Understanding Your Racing Weight Training Plan

Endurance athletes share a common goal: improving fitness and performance. However, many also set additional goals that support this larger aim. One common secondary goal is improving body composition. While this can be an important step toward better performance, it’s crucial to approach body composition changes at the right time in your annual training plan.

The biggest mistake athletes make when trying to lose fat is attempting to prioritize it while actively training for one or more upcoming events. This approach can backfire because the best strategies for improving endurance fitness often conflict with those for effective weight loss.

For this reason, any body composition goals should be prioritized outside of race-focused training cycles.

Our 80/20 Racing Weight Training Plans are specifically designed for this purpose. Each plan lasts six weeks, which is an ideal timeframe to focus on body composition while keeping your ultimate goal—improved fitness and performance—on track. Detailed Dietary Guidelines for Racing Weight Training Plans are covered in a separate resource. This document focuses on helping you understand what to expect from your plan and why it’s structured the way it is.

Key Differences in Racing Weight Training Plans

Unlike race-focused plans, Racing Weight Plans stand out in three key ways:

1. Lower Training Volume: Sessions are shorter, allowing your body to recover better while focusing on fat loss.
2. Higher Training Intensity: There’s more emphasis on workouts that target higher effort levels, which are effective for both fitness and fat loss.
3. Increased Strength Training: These plans include more strength work to support your weight loss and overall performance goals.

By understanding these differences, you’ll see how this plan is designed to help you achieve body composition changes while setting the stage for success in your future race training.

More Work at Higher Intensities

Endurance athletes aiming to maximize fitness and performance follow the proven 80/20 intensity balance—80 percent of training at low intensity and 20 percent at moderate to high intensity. This approach is the gold standard for boosting fitness and achieving peak performance.

However, when it comes to improving body composition, the 80/20 intensity balance is not as effective. A 2014 study conducted at the University of Salzburg demonstrated this. In the study, endurance athletes were divided into four groups, each training at different intensity distributions over nine weeks.

• The group closest to the 80/20 balance showed the greatest improvement in fitness.
• The group doing the most high-intensity training lost the most body fat.

These findings have been supported by additional research.

How This Research Shapes Racing Weight Training Plans

Based on this evidence, our Racing Weight Training Plans include a greater emphasis on high-intensity training, with more sessions in Zones 3–5 than our race-focused plans. To offset the increased physical stress of high-intensity workouts, these plans also feature lower overall training volume. This balance ensures you can target fat loss effectively without risking overtraining or burnout.

By understanding this shift in intensity focus, you’ll see how these plans are designed to help you reach your racing weight while supporting long-term performance goals.

Greater Emphasis on Strength Training

Strength training is proven to enhance endurance performance and reduce injury risk. To maximize these benefits, endurance athletes need to take a functional approach to this type of exercise, which basically means doing exercises that are relevant to their sport and avoiding those that aren’t. Reverse lunges, for example, are relevant to running because they mimic the stride action. Classic bodybuilding exercises such as biceps curls, on the other hand, will do nothing for you as an endurance athlete.

It’s important as well that you avoid strength training at too high a volume or intensity within race-focused cycles, as doing so will compromise your endurance training. Things change, however, during periods when fat loss is your top priority. At these times, it’s okay and even beneficial to spend more time in the gym and to strength train in a way that is intended to build muscle rather than to develop sport-specific strength.

The strength-training component of our Racing Weight Training Plans features different exercises and greater loads than our standard Premium Strength Plans. Note that these workouts have more extensive equipment requirements, as well. Specific equipment requirements are listed in each individual workout description. Our Level 2 and Level 3 Racing Weight Training Plans include three strength workouts per week, whereas all of our race-focused plans have just two (as do our Level 0 and Level 1 Racing Weight Plans).

Each plan’s strength component features three different workouts (labeled Strength Workout 1, Strength Workout 2, and Strength Workout 3) that are cycled through repeatedly over the six-week plan period. All three workouts are basically the same each time you do them. The progression comes from increasing the loads you use for individual exercises as you get stronger.

In the workout descriptions, the term “reps sub max” refers to the maximum number of reps of a particular exercise you could complete. For example, if a given workout instructs you to perform “2 reps sub max” of the Pull-Up exercise, you are to complete two fewer repetitions of this particular exercise than the maximum number you could complete without resting (a two-rep margin). You may perform max-rep tests of the various exercises included in the plan before you start it to determine your limit in each or just go by feel.

Some exercises are time-based. For example, “45s” means you are to continue doing the exercise for 45 seconds in total, pausing the clock if you need to stop and rest before 45 seconds are up. Instructions like this—“7s on/3s off” mean you are to do the exercise for (in this case) seven seconds and then rest for three seconds to complete one rep

Transitioning to Race-Focused Training

Again, the ideal time to complete a Racing Weight Training Plan is right before you start a race-focused training plan. If you follow this suggestion, you may find that you’re a bit overprepared for the early weeks of the latter plan. This is not a problem. In fact, it’s a sign that you have benefitted from your Racing Weight training and are well positioned to handle the heavier weeks to come. If you discover that you’re tempted to do extra work in those early weeks of 80/20 training to preserve the gains you made on your Racing Weight plan, just remind yourself that it’s not the fitness per se that you want to preserve but your improved body composition! Trust the plan.