Are You Getting Fitter—or Just More Tired? The Difference Between Training Hard and Training Well

You can complete every workout, push hard, and finish exhausted—and still miss the purpose of the training.

Hard work is necessary, but difficulty alone does not make a workout effective. In this episode, Coach Justin explains the difference between training hard and training well, why fatigue must be managed rather than feared, and how to judge each session by the role it plays in the larger plan.

What You’ll Learn

• Why a hard workout is not automatically a productive workout
• How effort, purpose, and recovery determine whether a session served the plan
• Why testing your fitness in training can lead to panic training and unnecessary fatigue
• Six questions that help you evaluate workouts more objectively

Timestamps:

00:00 — Training hard versus training well
05:00 — Why quality versus quantity is too simplistic
12:35 — The danger of constantly optimizing training
19:00 — Building your fitness floor versus raising the ceiling
26:00 — What separates training from simply exercising
31:00 — When training builds fatigue instead of fitness
39:00 — Why one workout cannot define your fitness
44:00 — Fatigue is not proof of progress
50:00 — Stop trying to prove race-day fitness in training
56:00 — The cost of always doing more
1:05:00 — Six questions to evaluate every workout
1:11:00 — Did the session serve the plan—or your need for validation?

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome everyone to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Justin. I'm head coach and owner of Tabula Rassa Racing. And today is episode 103. And I'm going to be discussing a topic that I've been kind of kicking around for a little bit, and it's the idea of training hard versus training well. You hear this saying of quality over quantity. So I think there is some validity to this statement, but I think it runs so much deeper than just this black and white dichotomy between quantity over quality. And quantity is going to be relative. It could be you're trying you train by miles, you train by minutes, intensity, all kinds of different factors will determine quantity, whatever it is that you're trying to measure. Quality is also subjective and is going to be a function of where you are within your journey. How experienced of an athlete are you? Are you brand new? So if you're brand new to the sport, you may not even be concerned about quality at all. Because any kind of training is going to be quality because you're just now getting started. So quantity is going to be what you're aiming for. But I think that there is a distinction that we have to make in terms of should I be training hard or should I be training well? And I think the answer to that question is yes and yes. To be honest with you, this is the second time I've recorded this episode. And as I finished off the first version of it, I really just didn't like the way that it turned out. And I was just rolling it over in my head, and I just I came to the conclusion that this is not a black and white issue. It's not that we should be training hard or we should be training well. I think the idea of training well is going to be subjective, and there are different phases that you should be focusing on when it comes to determining on whether you are training well. You can actually have periods of the same training plan where you are focusing on what we'll call training well versus training hard. And there are times and places for each of these. The idea of training well is also very subjective. So you can focus on training by duration, in which case you're trying to build endurance, whether that whether you're focusing on duration or miles is really irrelevant. So they're both very valid approaches. And you can go back and listen to a previous episode that we did where we discussed the pros and cons of training by minutes versus training by miles. I don't want to rehash any all that conversation, but I think there is an argument to should you be training hard? Sure, yes. Are there times and places where you should be training quote unquote well? And I think the idea of well is just so vague. And this is again, this boils back to this quantity versus quality. Quality is going to be, I think, more tied to training well versus the quantity is going to be training, is synonymous with training hard. Now, whether you measure that in terms of minutes, miles, intensity, or what have you, I think that there's the two sides to this coin. And I don't think it's as clear-cut as you should be training well versus you should be training hard. I think as endurance athletes, I think some of us, most of us, I'll go on a limb and say most of us, actually turn out to be kind of like a-type personalities. And I think it's hard to make the decision on whether you should be training well or training hard. And I think because we tend to veer towards one side or the other, I think a better approach to looking at this particular topic is let's compare this to the symbol of the weighted scales. So the scales of justice. It's this counterbalancing of well versus hard. And I think that there is a time and place to where one side can get a little bit heavier than the other as long as it's counterbalanced at some point in time the other direction. Is always training hard good? No, it's not. Is always training quote unquote well good? I don't know. I I think it depends on what we mean by training well. And when I first started thinking about this, I was like, training well, what does that mean to me? To me, it meant a nice mix of easy stuff and hard stuff, sequenced in such a way that creates balance. It will is enough stress to spur adaptation and to load fatigue, as long as it's not overly done to where you have a hard time recovering and absorbing and staying consistent and durable. I think that is a very valid approach. But I don't know if that's what others think training well is, especially when you phrase it to quantity over quality. And I think that there's a time where quantity is relevant and is actually the better approach. And I also think that there are times where quality is a better, more valid approach. So saying that one is the best approach over the other, I think is looking at this the idea of endurance sports, the world of endurance sports, as a black and white kind of thing, one zero in terms of binary code. So it's not good, bad versus good, evil. There's a balance to this. And I think the idea that is relevant here on how we should think about this is that we take a close look on where it is that we are, what is it that we want to achieve, what is the best approach for you as an athlete, not what is generally accepted across the world of endurance sports, because that may not be what is appropriate for you at this particular point in time. I don't think that athletes tend to be lazy. I do think that there is some validity that they do try and look for shortcuts and they're a little bit impatient, or they have a misconception of how long it should take to reach a particular level of performance. I see a lot of conversation, I have a lot of conversations with athletes, and they're just like, oh, I've been running for six months, eight months, a year, and I'm not seeing any improvement. And I say, okay, that's possible. It depends on where you started from. If you're just coming off the couch and you haven't seen any improvement in a year, I guess the next question is, how are you defining improvement? And I think that ties back to this training well versus training hard is how are we defining these concepts and when is it appropriate to focus on one over the other? I think as an endurance coach, one of the one of the hardest conversations that I can have, that I have to have with