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Frequently asked questions
Coaching Options?
MarkAllenOnline has two main training schedule options you can select from: The Peak Performance Program and The Maintenance Program. Both are training schedules that are generated from what in essence is an expert system housed behind the website that replicates the thought process I would go through if I was to generate a training program for you myself.
To be able to provide such a customized training schedule, you input all your personal information about your past fitness history, your current level of fitness, plus the goal race date and distance you will be targeting. These are the basics any coach would need to start to develop your schedule.
But the information that has been collected so far would only be enough to generate a fairly generic program based on pre-designed templates. You are not a number. You are unique. So to take your schedule to another level of sophistication and effectiveness, the eGrip Coaching Engine (the storehouse for my knowledge) will need some additional information.
You then select the number of workouts you want to do per week, the days that you would like to do key endurance workouts, and any recurring days off you would like each week.
What this provides you with is the power to determine when your workouts are going to be, and to block out days in the week when you know it is either impossible to get in a workout or days that you simply choose to have as rest days.
all of this information has been collected, eGrip will give you a Preview that enables you to see if the placement of each workout looks good to you. If it meets your satisfaction, you will the continue and the eGrip Coaching Engine, the brain of a champion, goes to work to generate your fully customized training schedule.
What are the Programs based on?
All workouts in your schedule are based on training in specific heart rate zones. The zones that are correct for you are determined from the fitness information that is collected prior to generating your training schedule. Past fitness history, your current fitness, and your age are all used to determine the training heart rates for you.
You will then use a heart rate monitor for your workouts to keep you training in the correct ranges. No outside testing will be necessary to provide you with an accurate training protocol. The formula that is used to determine your training zones, which will be different for each particular workout, comes from exhaustive research on lactate thresholds and the differences in carbohydrate and fat burning metabolisms.
The heart rates then help you to cycle through the three key phases of the training program in a way that maximizes the benefit from each phase. In essence what you have guiding you in your program is the integration of lab research with the real world experience I gained during my 15 year career in triathlons.
What does the Schedule look like?
Your training schedule, once generated, is available online at any time in the members section. You can view your workouts by week and by day. Each workout has listed the length of the workout, the heart rate zone you should train at for each workout, plus additional information about every workout that is available in the expanded day view of the program.
For all swim workouts, you will be provided with an actual swim session that you can follow if you are not a member of a masters swim program. All speed sessions have specific workouts as well that you can follow.
There is a chart function that enables you to see the progression of your workout volume as well as what your workouts look like that you actual end up doing. In addition, there is an Adjust function (describes later in this section) that allows you to input your workout completion data and to update future workouts if necessary based on your percent completion of the scheduled sessions.
And finally, each workout has a log section where you can type in any pertinent information you want to save about that workout.
What is the Peak Performance Program?
The Peak Performance Program is designed for racing. The training volume is based on your workout preferences and the fitness information you provided. It then follows a very specific protocol of training that is the exact formula I used to achieve continual improvement in my performance over my entire 15 year career as a world class triathlete.
You will progress through the three stages essential to any effective training program: base building, speed work, and tapering. Each of these three stages is an art unto itself. None are effective alone. And when they are done correctly, they work together to bring you into the best possible form you can be in considering where you are starting at today.
Peak Performance Length?
The Peak Performance Program is a schedule of training that lasts from 12-20 weeks. You can pick the actual length of the program as it relates to your goal race date.
There is a reason for the lower and upper limits on the number of weeks of the program. The lower limit is set because it takes close to 12 weeks to have a significant effect on an athlete's fitness, especially if someone has been training incorrectly in the past. It takes about this length of time for your physiology to shift and to really begin to reap the benefits of my training. Any Peak Performance Program that is shorter than this is just about impossible to have a significant positive effect in terms of greatly improving racing performance.
The upper limit of 20 weeks was set to prevent burnout. If someone follows a regimented high-end training program for a goal race much further than 20 weeks away, they run the risk of hitting their peak well before the actual race date.
20 weeks is a sustainable period of training. It is also enough time to really build an athlete's fitness and take them through a healthy progression of training. The starting level of fitness required to reach a goal race 20 weeks away will be much less than is required of someone who is peaking for the same race, but has selected the 12 week option. The logic is simple. If you have less time to get ready, your starting point has to be at a higher level.
If your goal race is further out than 20 weeks but you want to get started with a training program, then consider signing up for the Maintenance Program that is described below.
Strength Training and Peak Performance?
