Understanding your physical breakpoint as a triathlete
A big mistake many athletes make in their training is misunderstanding what their body can tolerate while training.
Especially if you’re just getting started (or if you’re coming back from an injury).
Here’s how I explain the concept of training tolerance to my athletes:
Your training tolerance
I use a helpful visual in the clinic with my triathletes and runners.
Let’s imagine for a minute there is a consistent threshold in your ability to perform an activity.
(take an Achilles Tendon issue from running as an example)
You might initially notice the pain on 1 or 2 workouts as you gradually overload the system.
But as you perform more sessions above your tolerance line.
You set the stage for an injury.
When you resume training after some early rehab your tolerance for activities remains quite low.
You might only be able to swim and cycle without flaring up your Achilles. Any amount of running or walking will flare things up.
Improving your tolerance line for endurance athletes
Through your endurance journey, we have 2 main strategies to increase your tolerance and see progress:
- Do things that keep you under the line (calm it down)
- Do things that increase the line (build it up)
Here’s how to use these 2 strategies to improve your training tolerance:
Do things that keep you under the line (calm it down).
When you have an injury there are usually some activities that are causing pain and discomfort.
Our first goal is to calm that down.
We can calm things down by:
- Unloading the area
- Emphasizing recovery
- Cross-training for fitness
- Add some gentle ROM and/or ISOs
The combination of these things will usually bring your pain under control and allow us to continue your overall progress.
Do things that increase the line (build it up).
Once you have your pain under control you can start to build things back up.
This comes from:
- Slowly ramping in endurance
- Adding strength/resistance training
- Trying some plyometrics
These things will start to increase your overall tolerance.
But the key is in the dose.
As you start to build things back up there can be a tendency to jump right back into the same level of training that you were doing before.
This is a mistake.
You need to build up to your breakpoint over 6-12 weeks.
This is what allows you to build up your training and continue pain-free.
A final note:
You can be actively working on both aspects throughout the rehab process.
This is not a step-by-step process.
It’s more of an ebb and flow between each aspect.
Some days you may need more focus on calming things down. Other days you can focus on building back up.
Monitoring how you feel is key throughout the journey.
That’s all for today!
Chandler
Ps. If you're stuck overcoming your breakpoint I have something to help. I wrote an email course to help you re-build your endurance, get out of pain and get back to racing.