athletes, is not trying to convince them to go easier because they're going hard all the time. And it's not that I have to convince them to go harder because they're going too easy. Those aren't hard conversations to have. The harder conversation to have with the athlete is to explain to them why the approach that they're currently using may not be the appropriate approach for them at this particular point in time. Are they applying their method of training correctly in order to achieve what it is that they're that they've set out to accomplish? That that is a much harder conversation to to have with an athlete. And I really want to drive home that one method of training it's not universal. So I don't want you to think that, oh, this is the generally accepted rule, because I don't think that that's true at all. And as an illustration, we can look at this the generally accepted principle of training, one particular method of training, is the 80-20 method that was made popular by Matt Fischero. And I think that there is a time and place for this particular approach to training. Do I think it's appropriate for all athletes? No, I don't. Do I think that this approach generally creates performance or creates an environment in which we can see performance? Possibly. I also think that it can lull athletes into a mindset that most of their stuff is supposed to be easy. I don't think that's a generally accepted approach and is not particularly helpful for all athletes. Do I think that there's a time and place for easy training? Absolutely. In order to go hard when it counts, some of your training must be easy. It can't always be hard. Hard in terms now, hard is going to be subjective on how we define what hard means. To me, there are three ways that training can be defined as quote unquote hard. You can either have it in terms of duration, you can either have it in terms of mileage, or you can have it in terms of intensity. So those are the three things that when I say going hard, I want you to make that connection on however it is that you think of your training. So if I say you can't always go hard, to you that might mean that I can't necessarily have the frequency that I want to have because my body has a hard time absorbing and recovering from that many workouts. You can also think of it in terms of mileage or minutes. If you're doing three runs a week, but those three runs are long and hard runs, that they're hard to recover from, or they always all three of them always have some kind of intensity component to them, then that may not be appropriate. In which case you change your methodology to okay, maybe we should increase the frequency a little bit to spread that that intent that that training volume over more sessions, in which case you may have an easier time to recover. Does that mean that that the quality versus quantity argument is no longer relevant? Because I'm actually telling you that you need more quantity because the quote unquote quality that you're trying to get is too much quality, and you're having a hard time absorbing it and recovering from it. In which case, that argument of quality over quantity is not appropriate at that particular stage of your training and where you are. So I really want to drive home to this idea that going hard all the time is bad, going hard some of the time is bad, that we must be training well, and this idea of optimality should always be considered because I think that there is a time and place for trying to be optimal. If you're constantly trying to optimize your training, then I think that you're actually leaving performance on the table. The reason that I say that is because optimality assumes that you always have the correct volume in terms of intensity and duration, whether that be minutes or miles, you always have the appropriate mixture. And if that were the case, then you never test the boundaries, you never test the extremes to where you can go. So you're always kind of like under this threshold. And I think it's easy to become trapped within that. And you're never you never go above that, you never go beyond it. So you're always like actually lulled into this area of comfort. And I think that hinders development, and I think it hinders progression. And I feel this way because I it's something that I've experienced in my own training as well, to where I was always afraid to push the pace on a particular run, or push the power on this particular bike ride, or swim a little bit harder with a little bit of more power, more reach, more higher swim cadence. I was always, yeah, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna stay where I'm comfortable at because I know that I can accomplish this, and I feel good about myself when this workout is over because I felt like I left some in the tank. I think that there are reasons and times where you should empty the tank on a workout. And should that always be the case? No, it absolutely should not. But there are occurrences where I feel that particular method is appropriate as long as it's placed properly, sequenced properly, and uh you have forethought in terms of what you have coming up next and what you did previous to those to that workout or that series of workouts. So I there's great thought that has to go into it has to be placed into the training plan to determine on if it's reasonable to have that approach at that time. So let's start by clearing up something that I want to make sure I'm I make perfectly clear. And that is hard work is not the enemy here. So I don't want you to think that, oh, I need to be going easier more often. I think that statement requires a little bit more information in order for me to confirm or deny whether that is a true statement or not. If you find that you cannot train more often or you can't be consistent because you're constantly sore, or you can't execute hard workouts because of the fatigue level that you're carrying. So if you do a workout and it requires you to take one to two to three days off after that workout, then yeah, I think that maybe you are going a little bit too hard. Versus do you have a situation where you are training frequently and you don't require any days off, you don't really get sore, there's no need to really consider and manage training volume. Then I say, maybe you're going a little bit too easy and you're not pushing the envelope a little bit because the body adapts to a particular stress stimulus if it's exposed to that stimulus over a longer period of time. That's how the body builds adaptation. The science is showing us that it takes the body around six to eight weeks to build an adaptation. For instance, if you're following a training plan and that that training plan increases in volume or volume in terms of either intensity, duration, or distance, and it's increasing week over week, that's not a sustainable method of training. It's a good approach for a set time, in which case you're following a 16-week training plan, you can use that approach. The question becomes is it a method that is sustainable over six months? That's the question. And I don't believe it is. So if you're willing to be patient, I say keep volume con if you don't have any races going on. I say keep volume fixed for six weeks. If you're running 35 miles a week or you're running 40 miles a week, or six hours a week, or whatever it is that your training volume is, keep that constant for six weeks. It's gonna require a lot of patience because you're gonna want to change that because you feel like you need to progress. But I want you to consider, hey, let's keep that constant, and maybe we'll just change the intensity mixture over the span of those six weeks. So let's say you look at the six-week block, I'm gonna keep it constant the first three weeks of that block. I'm going to