The training schedule will have you doing a strength routine two days per week during the initial base building phase and then part way through the speed phase of the schedule. You will progress through four different phases of weight training. Each one builds on the other. The end result will be a vast improvement in functional strength that is designed to help you with both your speed and your endurance.
The program is simple to follow yet extremely effective and very time efficient. It builds your overall strength, which is exactly what you will need for a great race performance in a triathlon. The amount and type of muscle that you will develop is all functional for endurance sports.
Even if you have been on a weight program in the past, I think you will find this one to be unique. It is absorbable within the structure of your training program as a whole, and will provide you with exactly what is needed to have a peak performance in a triathlon.
What is the Maintenance Program?
The Maintenance Program is designed, as its name would imply, to develop and maintain a moderate level of fitness. The schedule you will get with this program will build and maintain enough fitness so that when you approach the window when you will switch over to the Peak Performance Program, your body will be ready.
The Maintenance Program is ideal for two very different times of the year. The first is during the off-season when you want to keep a training program going, but would not benefit from the volume and intensity of the Peak Performance Program. The Maintenance Program is perfect for this level of fitness. It provides a guide to follow that will help your body adapt to doing regular workouts once again after a period where you may have stopped doing any kind of structured training program.
The second time of the year when this program is ideal is during the middle of the racing season. Most athletes have two big goal races during the year, one in the early season and one later at the end of the summer. There can be a time in between these two goal races where you just need a break from the intensity of racing. It is a time when you still want to maintain some fitness but not be on the higher volume of the Peak Performance Program.
This is when the Maintenance Program is ideal. It provides you with a schedule that will do two things for you. It will maintain the basic structural and muscular strength you have developed during your first Peak Performance Program while providing you with enough training to do what is called Active Recovery.
The reduced volume of the Maintenance Program is designed to help you put energy back into your reserves. It does this through a process of deconditioning. Two peaks cannot be hit in the same year if you do not let your fitness level come down a notch or two from the high points. The Maintenance Program does this for you.
It also provides what many of us need...a mental break from high intensity training.
The Maintenance Program provides a training schedule that is similar to the Peak Performance Program. This includes a maintenance schedule for weight lifting as well. All workouts are reduced from what you will do in during the race specific schedule. And as with the racing program, your schedule is based on the goal race distance you will be keying on when you switch back over to the Peak Performance Program.
As with all the programs on MarkAllenOnline, you will start your training at the level you are currently at and progressively develop the base of fitness you need to then plug into the Peak Performance Program as the year progresses.
Maintenance Program Length?
You have flexibility in choosing the length of the Maintenance Program. The minimum length is three weeks. The maximum is basically up to you. This program provides you with the option of making it as long as you need it to be until you get closer to your goal race Peak Performance Program window.
The three-week minimum is set, as it is with the Peak Performance Program, to provide the positive effect from my style of coaching to do its job. Any maintenance schedule that is less than three weeks will not provide you with enough time to come down from a high level of fitness to provide for building up of core energy that may have been depleted during racing.
If you are in the middle of the racing season and a break from the Peak Performance Program from one schedule to the next is less than three week, then it is better to simply plug into the next racing schedule instead of trying to decondition any significant amount.
And if your Maintenance Program is coming after a long layoff, you will need at least three weeks to begin the adaptation process of working out once again.
Do the Two Programs Work Together?
Yes. The training you will be guided by in the Maintenance Program is based on the distance of the first goal race you are going to be targeting once you switch over to the Peak Performance Program. The volume and progression is designed to build your fitness up to a level that will at a minimum have you ready to plug directly into the 20-week Peak Performance Program.
It will progressively increase both the volume and intensity of your training a rate that will not tax either your physical or mental reserves. Anyone can design a training schedule so challenging that you will be constantly at your limit. It is much more difficult to develop a personalized training program that will enhance fitness without jeopardizing it. The Maintenance schedule will provide the correct balance to get you ready for the Peak Performance without risking burnout. The Peak Performance Program will then continue to build through the three phases of base, speed, and taper all within the guidelines of your fitness.
Miss Workouts?
This is the reality of life. No athlete alive has been able to follow their planned training schedule without missing some workouts. Family, illnesses, work…all are realities that can take priority over a planned workout occasionally.
This is when the power the eGrip Coaching Engine continues to work for you after your schedule has been generated. There is a state-of-the-art function designed specifically for my program called the Adjust function. This is how it works:
Each workout has an area that allows you to enter the percent completed of that workout. So if you do the entire workout, you simply enter 100% completed. If you miss the workout entirely you input 0%. And if you only complete 50% of the workout, you input that information as well. Then at the end of each week, after you have entered the percent completed of each workout on your schedule, you go the Adjust function and click on it. The eGrip Coaching Engine then assimilates that information and automatically alters future workouts if necessary based on the actual amount of each workout you completed. The changes are designed to bring you back up to the planned schedule as quickly as is safe.
