One of the biggest changes I’ve made in my personal fitness and in preparing for events has been narrowing the gap between my training intention, and my final execution. In short, this means that on your easy training days, go easy, and on your hard training days, go hard. The smaller the difference between your training intention, and the final execution, the better your progress will be. Sounds simple, but it’s usually easier said than done.
The best way to kick start your training intention is to set up some big long-term goals and achievements you want to pursue such as signing up for a race or competition. From there, plan backwards as to what you must do to reach that goal in the best possible form. Then, stick to that plan, religiously. Being super intentional and focused on what the goal of any given days’ training is will set you up for a week of high quality and impactful sessions.
You won’t over fatigue yourself as you’ll balance your intensity properly, but you’ll get enough of a stimulus to promote growth and adaptation. As a general rule of thumb, about 20% of your sessions should be perceived as a ‘hard’ effort. So, 1 out of every 5 training sessions should be ‘hard’, while the rest of sessions being ‘easy’. Of course, there will always be a time and place when you train for the pure enjoyment of it with no plan and you just do what feels right. But, if you want to get faster and stronger and train harder for longer: focus on training with intent, and most importantly executing that accordingly.
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