Don't Let Fear-Based Training Sabotage Your Next Race

By Gale Bernhardt
For Active.com
If you train with a plan, you'll be more confident about your training and less likely to be motivated by fear.

There are many different philosophies and strategies on how to train athletes for a triathlon. My strategy for assembling a training plan varies, depending on the individual athlete, and I consider the athlete's race goals, current fitness and athletic history to develop a plan.

For self-trained athletes, I believe it's critical to establish your training strategy and map out a training plan so you'll have a clear path to race day. If you don't have a plan, it's easy to succumb to fear-based training.

Fear-based training takes different forms for different athletes. Let's take a look at a few examples of how fear-driven training can get you into trouble.

I've signed up for this event, now I really need to get in shape
Fear-based training puts you into panic mode and has you doubling or tripling, at minimum, the aerobic training volume you've been doing in the past few weeks.

Sometimes signing up for an event is just the kick in the pants you need to get fit again. To get started on your training journey, take a look at your training log to determine how much aerobic training you've been doing in the past four to six weeks.

When you begin designing your training plan, the first week of training shouldn't exceed the highest-volume week of the past four weeks by more than 10 percent.

I want to be sure I can go the distance and I want to see the course
Countless stories are told of athletes who decide to do a race simulation (full-race distance) workout -- the day before the race. Fear convinces them to test their endurance with a dry run to be sure they can go the distance for all three events together. Fear has also convinced them they need to physically experience the entire race course before race day in order to succeed.

This story is most common for sprint- and Olympic-distance triathlons. If you complete the course the day before the actual race, there's no way you can be rested enough to perform optimally on race day.

To help you ease your endurance fears, here are few simple guidelines I've found to be helpful for sprint- and Olympic-distance racing:

• In general, if you can build endurance so you're capable of completing a long bike ride that's between 50 and 80 percent of the time you think the entire race will take, it's enough endurance to get you comfortably through the event. For example, if you think an Olympic-distance triathlon will take you 3:30, your longest bike ride can be between 1:45 and about 2:45. I like the longest bike ride placed between two and four weeks before race the event.
• For sprint- and Olympic-distance racing, highly experienced or competitive athletes build the longest bike ride in training to 100 percent, or slightly over, the total estimated race time. These athletes will also include intensity within that ride. How much endurance and speed you can tolerate in your training load is related to how long you've been training and racing. Note: You will not find highly competitive athletes doing a complete race simulation on the race course within a week of the event.
• If you want to experience the course before race day, do some of your training on the course. If training on the race course isn't possible, try to drive most of the course before the race.

I don't want to be slow
"If you want to be fast, you must train fast. There's no sense in trotting along at a slow speed because that only teaches your body to go slow. Every workout needs to be at race pace or faster," your Fear Demon whispers to you.

If your Fear Demon convinces you to train fast all the time, there's a fairly high likelihood that you'll end up injured or your "fast" speed will dwindle to mediocre speed. The best athletes in the world know that getting faster means that some workouts are conducted well below race pace while only portions of other workouts are conducted at race pace or slightly faster.

Make a plan

If you train without a plan, it's easy for fear to creep in and convince you to do things that are counter-productive to your health and fitness goals. Map out a training plan, no matter how rough or simple it is, so you can literally see the path to success.

Plan the progression of your longest workouts, your weekly training volume, the volume of speed training and don't forget to plan rest. There may be times when this plan needs to be modified. Plan modification is normal, don't worry about it.

When the Fear Demon comes whispering in your ear, trying to get you to do something counter-productive to your goals, don't give in.

Gale Bernhardt was the 2003 USA Triathlon Pan American Games and 2004 USA Triathlon Olympic coach for both the men's and women's teams. Her first Olympic experience was as a personal cycling coach at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Thousands of athletes have had successful training and racing experiences using Gale's pre-built, easy-to-follow training plans. For more information, click here. Let Gale and Active Trainer help you succeed.

Size 14 is the New 10

By Elizabeth Landau
CNN

(CNN) -- The little number on the tag on a pair of pants that indicates size can mean a lot to a person, and retailers know it.

The probability of people describing themselves as overweight is decreasing, researchers find.

That's why, in recent years, as the American population has become generally more overweight, brands from the luxury names to the mass retail chains have scaled down the size labels on their clothing.

"You may actually be a size 14 and, according to whatever particular store you're in, you come out a size 10," said Natalie Nixon, associate professor of fashion industry management at Philadelphia University. "It's definitely to make the consumer feel good."

