Top Endurance Athletes Training Mistakes

Everyone goes through a learning phase when starting a new sport and everyone makes mistakes throughout their athletic journey. You're bound to make some mistakes when you first start training but this article will help you avoid many common pitfalls that most new and experienced athletes make when it comes to endurance sports.

Training Hard Every Session

A common thought by athletes is that they need to work hard every training session. They believe that they must sweat and feel the burn by the end of their training session. This is a mistake because you'll often be pushing your body too hard and often leading to inefficient training, over training or injury. Many athletes will push their run a little harder to keep their average pace or speed fast and fall into the trap that training hard every time will lead to better results. Doing this type of training you get caught in the dreaded grey zone where you aren't working hard enough to elicit adaptations and are working too hard to allow for recovery before the next training sessions. Amateur athletes will often neglect the time it takes to recover from a hard training session. It is in between the training session where your body gets stronger. Having a variety of training both easy and fast is essential to develop your bodies ability to use both fat and sugar as fuel. Take the easy days easy and the hard days hard!

Training Monotony

This goes hand in hand with the previous point. Are you doing the same pace, distance and terrain day in and day out? As a new athlete you'll see improvements solely by starting to exercise but doing the same thing will quickly lead to the grey zone and a plateau in performance. Your body responds to the stimulus that is being applied to it. If you are constantly applying the same stimulus your body will eventually adapt to the exercise and eventually your body won't be receiving a strong enough signal to adapt to the training stimulus and grow stronger. If you go out and run 10km every day at the same pace then run a 10km race and wonder why your 10km best time is essentially stagnant it's because your body is not receiving enough training stimulus. Your body requires intervals, speed, recovery and easy base training in order to grow and develop the bodies different energy systems. Everyone responds differently to training and it's about having variety to ensure your body is receiving appropriate signals to elicit training adaptations for the bodies different energy systems.

Increasing Volume Too Quickly

Many new athletes are very eager when first starting out. Everything is exciting, new and fun. You think you can keep pilling on the volume week after week. You see improvements in performance feeding your ego to do more so that you can see more results. Eventually you feel a minor discomfort in your body but you keep pushing through the pain telling yourself it will go away. Finally you're sidelined with an injury that all together stops you from training. I have done this exact thing and it is a common mistake made by new endurance athletes, especially in running due to its corrosive nature. If you increase the stress on your body too quickly your body will respond by breaking. An injury due to repetitive use is a sign that you've pushed your body past the limit that it can currently handle. It is a lot more effective and safer to build your volume slowly and have consistent training rather than ramping up too quickly and getting injured.

Inadequate Fuelling

Food is what gives us the energy to workout and helps our bodies recover. A common mistake made by endurance athletes wanting to lose weight is that they under fuel workouts and don't eat enough post workout. Putting your body in too much of a calorie deficit is dangerous because your body will start eating away at your precious muscles as it no longer has fuel to burn as energy. After workouts it's important to get a good combination of protein and carbs to ensure your muscles have adequate nutrients to grow stronger. If you're feeling low on energy leading into a workout or near the end of your workout think about your food choices leading up to and during your workout. A rough rule of thumb when starting to exercise is workouts under 90min you can get away without fuel but anything over 90min you should be eating something to keep you from a sudden loss of energy aka bonking. If you're training hard, losing weight quickly and not making improvements consider the fact that your body isn't getting the fuel that it needs to maximize adaptations.

These are basic training mistakes many athletes make when first starting out in endurance sports. They are also mistakes made by uninformed athletes that could continue for prolonged periods of time if not rectified. If you've been stagnant in your progress or are new at endurance sports considers the points mentioned in the article to help maximize your training and contact Tri-Body Training if you have any questions!