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Table of Contents

This is a draft table of contents. It'll give you an idea of what the book is about.

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Arrowhead Endurance is built around converging periodization: design your training around goal pace and progress everything toward it.

Why write a fitness book?

The serious athlete is neglected

  • serious athletes have unique needs
  • but publishers want products that scale
  • so serious research is often a solo effort

The serious athlete is misunderstood

  • exercise is expendable;
  • serious training is invisible; and
  • the rewards are intangible.

Modern training is multi-directional:

  • prioritize goal pace, not physiological thresholds
  • develop goal pace from four directions, not two
  • use converging periodization, not linear

Train today, plan tomorrow

  • the stupidest idea the world still believes
  • routines precedes rewards
    • get up and suit up
    • kill your commute
    • magic hour
  • fortune favors the bored
  • think six years, not six weeks
  • all training is exercise, but very little exercise is training.
  • FOMO is failure
  • not fat is not fit

Plan the work

Benchmark your baseline

Where are you starting from?

  • It's better to be roughly right than precisely wrong (Buffett)
  • Use the mother of all fitness tests (an Olbrecht lacate test)
    • Test for aerobic threshold
      • Use a practical measure of aerobic threshold. Not VO2max, but AeT HR, speed at AeT HR, or speed at ~2 mmol lactate.)
      • VO2max: Buyer beware
    • Test for anaerobic threshold
      • What's your anaerobic threshold? (Speed and HR at ~4 mmol lactate or during a 20-minute solo time trial)
      • Thresholds are proxies, not predictions
    • Test for anaerobic capacity
      • Peak lactate after a 45-90" all-out effort.
      • Without measuring anaerobic capacity, misinterpretations of other changes are likely
    • Note your aerobic efficiency
      • AeT relative to AnT in HR and speed: Within 10%? 8%? 5%?
  • Test for maximum strength (in a relevant lift)
  • Perform a skills inventory
  • Perform a SWOT analysis
    • What strengths can you capitalize on?
    • What weaknesses do you need to address?
    • What opportunities can you take advantage of?
    • What threats do you need to neutralize?
    • What skills do you need to acquire and/or refine? To what level? At what speed?

Determine the demands

What do you need to get there?

  • Build a terrain profile
    • What's the total distance and vertical gain?
    • What's the rhythm of the terrain?
  • Detail the nature of the event
    • Is it a race or a solo/team effort?
    • Is the pace steady, variable, or stop/start?
    • What are the recovery demands?
    • When and where are the recovery opportunities?
  • Given the demands, what is your likely duration?
    • Based on other events, use the fudgy fitness formula for duration
  • Given the duration, what is the necessary metabolic fuel mix?
  • Given the duration, fuel mix, and current fitness, what is your likely pace?

Check yourself...

...before you wreck yourself.

  • How much time do you have to prepare?
  • Given your current fitness and the demands of the event, do you ahve time to close the gap?
  • If not, what interim events can you plan for instead?

Write the roadmap

  • Break the year into two 26-week blocks
    • 24 for training, 2 for buffer
    • Seasonal athletes may want to use an annual, 48-week cycle
    • In your calendar app, turn on weekly numbers
    • Plan with four 13-week blocks: Each has 12 weeks of training and an extra recovery/flex week
    • Plan A events for goal-relevant times; plan B events for six months before; C here and there
    • Non-competitive "annual athletes" could use a cycle that starts on the second week of the year (the Monday after the New Year), because year-end holidays have immense social pressure that almost always interferes with training (link to: the serious athlete is misunderstood)
    • Extra recovery or performance windows are weeks 52 & 1, 13 & 14, 26 & 27, and 39 & 40
    • 14 and 40 are ideal for full-on rest weeks in seasonal sports
    • Self-scheduled A-priority events are best planned for the Saturday that's mid-way through the extra recovery windows, ideally 13 and 39
  • Half for Capacity, one third for power, one sixth for performance,
    • Capacity: Start at the extremes
      • Strength: maximum strength (MXST);
      • Speed: anaerobic capacity (AnC);
      • Duration: aerobic capacity (AeC);
      • Execution: skill acquisition.
    • Power:
      • Strength: explosive strength (EXST);
      • Speed: anaerobic power (AnP, if required);
      • Duration: aerobic power (AeP, if required); and
      • Execution: skill stress-proofing.
    • Peak:
      • Strength: strength endurance (ENST);
      • Speed: just above goal pace;
      • Duration: just below goal pace; and
      • Execution: skills at goal pace.
    • Performance:
      • Strength, speed, duration, and execution come together in a goal event
    • Recovery:
      • A restorative (non-destructive) break before starting the next cycle
  • Plan your progressions
    Barring unplanned breaks (from injury, illness, or interference) workouts should always progress and never repeat.
    • progressions versus workouts
    • Start at the extremes and use converging periodization to work toward goal pace
      • Strength: speed increases as load decreases
        • From maximum to explosive to event-specific strength endurance
      • Speed: duration increases as speed decreases
        • From maximum to super goal pace to goal pace
      • Duration: speed increases as duration decreases
        • From maximum effective (not absolute maximum) to sub-goal pace to goal pace
      • Execution: speed increases as waste decreases
        • From messy acquisition to stress-proofing to race pace
  • Schedule your final key workouts, work backward from then

