Blog
Understanding Your Free 80/20 Strength Training Plug-in
This document covers how to use your free strength training plug-in. For support on your Premium Strength Training plan, see Understanding Your Premium 80/20 Strength Training Plan. If you have not done much strength training recently, or if many of the exercises in your 80/20 Strength Training Plug-in are new to you, we recommend that you perform […]
New Study Provides Further Evidence That How You Balance Different Intensities Matters More Than Anything Else You Do in Training
Unless you fell onto this blog through a trapdoor and you have no clue what you’re doing here, you know that I am a proponent of the 80/20 training method, which entails spending about 80 percent of your training time at low intensity and the rest at moderate and high intensities. This does not mean […]
The Four Kinds of Endurance Talent
What does it mean to have a talent for running or cycling or other endurance sports? Generally, we think of it as a natural capacity to maintain high speeds for prolonged periods of time, a capacity that is physiologically rooted in what we can loosely call aerobic power. There is no question that you aren’t […]
Is Pre-Race Tapering Overrated? Or Is This Question Just Click Bait?
Recently one of my custom training plan clients emailed me with a question. He was three weeks out from the marathon he’d hired me to prepare him for and was somewhat alarmed to see that I had scheduled a 20-mile run featuring 16 miles at his goal marathon pace at the end of the current […]
Good Cop, Bad Cop
To train with maximal effectiveness, you have to be mean to yourself. And you also have to be kind to yourself. Every week I do two full-body functional strength workouts at a local gym. The specific exercise selection evolves over time, but there is one exercise I never fail to include among the dozen or […]
Become a Better Coach by Becoming a Better Listener
This week, Matt writes for the TrainingPeaks Coach blog and his article can be found here.
The Art of the Marathon-as-Workout
If you’re a relatively inexperienced runner, or a back-of-the-pack runner, stop reading now. This one’s not for you. Unless you’re just curious—then go ahead and keep reading. For most experienced competitive runners, a marathon is a race. You sign up, pin a number on your belly, and go for broke. The workouts that serve as […]
How to Cultivate a Growth Mindset in Athletes
This week, Matt writes for the TrainingPeaks Coach blog and his article can be found here.
Test or Stimulus? How You View Your Workouts May Say a Lot About Your Overall Mindset
I’m working on a new book on the psychology of endurance sports. It’s titled The Comeback Quotient and it’s a sort of sequel to How Bad Do You Want It? As part of my research, I’ve just read Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. You may be familiar with Dweck’s work, which has been mainstreamed by a […]
Would You Go to a Fortune Teller for Retirement Planning Advice? Then Why Do You Not Go to Trained Professionals for Sports Nutrition Guidance?
If you’re interested in the effects of diet and nutrition on endurance performance, you’ll be interested in a study that was just published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness. Italian researchers recruited 40 student-athletes from the University of Bergamo and separated them into four groups. Two of the groups were made up of kickboxers, […]