to make decisions regarding your training. Another option is to hire a coach to monitor you and guide you for at least a few years. It is very difficult to know where the “line” is between overreaching and overtraining. An outside, objective observer, can help.
That which does not kill us can sometimes injure us and/or make us sick and/or cause us to forfeit our potential for the best possible performance.

Roch and Huddle