Work the plan

It's a map, not a model

  • athletes don't follow plans; plans follow athletes

Half-ass it with everything you've got

Pain is not performance

Liebig's law of the minimum

Stay on track with tea leaf training

  • The Olbrecht steering principle

Be ready on race day

Rest, recover, repeat

Fatigue is not fitness

Get fat like Lagat

Training plans are not toilet paper

Training Tools

Sample training plans

  • Skimo
  • Trail running

Workout library

  • Strength
  • Speed
  • Duration
  • Execution

Testing Methods

  • Aerobic threshold
  • Anaerobic threshold
  • Anaerobic capacity
  • One test to rule them all
  • Implied maximum strength

Bibliography

Climbing

  • Climbing Your Best, Heather Reynolds Sagar
  • Deep Play, Paul Pritchard
  • Extreme Alpinism, Mark Twight
  • Nine out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes, Dave MacLeod
  • One Move Too Many, Thomas Hochholzer & Volker Schoeffl
  • Performance Rock Climbing, Dale Goddard & Udo Neumann
  • The Rock Climber's Training Manual, Anderson
  • The Self-Coached Climber, Dan Hague & Douglas Hunter

Endurance

  • Basic Training Principles, John Davis
  • Endure, Alex Hutchinson
  • The Haywire Heart, Christopher Case, John Mandrola, & Lennard Zinn
  • How Bad Do You Want It?, Matt Fitzgerald
  • How to Skate a 10K, Nils van der Poel
  • Iron War, Matt Fitzgerald
  • The Lore of Running, Tim Noakes
  • The Manual for Ski Mountaineering Racing, Eric Carter & Stano Faban
  • Modern Training & Physiology, John Davis
  • The Power Meter Handbook, Joe Friel
  • Racing Weight, Matt Fitzgerald
  • The Science of Winning, Jan Olbrecht
  • The Science of Running, Steve Magness
  • A Scientific Approach to the Marathon, Enrico Arcelli & Renato Canova
  • Secrets of Lactate, Jerry Cosgrove
  • Training & Racing with a Power Meter, Hunter Allen & Andrew Coggan
  • Training for the New Alpinism, Scott Johnston & Steve House
  • Training for the Uphill Athlete, Scott Johnston, Steve House, & Kilian Jornet
  • The Well-Built Triathlete, Matt Dixon

Combat

  • Becoming the Black Belt, Roy Dean
  • On Combat, David Grossman & Loren Christensen
  • The Martial Apprentice, Roy Dean
  • Warrior Mindset, Michael Asken, Dave Grossman, & Loren Christensen

Motorsports

  • Master the Art of Kart Driving, Terence Dove
  • Speed Secrets, Ross Bentley

Philosophy

  • Mastery, Robert Greene
  • Mastery, George Leonard

Shooting

  • Accuracy & Precision for Long Range Shooting, Bryan Litz
  • Long Range Shooting, Ryan Cleckner

Strength

  • Kettlebell: Simple & Sinister, Pavel Tsatsouline
  • Special Strength Training Manual for Coaches, Yuri Verkhoshansky

Acknowledgements & Influences

Influences

  • Scott Johnston
    • Scott was my mentor and advisor during my skimo days. He pointed me toward the resources below in addition to engaging in our 14-year dialog on endurance training. At last count, it was 1,200 emails long.
    • My own training and research was book-ended with the publication of Scott's books: Training for the New Alpinism and Training for the Uphill Athlete. TftNA was published in __ , __ months after I started, and TftUA was published in __ , __ months after I stopped.
    • Following skimo, I worked with Scott as a coach at Uphill Athlete.
  • Jan Olbrecht
    • Intensities can be categorized between capacity and power
      • AeC is "as much as possible"
      • AnC, AeP, and AnP are as much as necessary
    • “it’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong“ (Buffett)
  • Renato Canova
    • Start general, at the extremes, and move to specific
    • First duration, then work speed from both beginning and end
    • Use internal load to progress capacity and power
    • Use external load to stabilize and fine tune performance
  • Steve Magness
    • Volume increases for capacity, plateaus for power, and then declines for performance
      • SS: Rather than volume, Johnston TSS is probably a better metric to follow but using the same profile
  • Yuri Verkhoshansky
    • Broaden the available fiber pool by "waking up" fast-twitch fiber, then train them to work aerobically

Combining these influences and their techniques is what inspired my label "converging periodization" that became the metaphor for Arrowhead Endurance.

About the Author

Glossary

Index