actually keep intensity constant. I'm going to do the same workouts, same structure, same intensity. I'm going to do that for the first two to three weeks. And then after that, I'm going to start changing up some of the intensity, maybe increasing a little bit of increasing the intensity, change the intervals around, but we're keeping the overall training volume fairly constant. After that six weeks is up, you can consider that to be a new foundation, a new level. So I want you to think about it in terms of what's the idea of training. Over the long haul, we want to increase our floor, right? So we want to increase the baseline of our fitness versus raising the ceiling of our training. So I want you to consider that following a 16-week training plan or whatever it is, that is designed, in my opinion, to raise your ceiling. It's not necessarily designed to raise your baseline fitness, the floor in which you perform. Considering a six-month training plan, now we're talking, all right, now we're looking at raising our the floor of our fitness. This house mentality of we're laying the foundation or we're putting up the roof. Are we want to do we want to make our building taller or do we want to make our building more stable? And think of that as how you should consider your training over the short term versus the moderate term and long term. There are times and places where hard work or harder intensity work should be implemented, otherwise, you don't really see any progress. You become stale and the body adapts to it. And it if you want to go harder on a race, you have to push the body during training. Uh to a certain extent, you have to do it reasonably and responsibly, but you can't train easy and expect to race hard. That that's not how that works. Likewise, you can't train hard and expect to race easy because you have no barometer for what easy is, because you're always training hard. So if you train hard, you're gonna race hard. If you train easy, you're going to race easy. That's just the way that works. So, you know, if you're looking at your training plan, you're just like, okay, I understand this now, so where do I put the hard stuff in? That's the art of trying to create a training structure and a training methodology. It's not necessarily as clear-cut as, oh, it's 80-20, 80% easy, 20% hard. I don't feel like it's that easy. If that's the case, then everybody would be using that method. Everybody would be seeing gains, and there would be no reason to do any other kind of method. Do you have elite athletes that are following that approach? And yeah, that that's reasonable. Do the Kenyans follow that in terms of their marathon prep? Possibly. Maybe a lot of their volume is 80%, but they have the capacity to when that 20% comes, they can go hard. But I don't think that is the rule. I think it can be more of the exception to the rule rather than the rule itself. So following how elite athletes do things isn't going to guarantee that you're going to generate the same kind of results, or you think that makes it the optimal method to to use for you, because I think that you're it's it's naive. And I don't think it's appropriate for every single athlete. Otherwise, there would be no art to training. It would all be science and all data driven. I that that's the new buzzword now, and well data driven and science-driven training. I think that there is an approach to where you can use data to back up the method, but the method has to come first. I I don't agree with using data to define the method. I think you use it to either support or reject a method, but just because one athlete doesn't necessarily perform under that environment doesn't mean that other athletes can't or shouldn't. Otherwise, we should all be training the same and we all develop we all would generate the same adaptation by employing that method. And I don't think that's the way that it works because our bodies are too unique. We all have different compositions of muscle fibers, we all have different strengths. Genetics plays a big role into it. Otherwise, we'd all be using the same method in the weight room to get stronger and bigger. But there are certain things that that work for others and ways that don't work for others. So I don't think it's as clear-cut. So let's progress this a little bit further. Now that I've made the I've made it perfectly clear that there is a time and place for intensity. It's needed, it's essential for growth because otherwise you just you stay stagnant. It doesn't matter how often you train, how much volume you have and duration, but if it's all done at the same intensity, you just get really good at racing at that level. That's what happens. You don't really see a whole lot of progress. You get the satisfaction that maybe that training and racing feels easier. But why do that? We I feel like we do this because it's hard. We do it because we like the way that it makes us feel about ourselves and to accomplish something that is challenging. But if you're constantly seeking comfort, then what's the point? I don't understand it. Training well, I think, is valid because it includes training hard, it includes training easy. There is a mixture that is needed. I've talked with athletes where they say they come to me and let's say they're an ultra-endurance athlete and they do these crazy long runs. It's ridiculous how long these runs are. And then they say, I do three to four runs a week, but they're all hours long. And they're just like, I if they say I run four days a week, I run four because when I try to run five, I get hurt. I say, the reason is because you are you aren't managing load. The load isn't distributed properly. So you could run five, but you have to change the method in which you're running. Right now, you get the satisfaction of running long, so you're gonna have to run less often because your body needs time to recover from those efforts. But if we change the mix, then you could run more often. And we can start to work in intensity. So the run that would if you went out for a 20-mile run and it would take you uh three, three and a half hours to do that, maybe you could get to the point where that same 20-mile run could take you 245, 230. So why wouldn't you want to do that? So, what I want you to ask yourself when you're sitting down and looking at your training plan, and you're trying to find out, okay, what's the mix of intensity that I need in this plan in order to generate the adaptation? When should I be training hard? When should I be training easy? Because I want a well-defined training plan. And I think that's where I want to take this conversation, is that it's not training hard versus training easy versus training well, because training well involves the other two, training easy and training hard. As you sit down and you look at these workouts, at the at the let's say that you go and you do a workout. I want you to, when you hit the save button on your watch, I want you to ask yourself a few questions. Was this workout difficult? Did I have to suffer a little bit in it? Did I push? When I finished it, do I feel absolutely exhausted? Did I hit some particular target that I was aiming for? To me, those are more questions that align with the training hard versus training easy. I think that defines what bucket it falls in. It doesn't define on whether you're training well or not, it just defines on what intensity bucket you're in for that particular workout. That's easy to do when you look at individual workouts. But individual workouts is not how we build a training plan. We have to take a more holistic approach to it. And you can't just use this siloed approach. So people that actually aren't following a training plan, but they just go ahead and they just they think about it workout by workout. To