3 Training Strategies to Crush your next Adventure Race

1 – Your adventure race training needs some structure

 Structure = simplicity

Structured programming = predictable improvements in the physiological capacities necessary for chaotic and random environments such as an adventure race.

Chaotic and/or random programming = inability to consistently perform in varied or chaotic environments such as an adventure race. Random programming improves your ability to perform during short bouts of high intensity by improving transient localized adaptations that feed off systemic adaptations such as relative strength, aerobic capacity, movement, and biological power.

In other words, you see improvements in your ability to perform in those workouts but don’t efficiently feed systemic adaptations to improve the baseline capacities necessary for long-term improvements and high level performance in adventure races.

You get better at working out and some specific local endurance but you don’t continue to see meaningful improvements month after month, year after year.

These workouts are awesome for peaking, but not for improving from race to race.

Adventure racers should use the following structure:

• Foundation building – 4-12 weeks

  • Length will change depending on length of the race and current fitness levels
  • Primary focus
    • Re-establishing perfect movement, increasing strength, general work capacity, specific work capacity, aerobic fitness
  • How to do this
    • Use simple movement patters such as goblet squats, hip lifts, basic rows, pushups, crawling patterns, etc.  Dial in technique and correct imbalances
    • Apply a large volume of moderate intensity alactic-aerobic strength training. 20×3 instead of 5×10
    • Use lots of low intensity aerobic work (zone 2)
    • Focus on strategic high intensity work to develop cardiac power and fast twitch aerobic capacity – usually 1-2 times per week as part of longer workouts

  • Intensification – 4-6 weeks

    • By this point you’ll be lifting heavy again, with more complex exercises such as back squats and deadlifts while perfect technique is maintained
    • Workouts are gradually increased in intensity and total stress to help develop strength endurance and specific work capacity
    • Anaerobic power and capacity and aerobic maintenance are the emphasis of energy system work
    • Specificity to race movements/tasks is high, intensity is high, and overall volume slowly drops off

  • Peaking

    • Slowly drop off volume, maintaining intensity until you peak for race day

2 – Movement is the most important factor in longevity and long-term performance

Fatigue (psychological and physical) degrades movement quality.

This has to be accounted for adventure athletes who are going to reach high levels of fatigue during any challenging adventure race. If your baseline movement competency isn’t high enough or you haven’t learned how to maintain movement integrity under greater and greater levels of stress through fatigue, load, and psychological strain, you’ll break down during a race and get injured or under-perform.

When it comes to training for an adventure race, most people think they can utilize movements like the barbell back squat or deadlift right away even though it’s likely that they’re not nearly as proficient at those movements as they could be. Years of experience and piles of research show that people baseline their performance expectations at arbitrary levels, consistently short of what is possible.

Most trainees have “success” for some period of time (getting stronger) so they stop focusing on improving the quality of the movement and focus on the outcome until some event occurs that highlights a lack of proficiency (usually an injury).

Adventure racers don’t get away with “good enough” technique for long – fatigue, and volume will eventually break you down and that’s when injuries occur.

You might be an expert barbell back-squatter in your head, but if I give you a goblet squat and really emphasize the performance points and write it in a way that quality is the focus, you can seek challenge in deliberately practicing that movement. The training effect can still be realized by increasing load, density, volume, etc.

By using a well thought out progression in my adventure race prep programs, perceptual learning takes place, patterns are built on top of other patterns, and the next time you do a back squat you’re better at it than you’d expect. You’ve learned how and why to pay attention to movement quality and develop an internal compass for it that becomes an unconscious skill.

It’s likely that you’ll actually be stronger after a short adaptation period to a specific movement because you’ll be able to express your true physical potential instead of focusing on five cues designed to overcome the underlying movement discrepancy. You’ll also have the necessary combination of physiological capacities to get the most out of the workout as well; speeding up recovery and improving your ability to adapt.

When you show up to your next adventure race, not only is your baseline movement quality much higher but your movement and stress resiliency is much higher as well. So, as you go through the race and fatigue and stress sets in you don’t break down, you can recover between obstacles, and you perform to your actual physical potential.

What you need to do:

• Go back to the basics and spend some time dialing them in movements such as goblet squats, hip lifts, pushups, rows and crawling exercises.
• Don’t grind out sets! Instead, use the outline in #1 and get a great training effect using a high volume (lots of sets of 5 or less reps) of moderate intensity sets
• Slowly progress to more difficult exercises while slowly introducing greater levels of stress and fatigue make sure to never let technique break down

3 – Play the long game

Intelligent adventure race training forces you to actually use your brain. Most trainees want to mindlessly move through a workout or focus on pain as an indicator of success. A higher performer in adventure races needs to be able to deal with pain, but they also need to be able to control their emotional response and react accordingly instead of just plowing ahead.

Here’s a secret: no one that is actually good at anything uses pain or difficulty as the primary indicator of success. Pain is a feedback mechanism and tool – using it to learn when and how to go hard is a skill.

By implementing a strategic process to your training you’ll learn when and how to go hard. There are many kinds of challenges – following a structured plan even when you want to just go the easy route and crush a WOD will make the difference between sitting in the middle of the pack or crushing your next adventure race.

What you need to do:

• Use pain and fatigue as a tool instead of an escape. Learn from it and work to maintain emotional, cognitive, and physical control
• Follow a plan – winging it only works for novices.

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