Not only does it update based on the most recent week, but also the Adjust function keeps track of your percent completion of all weeks and will alter workouts based on the cumulative completion ratio. This is an absolutely important consideration for altering any future workouts based on missed or partially completed workouts.
If you miss one long run, that is a relatively insignificant event over the course of 20 weeks of training. If you miss 5 weeks of long runs, that has a significant impact on your overall endurance fitness and will require a completely different approach to safely bring you back up to the fitness you need to complete your goal race.
What Else Do I Get?
In addition to your training schedule, both the Maintenance and the Peak Performance Programs provide you with a wealth of online information.
The Peak Performance schedule gives you information on the following:
- How to best maximize your training schedule
- Heart rate monitor usage
- Heart rate zones and how they were picked for you
- Fat burning and what it means for endurance athletes
- Building a bigger athletic engine s
- How to warm up properly
- Aerobic workouts- what this means and why they are important
- Anaerobic workouts- what this means and why they are important
- Bricks- what this means and why they are important
- Pacing- knowing how to pick the correct speed for peak performance
- Swimming-technique importance
- Biking-time trial importance
- Running-heart rate drift
- Lifting- how to do it properly
- Be flexible-working with life's unexpected circumstances
- Nutrition-eating for health and performance
- Mind power-tapping into your potential
- Traveling-an extensive checklist to go through before you leave for the race.
The Maintenance Program allows you to access information on the following:
- How to use the schedule for off-season maintenance
- How to use the schedule for mid-season maintenance
- How to utilize the features of the Maintenance Program
- Maintenance Mindset-a guide to shifting the training focus
- Warming Up-the importance of starting slowly during this period
- The Workouts-how to follow the Maintenance Program guidelines
- Lifting-how to do the abbreviated strength training schedule
- Fun Racing-how to add in a race to spice up the schedule
- Fun Racing-good and bad. Determining if you should race now
- Form/Fitness/Fatigue-using reduced fitness to your advantage
- Muscle Patterning-the hidden benefit to training
- Muscle Patterning Fatigued-using a slow pace to improve form
- Swim Technique-drills to improve your swim stroket
- Lifting- how to do it properly
- Bike Position Changes-hints on finding you best time trial position
- Handle Bar Position-thought on aero vs. comfort
- Seat Position-changing it now
- Flat Running-advantages to speed you will need later
- Flat Running Mindset-training your mind
- Hill Running-building strength and reducing injury
- Maintenance Nutrition-taking advantage of a good diet
Do I Get Human Contact?
Absolutely! Through email you can get any questions answered you may have during your training program. We have a staff that will answer every single question you have about training or the site. I personally answer all training questions. The remainder of our staff answers the technical site questions.
My staff is well versed and experienced in the training methods I use. They all have a minimum of three years being coached by me personally plus an extensive education in the area of endurance training. There are some brief periods of the year when I physically cannot access my email. During those times, my staff will get back to you quickly with suggestions in my absence. Then upon my return I review all of their responses and will get back to you personally if I feel there is any additional information you would need to have your question fully answered.
What is the Cost?
Both programs are priced on a per week basis.
Peak Performance Program:
$29/week with an initial purchase of 6 weeks. The remaining weeks of the schedule may be purchased weekly.
Maintenance Program:
$19/week with an initial purchase of 3 weeks. The remaining weeks of the schedule may be purchased weekly.
Both the Maintenance and Peak Performance Programs may be purchased in whole if you wish to pay all at once. You will only be able to see the weeks on your schedule that you have paid for. For example, if you have a 20-week Peak Performance Program but have only paid for the minimum first 6 weeks, you will only be able to see those weeks until more weeks have been purchased.
It is recommended to pay for the whole program in the beginning. By doing this you can see the entire schedule from day one of your training. This has helped a lot of athletes to allocate their physical and mental energy appropriately. Knowing that the upcoming week may be easy but the next more challenging helps to pace your effort over the course of the program better.
Also by knowing what is coming up in future weeks people are better able to plan the scheduling of workouts within the realities of their personal lives.
Am I going to get my money's worth?
That is actually a good question. So far all of our clients have been extremely happy with the programs that they have been provided with, the results they have gotten from following them, and the access to our staff for questions.
Please check out our Testimonials section on the eGrip page to find out what some of our clients have to say about their MarkAllenOnline experience!
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