me, that's exercising for fitness. They are not training. So there's that there's a big distinction there. And I've we've made that distinction in previous episodes before, on where we've talked about are you doing this for fitness or are you doing this for training? Are you training? Training well, when you start to think about the big picture, is now we start to ask questions like, what's the purpose of this session? What's the effort that is needed in the execution of this workout? How does this workout fit into the overall structure of what I'm trying to accomplish? Can I recover from this workout? And recovery from a particular workout is going to be a function of what you did yesterday and what you have to do tomorrow. And ask yourself, did this help me feel more? Does this actually feel is a bad word? I don't want to take that out. Does this help me become more prepared for my race or whatever goal I'm trying to accomplish? Feeling, I want to take that completely out of the picture. It should be pretty clear-cut. Did this help me or did it make me worse off? Did I make a smart decision today based on where I'm at today, not where I think I should be, or what I think I can execute, or what I should be able to execute, that requires your training plan to be thought of as being done in pencil and not pen. So the development of a training plan that spans a longer period of time, let's say that you're following a plan that's 16 weeks, that has to be thought of as a living organism. This is not something that has just been carved into stone and that if you just execute each week, you're going to be miraculously prepared for whatever event that you're training for. I think that there is some nuances that have to take place. And there's some living and breathing component to that. Okay, when I was doing this, when I was designing this plan, I used some generally accepted principles on how to structure this. But when it comes to executing it, I have to be a little bit more dynamic and a little bit more free-flowing with it. I still follow the structure, but maybe the sequences have to change, placements of workouts, a workout that I thought that I should be able to accomplish this week, I may not be ready for. So maybe I have to swap it with a workout that I did the previous week in order to really solidify the foundation that's going to be necessary to execute the more advanced workout. That's what that's the way that I feel like you should be approaching this so that you are training well. And not just, oh, I'm training easy or I'm training hard. There's a balance to it, and it breathes and it grows. So I want you to think of defining this bucket, whether it's a hard bucket, easy bucket. I want you to use the concept of effort as the defining characteristic on where that workout falls. So was this an easy effort? And was it truly an easy effort? Not was it, oh, it should have been easy, but it really wasn't easy, then something that should be put into the to the easy the quote unquote easy training bucket actually gets put into the harder bucket because maybe you weren't as recovered for that session. So something that was supposed to be easy was actually more of a moderate effort than a truly easy effort, in which case all you're doing is you're just stacking on fatigue more and more. So your training is not building fitness, it's building fatigue. And it's just making you more tired. You being more tired is not an indication that you are building fitness, that you are getting stronger, that you are getting faster. It simply means that you are just getting more tired. In which case, your taper is going to have to be longer and more purposeful about it so that you can shed the fatigue and actually see your true fitness on race day. Because fatigue masks fitness. You cannot, in my opinion, it is really hard to observe fitness and performance during training. That's not the time that we want to observe it. I know it's not intuitive and it doesn't satiate the need for you to be validated that your training plan is working or that it's appropriate because your performance isn't there or what you perceive your performance should be because you're fatigued. Excuse me. Now I haven't even brought into things where we start talking about and you know the impact of environments and things like okay, you built this training plan in the spring where temperatures were a little bit easier. You've just finished a winter training cycle, and so you have this kind of this idea or these expectations on what kind of performance you should be able to generate based on how you performed during the winter, where it was a completely different environment, and now you're implementing a training plan for the summertime, and you're expecting that performance to be consistent, if not better, than what you experienced in the win in the winter, and it does not work that way. So what you define as an easy workout in the summer may not have the same definition as the way it was defined in winter and fall, because it's going to be relative, and there's going to be things that are impacting the effort level that is associated with that workout that is outside of your control. So when you're trying to determine what your intensity mixture should be so that you can define how much hard work should I have in this training plan, how much easy work should I have, you have to really sit down and be subjective about it. Oh, was it more of a moderate effort? Do I feel like it required a little bit more focus than what I was expecting? Then maybe it wasn't as easy as it should have been, in which case I need to either adjust my expectations, adjust future executions, but you have to really think about that in terms of properly bucketizing the way that you that your training plan is structured. Because training hard and easy is a function of effort, but training well is whether that effort matched the purpose for that workout. Now, the purpose of the workout is going to be a function of what you did yesterday and what you have to do tomorrow. That's how you define purpose for a workout. Now, was the effort level in line with the purpose of that workout? That's what it means to be training well and have a good mixture of work. Think of your training plan as like a like a portfolio, like an artist portfolio. There's not one single piece of art that makes up that portfolio. It's a collection of pieces. So it's a body of work. That's, I think, that's a decent illustration on how to think about your training. It's a collection of efforts. And that collection of efforts is going to define and validate whether you're training well or there is some kind of imbalance that is present within your training plan. When it comes to defining effort or the execution of your workout, there's this idea concept of discipline. And I think discipline tends to be thought of in terms of how do I do a workout that I really don't want to do? Oh, am I motivated? Am I disciplined to do it? I think that is one aspect of discipline. But discipline also plays a role in the execution of the workout, not just getting to the point where you actually do or don't do the workout. Discipline to hold back when it's required, because you feel that, oh, I can go harder, so therefore I should go harder. Because if I see some kind of degradation in performance, whether that performance is in terms of miles per minute for your run or kilometers per minute, or if you're talking about power and cadence on the bike, or if you're talking about swim splits, you don't want to see that number get quote unquote worse because that's going to lead you to conclude that, oh, my I'm not getting fitter. I'm actually getting slower, I'm getting weaker. That's not necessarily the case. The case the to define it is to sit