Skip to main content

Stuff At The End

Influences & Acknowledgments

Influences & Acknowledgments
Photo by frame harirak / Unsplash

Influences

Scott Johnston

Scott was my mentor and advisor during my skimo days. He pointed me toward the resources below in addition to engaging in our 14-year dialog on endurance training. At last count, it was 1,200 emails long.

My own training and research was book-ended with the publication of Scott's books: Training for the New Alpinism and Training for the Uphill Athlete. TftNA was published in __ , __ months after I started, and TftUA was published in __ , __ months after I stopped.

After skimo, I worked as a coach with Scott at Uphill Athlete.

Jan Olbrecht

Principles

  • Distinguish between capacity and power
    • Anaerobic capacity (AnC)
    • Anaerobic power (AnP)
    • Aerobic power (AeP)
    • Aerobic capacity (AeC)
  • Development should be strategic. The best training prescriptions are often a "Goldilocks" recipe:
    • Aerobic capacity (AeC) should always be developed as high as possible.
    • The other three—AnC, AnP, and AeP—should only be developed as much as necessary. Having more than an event demands will decrease performance.
  • “It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong“ (Buffett)
    • Frequent testing that aids inference is better than infrequent testing with absolute answers.
    • Lactate testing is quick, simple, and can be done in the field. But it takes some interpretation;
    • Vo2 max testing may be more precise, but it's expensive, and requires a lab with an experienced technician.

Renato Canova

    • Start general, at the extremes, and move to specific
    • First duration, then work speed from both beginning and end
    • Use internal load to progress capacity and power
    • Use external load to stabilize and fine tune performance

Yuri Verkhoshansky

    • Broaden the available fiber pool by "waking up" fast-twitch fiber, then train them to work aerobically

Steve Magness

    • Volume increases for capacity, plateaus for power, and then declines for performance

Acknowledgements

Coming soon