One of our golden rules is that you need to slow down during points in your training if you want to become a faster paddler.  The reason this golden rule is necessary is because paddle athletes often think harder is always better. Most athletes erroneously believe that the way to get faster is to always try to go harder and faster than they did in their prior workout.

The problem with this approach is that if you are always trying to go harder or faster you will wind up being  tired, fatigued, and unable to recover from your previous workouts.  Fitness and speed do  not grow in a linear manner. Rather, going hard during every workout will leave you training in a “grey zone” where your workouts are not hard enough to make gains and not slow enough to allow you to recover before your next workout. Although there is a time and place for “grey zone” training ( discussed in the book ) always training in the grey zone is fitness suicide.

A much better approach to training is to go hard (really hard) when it is time to go hard and go easy (really easy) when it is time to go easy. There are three main components any training session – frequency, duration, and intensity. Intensity is the one that most athletes get wrong. Paddle athletes are encouraged to use a heart rate monitor as a tool to learn how to gauge intensity during a workout.  Many athletes find that when they train by heart rate what they used to think was slow is actually “grey zone” training.

This going slow to get fast business is not limited to individual training sessions. Rather, in order to keep growing as a paddle athlete, you are encouraged to “periodize” your training year and plan for times of the year where your main goal is to train slowly.  In fact,  there are times in the year where you should plan on letting your “high end” fitness (e.g speed) slide a bit. People are not robots. Nobody can maintain their “high end” fitness year round.

For example, during some points in the year, athletes are encouraged to visit the gym for functional strength training. Weight training, for anyone who has attempted to incorporate it into a paddle training program, will leave your arms feeling heavy and your paddling sluggish. This is perfectly acceptable if the weight training is properly incorporated into your training year as the benefits of weight training, such as a decreased susceptibility to injury, outweigh the benefit or need to be able to paddle fast throughout the training year.

As another example, during some points in the training year, athletes are encouraged to forgo intensity in their training program altogether. During these “base training” weeks, long slow workouts are used to build an endurance infrastructure upon which intense training can be added at other points in the training year.

Finally, most of our athletes are on a “two on one off” training program where they have a rest and recovery week after every two weeks of training. Stated another way, most of our athletes slow down a bit every two weeks to rest, absorb their training, and then train harder because they are rested.

The bottom line with all of this is that although there is a time to train in the grey zone (for example when training for a channel crossing), for most of your training year (especially during the competitive phase of training) you need to get out of the grey zone. Go slow (really slow) when you should be going easy. Go hard (really  hard – so hard it hurts) when it is time to go hard. Slowing down and not pushing as hard as you can from time to time, will be a key to your success. You should not be cooked after each workout. Go slow. Do less. Seriously.