back and say, what was the purpose of this workout? And it's not to validate my insecurity or to provide me evidence that I am getting stronger, faster, weaker, whatever it is. It's that I went into the workout in a responsible way and I executed it based on its purpose because I have to think about how this workout fits into the overall screw scheme of everything else. So think about it like this. I want to I've I think I've used this illustration before, but think of it in terms of a puzzle, like a jigsaw puzzle. When you sit down with a puzzle, you look at all the pieces, right? They're all different shapes, they're all different sizes, the notches are in different locations. When you flip all the pieces over, it just shows you a small glimpse of the overall picture. But you can't really discern what the completed puzzle looks like by looking at just a single piece or even a small collection of pieces to that puzzle. You really don't know what the puzzle looks like until you look at the top of the box of and it shows you the completed puzzle. That's how you put all these pieces together. You're following what it looks like on the box, and then you say, okay, these pieces look like they fit together, they have the appropriate corresponding shapes so where they fit together. That's the way that I like to think about training. And you know, you you can't really judge the effectiveness of your training plan by looking at a single workout or even a small collection of workouts. You have to look at it in terms of the complete body of work. When all those pieces get put together and you see the picture, that's when you have enough information to say, did this work? And to be honest with you, you don't know that until excuse me, you don't know that until race day. And I know that that opens up some level of insecurity for some athletes because they want to perform to the best of their capabilities for race day. And I want to say it that way, that they want to perform best of their capability, not perform to their potential. And I think that when athletes try and perform to their potential, I think that kind of opens the door to maybe not training well, but being a little bit more imbalanced because you don't really know what your potential is. It's hard to determine what your potential is with when you're in the training plan. It's when you show up to race day and you're like, okay, what were the conditions that I had to perform in? How well did I feel prepared? How consistent was I during the process of training? How did I perform? How did I execute? If I was consistent and I got the vast majority of my workouts in and performed to the expectations that I had, and I followed the prescribed intensity and mixture, and race day had some stuff in it that was beyond my control, then that's not necessarily a measure of your potential. It's the you perform to the best of your capabilities in the environment in which you were exposed to. So each of those workouts within the training plan, those little bit, those little pieces to the puzzle, they all serve a purpose. And just no puzzle piece is shaped the same way, no workout has should have the same purpose to it. That doesn't mean that each workout has to be different. It's the purpose may not be the same for each workout. So let's say that I have a workout that is a run workout that's an hour long, and we're doing intervals, so we got a warm-up period, and let's say we're just doing five five minutes on one minute, uh a little bit easy, so five minutes a little bit of tempo or a harder effort, whatever the intervals are, it's irrelevant. But you have a prescribed intensity. We could do that same workout the following week, but it has a different purpose to it. Maybe we follow that same structure, but we change the intensity mixture because we've stacked on some fatigue, and so even though the workout is exactly the same, the intensity is not the same. It's got a different purpose to it. Let's think of it that way. Because I don't want you to think, oh, that means I've got to generate a new workout every single time, and I can't reuse workouts. That I don't believe that is true at all. I think it's actually a valid method because it allows you to compare the same workout done over time, and you can actually measure performance. So if you say this was the purpose of this workout in this week, and then you go to another week because I had the same purpose, same structure, let's compare the results to those and say, Hey, did I perform better? Was it worse? Was it about the same? And bring in all the other factors that normalizes it. Well, what's my sleep been like? What's my recovery been like? How am I eating? How am I feeling? What's my life stress? Then it then they're truly comparable or not. So just like each puzzle piece has a unique shape, each workout has a unique purpose to it, and there is a proper place for that workout within the overall scheme of the training plan. If you were if you're going hard all the time, then that means all of your puzzle pieces are shaped exactly the same way. So it doesn't matter where you put that piece, right? Because they're all shaped the same, so they're gonna fit no matter where. That that's an extremely difficult puzzle to put together because the picture that is developed is unique to the piece, but if the piece isn't shaped in a unique way, you don't know where to put it. So if you're always going hard or you're always going easy, think of that as there's the puzzle piece is not unique and can be placed anywhere, but it can distort. The final picture that you get. It's when you sit back and you think about what's going to be the purpose of these workouts, what makes it special, and why should it go here versus there is what defines the overall training plan and will develop the picture on race day that you want to have materialize. I think that there is a what athletes sometimes struggle with is that they tend to associate fatigue with progress. There's this mindset of you just rise and grind, I'll sleep when I'm dead kind of mentality, or if you're not sore, then it's not working. This go big or go home mentality. I think it really sabotages athletic development over time. I think that there's a good time and place for that kind of mindset. If that's what it takes to get you to execute hard sessions, then yeah, absolutely draw on that lion mentality. But there's a time and place for it, and there's a time to feel like a sheep, and there's a time to feel like a lion. So I don't want you to think of, oh, I'm always tired, so I must be getting better. Because that's not necessarily true. Is it true that fitness is masked by fatigue? Yes, that is true. But fatigue is not a barometer or is not an instrument to fitness. So it's not that, oh, I I'm getting more and more tired, so I must be getting more and more fit. It doesn't work that way. For instance, let's say that you do all of your runs at the same pace, and let's just say it's an easy pace. So we're gonna follow this mentality of oh, a lot of my workouts should be easy. If that's the case, then what the body knows is that effort level. So if you train at that effort level all the time, why would you expect to be able to go into race day and expect to perform better than the way that you trained? That doesn't necessarily mean that we have to constantly be doing race-pace efforts in training just so that we can race at that effort. I think there is because there's a fine line between doing that too much and doing it too little. This quest for optimality can sometimes get athletes stuck and coaches don't get it right. I can't sit there and think about and define what is an optimal training plan for a particular athlete and guarantee performance. Oh, if you run all of your runs at a 12-minute