Research shows that, when it comes to self-perception, the concept of "overweight" may be relative.

A working paper from a group led by Mary Burke, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Massachusetts, suggested that people's perceptions of overweight have shifted, and "normal" is now heavier than it used to be.

Researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, nationally representative surveys run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first group was surveyed in 1988-1994, and the second was surveyed in 1999-2004. Because there were different people in each survey, it is not possible to tell if the perceptions of individuals shifted over time, the authors said.

Participants were asked whether they consider themselves "underweight," "about right," or "overweight," and reported their body mass index, a measure of the health risks associated with weight. Calculate your BMI »

Are people more complacent, or better educated?

Although the BMI of the general population increased from the earlier survey period to the later one, the probability of people describing themselves as overweight decreased in the later survey, researchers found.

They found that weight misperception tended to decrease among women -- meaning women with normal BMI who were surveyed in 1999-2004 were less likely to say that they're "overweight" than women with normal BMI in 1988-1994, especially among 17 to 19-year-olds. For men, it was about the same.

"For women, this was good news," Burke said. "Women seem to get a more realistic perception of themselves."

Don't Miss

• How to dine out without hurting your heart
• In Depth: Fit Nation

Although the study authors said this trend may reflect healthy body image campaigns, physician nutrition specialist Dr. Melina Jampolis, who was not involved in this research, said she doubts that positive messages had this much influence.

Rather, it is the relative increase in weight of the general population that makes people with normal BMI feel more normal, she said.

On the flip side, feeling normal but being overweight may decrease a person's motivation to lose weight, Burke said.

Still, while the BMI scale reflects disease risks associated with being overweight, it does not reflect the whole story of a person's health, experts said.

There have been reports that being somewhat overweight, but not obese, is associated with decreased mortality, such as a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that looked at deaths from a variety of causes.

Innovations such as treatments for high cholesterol have lowered the death risks for overweight people, Burke said. Especially for older adults, being slightly overweight may increase bone density, cushioning bones against falls, she said.

But the JAMA paper shows associations, not causes. People should not take this information as an excuse to gain weight, Jampolis said.

There are, however, other reasons that BMI isn't the whole story -- for instance, it does not reflect the distribution of a person's weight, Jampolis said.

"You could have really skinny arms and legs and just carry your weight in the middle, and it could be only 10 pounds, but belly fat, the visceral adiposity, it could very significantly increase your risk of disease," she said.

A brief history of body size perceptions

Experts noted that plumpness has been in style during some historical periods, especially as an indicator of prosperity when food was scarce. But the ideal of controlling one's food isn't new either. The book "Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West" by historian Peter Stearns points out that fasting was a religious virtue seen throughout the Middle Ages, and continuing into the Puritan version of Protestantism. Christianity also espoused the idea of restricting food to fight sin.

Health Library

• MayoClinic.com: 20 tips for permanent weight loss

The artistic and literary movement known as Romanticism, beginning in the late 18th century, stressed "slender, ethereal" ideals, Stearns wrote. The 1830s brought a prominent New York fashion style of a "willowy" look for young women, and there were many reports of anorexia nervosa during this time, the book said. But for older women, plumpness remained fashionable, and women on stage were expected to be voluptuous.

The meaning of the word "diet" came to include the goal of weight loss as early as 1910, Stearns wrote. "Middle-class America began its ongoing battle against body fat" between 1890 and 1910, Stearns wrote. The main factors that contributed to this shift were the advent of fat-control devices, the rise of public conversation about fat, and changes in fashion for both men and women, he wrote.

The culture of beauty that shaped up around the turn of the last century, promoting slimness as beautiful and fatness as ugly, has intensified since then, Stearns wrote.

Despite the widespread notion of dieting, obesity has risen dramatically over the last 20 years in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health found that the percentage of adults classified as obese went up in 23 states in the last year. View a map of obesity in America »

As clothing size numbers scale down in an era when bodies are getting more overweight, portion sizes have been increasing, Jampolis said. Photographs of fast food hamburgers from 50 years ago reveal that the serving size back then would seem like a "joke portion," now, she said.

"The same thing has happened with our body sizes. We're perceiving them as totally normal," she said.

As far as vanity sizing, Nixon called it a "temporary fix" that reflects a larger problem of people looking for quick solutions for losing weight, she said.

"It doesn't really deal with the root of the problem," she said. "It's really a lifestyle issue. It's not about a temporary diet, it's not about being pleasantly surprised because you're a size 12 instead of a size 16," she said