Threshold Performance Club | 3 tips you have to follow

Threshold #6 | 3 Tips you have to follow

On Tuesday I had the pleasure to run with Joe Skipper.

Joe is one of the world’s top Ironman triathletes. He’s just won Ironman Arizona, went head-to-head with Kristian Blummenfelt at the Pho3nix Sub 7 attempt & finished 5th at this year’s Ironman World Championships in Kona.

He shared some tips - and I’m going to share them below. This is a simple email with really important information.

Short and sweet.

So what are the tips?

Tip 1: Train on perceived effort

In today’s world data is everywhere from heart rate to lactate to glucose. I’m the biggest advocate that all data is useful so long as it’s interpreted in the correct way.

There is a hierarchy of importance, and when we all swim, bike & run we will feel good or bad. If we feel good or bad it sends signals to our brains that we need to work harder, improve the sessions, relax and pat ourselves on the back and so on. Perception alters how we behave and the actions we take.

This is why perceived effort is one of joe’s tip to focus on. At the end of the day the way we feel is the most important, especially for amateur athletes, and we can have days we feel great and the data is poor, and feel bad yet the data is good. The days where we perceive we were bad, yet the results are good, are great days - as it reinforces on a good day results can be even better.

On a more tactical level, if we were to focus on lactate as the main data point for training harder or less, we may back off training once we reach a level of lactate we “deem” a threshold. However if we trained by perceived exertion, we may have sessions where we push to a level well beyond our threshold - but feel great - and these sessions send us above and beyond what we were already capable of.

Training by perceived exertion can increase the load we put through our bodies, and improve our fitness.

Tip 2: Wear a heart rate monitor

Assuming you have a smartwatch - Garmin, Apple Watch, Fitbit, Samsung Watch Wahoo - or smart device - Whoop, Oura - heart rate is a normal data point tracked by the hour or in real time.

It is VERY tempting to live or die by the general feeling of how hard you’re working out which is why perceived exertion should be backed up with heart rate data. If you’re feeling fit and healthy, your runs are impressive & the heart rate data suggests for the pace you’re running at it is way too high - e.g. an EASY 4km run at low heart rate yet your heart rate is in your Z4/Z5 - you know you’re not actually as fit as you need to be.

Likewise if you perceived effort is really strong, yet your heart rate is fairly low for the training session, you know you can push harder.

To be as accurate as possible attempt to wear an external heart rate monitor. This means one separate to the watch. Why? Having a standalone device close to your chest is considered more accurate. That being said I personally have correlated by chest heart rate monitor with my watch - both Garmin - and they record the same heart rate data - as far as I can tell.

Heart rate data is literal data on how fit your aerobic & anaerobic fitness is. It’s extremely important. Match this up to your perceived effort to find gaps where you can push harder & get more comfortable working at a higher rate.

Tip 3: Use a power meter

Cycling is hard.

Knowing how to improve your cycling is even harder because roads we generally cycle on are twisty, have potholes we need to dodge & we’re always stopping for lorries and traffic lights. There are rare occasions where roads are perfectly straight and flat.

A power meter is vital to help generate understandings if the perceived effort you’re putting in on a hill climb is actually down to fitness, gear choice or external factors. If you feel like you’ve given your 100% effort over a 2km climb with a 4% incline yet the power meter says you’ve averaged 130 watts, depending on your goals, you can interpret this as under or over delivering power.

Likewise you may be trying to alter your cycling technique to become a lower cadence cyclist during the big power efforts. With a power meter you can assess in real time where your cadence is at relative to the watts you’re generating through the pedal.

When you apply perceived exertion to the power meter readings you can accurately assess how fit you are relative to your goals. For example I am aiming to compete over 90km bike rides with the top amateurs in my age group, and they are pushing 40-50 more watts than me on an average race ride. I know from my own fitness & heart rate data I am fit, so I can understand now that I need to focus on my ability to mentally push through the pain of high lactate levels in my legs during the big effort sessions.

Sometimes the result of data is literally holding a mirror up to your face -> you’re not working hard enough.

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Rest day

This is a small reminder rest days are a part of successful training block. DON’T miss them. Rest means rest -> don’t do a 20 mile walk.

That’s a wrap on week 6.

These tips have been put into practice and they are a great reminder great success can be found with simple tips easily executed.

As always you can follow my training on Strava. This week I pushed a new 5K PB & my training sessions are public - so you can try them out too.

Have a great week,

Robert