pace, then we will be able to race at an 11-minute pace effort. Whether that's true or not, I have no idea. And there's a lot of things that are outside of my purview where I don't see yet on whether that is a reasonable assumption to make. If I tell you that some of your workouts should be done at a 12-minute pace so that when it comes time we can train at a 10-minute pace, then yeah, that that's reasonable. Because if we're always training at a 10-minute pace, we're just too fatigued to go stronger and harder. I want you to think about managing fatigue is really how to look at training plans in general. So we're trying to manage training load and manage fatigue. We're not trying to manage distance and duration and all that kind of stuff. I think that those are instruments that we can use to quantify fatigue and a way of planning forward. But I don't think it's really what we're trying to manage. What we're trying to manage is the body's time under stress. And however you define that, and however you manage it, whether that means that you run a certain amount of miles or a certain number of minutes, or that that's how your training plans are set up, then so be it. That's fine. But there comes a time where the fatigue gets too high, and it doesn't matter how many miles you're trying to run, you're not going to be able to execute it well. And if you do execute it, it's actually going to dig you a deeper and deeper hole. And so when it comes time for race day, you're not optimal because you've put on too much fatigue that you cannot shed in order to observe true fitness on race day because there's still too much fatigue that has been accumulated that you did not have time to unwind. So I think sometimes athletes can use this fatigue as a way to quantify whether a workout was quote unquote good or not. It's like, oh, that that workout was all it killed me. I felt exhausted. I cut I would question is okay, was that the purpose of the workout? Should we have felt that way? If it was a race simulation, then yeah, maybe maybe that's appropriate. But if we said that now we've got another intense workout tomorrow and you did a workout today that shelled you, then no, it wasn't a good workout because it didn't meet up or didn't conform to its purpose, because its purpose is a function of what you have to do tomorrow versus what you did yesterday. So I want you to think about training a little bit more holistically and stop and get away from this. Oh, I'm trying to manage miles and minutes and intensity and all that kind of stuff. Manage fatigue. And I think once you can get to that mindset, then you start to develop an awareness for what training well means. Because until you understand what it means to manage fatigue, I don't think that you'll really understand on what it means to train well, because one is a sufficient and necessary condition to the other. So I think the next thing that I want to bring into this, and this is something that that I'll own for myself sometimes, is that we as athletes we fall into a trap of trying to prove our fitness and training rather than allowing race day to prove what our fitness is. We seek this validation that the expectations that I have formed for race day are somehow reasonable and achievable. And we seek these glimpses of that during training. I think that there is some validity to that statement because if you go into a race and we're starting a training plan and you say this is my goal for the race, and I want to execute it at this kind of pace or this kind of power or whatever, and we start the training and it looks like that might be a little bit out of reach, then you have to have that conversation. You have to say, It's like, okay, I'm not saying that you can't do this, but what I'm seeing right now is that in order to accomplish this, it's going to require so much hard work that you run the risk of showing up on race day way too fatigued, way too stressed out, and you may not even get through the training plan because you could just wind up hurt. So then we have to adjust our expectations. Sometimes I fall victim to this where I have a future, I have a future race in mind, and I'm using my current workouts as a barometer on whether that is a reasonable race that I should go after. For instance, I've just now finished what I what I feel is the finish of my triathlon season is kind of done. Whether I am considering doing some other competitions like an aquabike or some of those just to stay competitive and just to really kind of test different aspects of my training. It's like I'm kind of curious now on like where I can really take my bike fitness. And I think that I can see that if I sign up for like an aqua bike, and I really have the opportunity to just drop the hammer and just let the bike be what it is and just go for it because I don't have to reserve anything for a run. That would just be like a fun, a fun experiment to do, but I have the idea of running a half marathon later on in the year, so I'm actually using my current run workouts as validation on whether I feel like I can accomplish that. And even as a coach, I've been doing this for a long time, and I know it's irrational and I know it's not reasonable, but I still find myself doing is man, I just had a hard time running for 50 minutes and I only got in this number of miles. What makes me think that I should even go for a half marathon? Or how you know, can what would training look like and how would I feel trying to do that kind of volume based on how I'm feeling today? I I don't know. I'm really kind of torn on that one because I think it's a good barometer on whether a particular goal is reasonable or not, but using it to validate validate something or validate my abilities to execute something in the future, I think I fall victim to that. It's a little bit of a pitfall to fall into because otherwise, why would I train for the half marathon? If I could do it today based on my current training volume, then what am I worried about? What am I concerned about? Then the question is can I hold on to that fitness until it's actually time to execute? That's going to be the real question. But should I judge future performance based on my current performance? I don't know. I think it might be a little bit unreasonable because I can do more during training and unlock potential performance potentials that I don't currently have because that's the whole idea behind training, right? So using our current training and trying to define what our fitness is and using that as a barometer on what we can achieve going forward, I think can have some pitfalls. You're using workouts to define, hey, how fit am I? How ready am I? Am I behind the eight ball or am I ahead? Do I still have it? And you've been doing this for a long time, and maybe you took a break and now you're coming back to it. Oh, I still got it kind of thing. Can I hit a particular pace that I want to hit? Can I survive the distance? Am I moving forward or am I regressing? Using single workouts to answer all these questions is a big pitfall. Again, you're only looking at that one puzzle piece, which is only showing you one small aspect of the overall picture. And I think that gets athletes in trouble. Because then they I think they may have a tendency to panic train then. If they start to feel like they're getting behind the eight ball or they're getting slower or whatever, then they're like, oh, I gotta do more, I gotta do more. So it's either they start adding on miles, adding on minutes, adding on intensity. And what it is is that they've now sabotaged their entire training plan because they were seeking validation that their current fitness is enough to get them through some event in the future without realizing that there is fitness that there's still to be