Fell and trail running seasons are notoriously varied, long, and difficult to train for. Here coach and mountain expert David Taylor of Fell Running Guide takes us through ways of structuring your season and training to get the best from yourself in these arduous races. He covers picking races, strength training, common mistakes and how to juggle all the demands on your body.
Pierre and Nicolette from Mountain Abandon were early adopters of our RPE scale for athlete feedback. In this article they present the science behind RPE, how they track athlete progress/fatigue with this data, and why they believe it develops the athletes inherent ability to self govern. In ultra running and endurance sports, being able to pace yourself correctly and evaluate intensity is key to success in both training and racing. With RPE we have a consistent measurement relaying only on the athletes brain, overcoming issue with poor data from devices which cannot know weather temperatures, caffeine consumption, sleep deprivation and other variables.
Training zones based on blood lactate levels are unique to each athlete. In this article Simon Vincent presents why lactate testing is more reliable than FTP, and how to use it in constructing training programmes and assessing your athletes.
After the Tokyo Olympics, Passion Fit coach Tom Ward looks at the modern culture around winning, glorification of winners, and discusses why this might not be the most important feature of sport after all.
Xhale co-founder and triathlon coach Mark Livesey presents the founding reasons for the creating of Xhale. He remembers some of his early experiences with coaches and instructors in the military. He quickly realised that the “old” style of coaching – breaking soldiers with “just one more rep” – did not develop resilience and instead caused unnecessary stress and resistance. Through these experiences he developed his own coaching style based on communication and the coach/athlete relationship. These are the principles on which Xhale is founded.
