The Big Bounce in your training cycle

How to stay with it and make it work for you

The training effect; what is it?  The training effect is your body’s response to the effort of training.  You push your body through hard efforts and your body responds and adapts.

What are the elements of that adaptation? That adaptation as many elements and affects your whole body/mind.

–          Muscular – The most obvious is your muscles responding to the effort.  Maybe at first they are sore and then as you get fit they get stronger and are able to take bigger loads for longer periods of work.  This is the macro adaptation – you get stronger.  At a micro level your muscle tissue cells are actually reconfiguring themselves to align their ability with the effort required of them.

–          Structural – As you increase the load and effort your bones and tendons will strengthen. The attach points will grow larger and stronger.  The flexibility and responsiveness of the connective tissue will adapt to your racing stride.  Tendonitis will turn into explosive response.

–          Aerobic and metabolic – your body’s plumbing; the heart, lungs, digestion, veins and arteries will reconfigure themselves into a high-volume, efficient network in response to the training load.

–          Mentally – your body/mind connection will learn to adapt and tune itself to the training and racing effort.

It’s important to realize that the training effect is not a straight line response. It is a curve and your training effort can shape that curve in the big push – big bounce scenario.  The gains you can make in a relatively short and intense training cycle can be exponential or at least additive. They are only incremental if your training is incremental.  The big push – big bounce methodology breaks the linear response assumption.  The magnitude of positive change is relative to the magnitude of your push. (yeah I’m talking about you – long slow build training plans)

The caveat is that you have to work very carefully not to break.  The big push has to be managed to push you to your breaking point but not beyond it.  Because if you beak yourself in the big push you don’t get the big bounce.  You can break yourself in any of the adaption areas, muscular, structural, aerobic and, yes, mentally in the big push.

That’s why the big push has to be a measured and balanced plan as closely tailored to your abilities and history as you can get.  The key word here is plan.  If you have a good solid history you can confidently put together a plan that is plausible for you.

Pulling a standard plan off the internet or such is ok but it’s better to have one specific to you.  That’s why a coach, especially a coach who has some history with you, is so effective in putting together a tailored plan. They can be objective.  They can keep you from breaking yourself in the big push at while at the same time push you harder into the dark place then you would push yourself and then hold you accountable for getting the work done.

The plan becomes ultimately important in the big bounce because it simplifies your work.  When you’re in the dark place and holding on by your fingernails mentally and physically you can’t doubt your plan.  You have to trust your plan and simply execute.  The plan is the light at the end of the tunnel when all other positive feedback is gone.

In the big push – big bounce training plan many of the workouts are going to beyond your ability.  They will push you to failure on purpose so you can be sure to find your edge and push it.  In the big push failure is ok.  You may have to walk or take a breather but only after the plan has pushed you to that point.  You have found the edge, the high water mark to look for in your next cycle.

It takes a bit of courage to train to failure.  It’s not easy.  It’s not comfortable.  It’s mentally crushing to not be able to finish a prescribed workout, but through failure you will find success.

It’s not supposed to be easy.  That’s the whole point. Most workouts in the big push with suck.  The light at the end of the tunnel is your goal race.  The big push doesn’t pause to let you celebrate your success, it keeps pushing because success is found at the end of your goal race.

In this way the compressed training cycle of the big push – big bounce is not bad.  It is a specific strategy to get you to your race goal in the most direct, efficient and effective way.

When I first started training and qualifying in the marathon my years were broken into two racing seasons; Spring and Fall.  I would start training for the Boston Marathon on January 1^st with my first long run of the campaign of 10-12 miles.

In those days we would target a mid-October race as our qualifying race for the next year.  I would kick off my training campaign on the 4^th of July.  In between campaigns I would run a little but mostly try to get out of race shape.

If you do the math this left me with 12-14 weeks to prepare for a qualifying marathon.  Here’s the big reveal, the ‘aha’ moment…if you’re willing to go to the dark place, to deploy the big push – big bounce training campaign 12 weeks is enough time to get into qualifying shape.

Over the course of those 12 weeks are 4 cycles of 3 weeks each. Each 3 week cycle pushing harder and deeper like a kid pumping to build up momentum on a swing to get that final exit velocity to launch.  That’s 4 big pushes and 4 big bounces that will spit you out onto the starting line of your goal race hard and ready.

This type of training is not for the couch-to-5k crowd.  You need to have a baseline of some training to make it through unbroken.  But you don’t need to be an expert or an elite to do the work and transform yourself into a racing machine.

During this training cycle you will have to stick to the plan. You will have to execute the plan as prescribed.  You have to commit. You can’t mail it in or execute it half heartedly.

You will lose weight and harden up. You will get that lean look that identifies the serious marathoner.  You will have to take care of your body.  You will have to proactively stay on top of the aches and pains.

You will need to watch your nutrition and fuel to support the workouts and fuel to help your recovery.  You’ll have to find a way to get enough sleep.

In summary:

This is not some Evil Kneivel Kamikaze Training plan.  It is an effective strategy to a PR or a BQ or other tangible race goal.  I guarantee you that with the right plan and the commitment to executing the work you can transform your ability to race in 12 weeks with the big push – big bounce.