gained in order to have that kind of performance in the future. So you still have time. So stop seeking validation today for something in the future where that kind of negates the whole process of training and the whole journey of training. So I want to get to this idea of what is the cost of always training hard? And hard again is going to be defined as more miles, more minutes, more intensity, more frequency. Those sorts of things can be defined as what does it mean by going hard? For me, going hard is frequency. I'm a freak I fall into the frequency trap a lot. It's like I want to do more and more workouts, and oh, I want to improve my run, but I also want to improve my bike. So that means I need to do more runs, more bikes, and I start to fall into that trap of I'm just trying to do more and more in order to s to gain more and more fitness. Then I have then I should be really looking at, okay, I'm all I'm constrained by time and my ability to absorb and recover. If I want to get better at my run, maybe I have to sacrifice the bike a little bit and accept that I may not see progress on the bike where I'm at right now because I'm trying to get better at something else. That's a hard pill to swallow sometimes because we want to see progress in all areas, especially for multi-sport athletes. That's a big concern for some, and where a coach really has to is more of a guide than they are anything else. Okay, we have to define what it is that we're trying to improve. We can't improve in everything, but we can have periods of focus where we can improve a little bit here and there, and the collection of those improvements over time is what generates an improvement in fitness and raises the floor. Like I've alluded to before, that if you run all of your runs at the same pace, then nothing is truly hard and nothing is truly easy. It's all just that now becomes the status quo. So if you're always going hard, then you're never going to be able to go harder because you're always going hard. There is no hard, there is no easy. It's all that's the effort that you're always executing. So finding different paces, different effort levels, different power targets, and having a mixture of these things in a training plan is really the key to seeing improvement over time. And so that when the time comes to where you can and need to go hard, you can't because you've managed fatigue in such a way that allows you to do that. Always going hard or always going easy, and then expecting to do the opposite on race day is not a reasonable approach and is irrational. So you have to practice what it is that you want to do on race day, but you have to do it in such a way that allows you to recover and absorb it so that you don't wind up on race day just so fatigued that you're not going to observe the fitness that you feel like you should have or that you actually do have. So I want to get back to this idea of training well. I think that we've really kind of defined what it means, or what I mean by training hard in terms of okay, are we managing frequency, are we managing intensity, duration, whether it's duration in minutes or miles? That I think that defines easy and hard. So well is how do we incorporate these two buckets of training into a single cohesive picture? So, really, what I want to say is that there's a time and place for how we define what well means. Well is not universal and is does not stay constant over time, it's a function of where you are in that given moment. So you could say that training well could be I need to work on building aerobic endurance, I need to work on becoming more durable because if I become more durable, I can be more consistent, and performance comes from consistency, and so I need to be able to build this foundation, at which time this says training well may mean that more of my stuff has to be a little bit on the easier side so that the body can adapt and absorb with some exposure to intensity so that it can grow a little bit, but that's not my primary focus. I'm trying to lay a more solid foundation. Then there comes a time within the same training plan that shifts, that training well is no longer with the goal of laying a foundation, it's now putting up the house. So now we're starting to get into some developing race-specific strength, we're sharpening the intensities, we may be in fine-tuning our mechanics. Now we're starting to get a little bit more nuanced, in which case the intensity and mixture in the focus of your training may shift. And so you maybe get away from this hard focus on, oh, I'm I need to just train well and have a nice mixture, because sometimes we have to allow that scale to become imbalanced and be okay with that. But do it in such a way that it's not a prolonged imbalance, that we do bring it back into balance within what's a reasonable time. So it's not just overloaded. You're not going too easy all the time, you're not going too hard all the time, but there are times where we go hard and then we offset that by another time period where we go a little bit easier. So there's this balancing mechanism, and that changes throughout a training plan, and it can change throughout the year as well. Trying to drive home to this point that training well is a function of what your goals are, where you're at, in terms of your overall journey, what it is that you're trying to achieve. And so I can't really find a way to explain this in a different way. So let's get back to this puzzle idea is that when you're putting together the puzzle, you may put different sections of the puzzle together at for a particular time. So let's say that we want to put the border around the picture. So that's where we start. We always start with the border. So that's let's just say that's your aerobic foundation and that's your zone two kind of stuff, and we're laying the foundation so that we can more easily find the more nuanced stuff with inside the picture, right? But we have to establish the border first. Now, let's say that I can look at the box and say, okay, I want to find all the pieces that have a particular image in them or some kind of pattern to them, so that I can put together one area of the puzzle and have that one complete. So you can think of your training that way. So, okay, this block right here is going to be a higher intensity block, and I'm going to peg it to where it lasts this long. And this is the sequencing that I'm going to be using, but it's going to have a little bit more intensity than it's going to have the easy stuff. But then you move to another, after that's done and that's all put together, then you move to a different area of the puzzle. And you're just like, okay, now I'm going to put together this part of the puzzle. In which case you may say, okay, now I've just stacked on a bunch of fatigue and I'm really tired. So now I'm going to go a little bit heavier on the low end side of my aerobic conditioning. Now I want to build that foundation a little bit more. I'm trying to get what it is that I've done in terms of focusing on the high intensity stuff, and now I want to turn that into foundation. I want to transform it in a way. So then you you focus on that. So that's the only way that I can where I feel like I'm explaining this properly on how to approach this is that well is a function of all kinds of different factors, and it's not constant over time. Let's kind of I want to get this thing wrapped up pretty soon here. So I want to leave you with six questions that I want you to ask yourself. Whether you're asking yourself this at the end of a workout, or if you're sitting down to do your week, your weekly training plan, I want you to ask these several questions when it comes to your planning. And even if you have to determine how effectively you executed a particular session, these questions are also relevant. So let's start with the first one. What is the purpose of today's workout? So again, each of these puzzle pieces have a unique shape to them and they fit a particular place within that puzzle? That's the way that your workout should be. So what is it that I'm trying to get out of this session? Am I trying to get stronger? Am I trying to get faster? Am I trying to get more durable? What is it that I'm trying to achieve? Now, the second question is did my effort that I implemented or that I executed match the purpose that I had outlined in the workout? So this is going to be post workout. How well did I execute that plan? You can sit back and say, okay, I think my I might have gone a little bit too hard on it. So now I might have to make some adjustments to future workouts in order to accommodate for that quote unquote mistake. But that's where the training plan is a leave a living, breathing organism. And it's going to matter on how you execute these sessions. So you have to sit down and you have to really have some internal conversation on how good did I do this. Number three, did I make the workout harder because it needed to be harder, or did I allow my ego to influence my execution? And I think that this is one of those questions where I fall victim sometimes, is that I allow my ego to get in the way of proper execution of a workout to where I feel like, okay, this should be a zone two, but now I've turned it into a zone two progression rather than just being happy with just let's just stay at the low end of zone two. Why do I need to feel like I have to progress to the upper end of zone two? And I can tell you why. Sometimes I feel it tells me that I'm progressing, that I'm making progress. And it kind of gets in the way sometimes of a proper execution and a proper management of fatigue, is that I allow that ego to get into get in the way and influence my execution. I think I have a good plan, but I'm not executing it well because I'm allowing my ego in rather than sitting back and rationally thinking about this and allowing the performance to be what it is and not seeking validation that I'll some that my performance expectations that I have for a particular race are valid and reasonable. The fourth question that I would say is can I recover from this in time for my next important session? So this comes down to sequencing and how effectively did I perform this. It may be an indication that things have to be moved around. If you had poor execution of a workout, if you went a little bit harder than what you should, then maybe you have to move some things around as okay, if tomorrow if I did a hard run today and but it was supposed to be easy because and I have a hard bike tomorrow, then if I went a little bit harder today, I might have to change tomorrow's workout from that hard bike to maybe uh an easier bike or move a swim in its place. There's manipulation of the sequencing, but you have to be careful with that because when you lay out the training plan, hopefully you've done it in such a way that it's sequenced properly, and so you're managing that fatigue. But if you start moving things around, you may get stuck with uh non-optimal sequence because things just weren't executed properly. In which case, I would argue that you may not need to move things around, but you may actually have to ha change the structure of the defined workout and reduce its intensity and change its purpose rather than just always moving things around, because sometimes it's appropriate, but sometimes it's not. And the next one is am I building fitness or am I just collecting fatigue? And I talked about this a little bit before is that fatigue is a mask to fitness, and sometimes we can't directly observe fitness until we shed the fatigue, and relying on the judgment that oh my performance is declining, I must be regressing. No, maybe you're just you're overreaching, and your body is not shedding the fatigue, and you're not recovering in such a way that allows you to progress. It's this functional, this non-functional overreach versus functional overreaching. Overreaching in itself is fine, but it depends on whether it's functional or non-functional. That's the key. So you have to address this question and say, okay, did this workout just make me more tired? In which case, maybe it didn't make me better. It could have, but maybe it didn't. Maybe I'm just training in such a way where I'm just getting more and more tired. And then I have to say, okay, maybe now I need to think about where's my rest day? Did I even put a rest day in it? Do I have to change the purpose of some of these workouts and change the intensity mixture or force to give myself a day off in order to shed that fatigue because I'm not absorbing it and recovering? The last question that I would say is important is did this session help the bigger plan, or did it only make me feel validated for today? Again, this I think this boy we can use this puzzle as an illustration here is did I put that piece of the puzzle in the right place within the overall picture that I'm trying to develop? Did I force that piece in there and it doesn't belong? Feeling validated today, I think that this is something that I see quite a bit and something that I experience personally more often than I would like to admit. And sometimes I kind of sabotage myself. I feel like I'm better at managing my athlete than I am managing myself sometimes. So I I want you to get to the point where the question that you're asking yourself is not did I work hard today? The question that you should ask yourself is Did I train today in a way that allows me to keep moving forward? I think once you can come to grips with that methodology and that way of thinking, I think it's freeing. And it allows you to move away from the need of validation and and training to tell you, oh, I'm moving in the right direction, or I still got it, or my expectations are rational and reasonable for a particular race because I just proved to myself in training that I could do it, but it cost me something. Something always has a cost to it. So once you start evaluating workouts from a cost-benefit approach versus, oh, did I feel like it was hard or did I feel like it was easy? Sometimes those feelings are subjective because I can feel a particular way when I'm actually in the workout. I'll be like, man, this workout is really hard, and I'm trying to hold on. But then after the workout is done and I've removed myself from that stressful situation, sometimes you have a tendency like, oh, it wasn't that bad. You kind of lessen, lessen the quote unquote feeling that you had while you were in the situation, and now you've kind of removed yourself from it's oh, it wasn't that bad. Those feelings are transitory, man, and they are a function of the environment in that particular moment. So using this more more cost-benefit kind of way of thinking, I think removes the need for always relying on feeling. So I want to wrap this thing up here to where I don't want you to be afraid of working hard. But I also don't want you to feel like you you're you have to work easy all the time. Because if you do that, you just get really good at going easy, and in which case your development is kind of hindered, in my opinion. You can't train easy and race hard all the time. It doesn't work that way. So I don't want you to be afraid of being uncomfortable, but I do want you to think about how do I manage those uncomfortable situations and circumstances in the grand scheme of things. How oft am I uncomfortable? Am I uncomfortable all the time? Then that's an indication that maybe I'm training a little bit on the harder side, and so my scale could be a little bit more unbalanced. If you feel just fantastic all the time, and you you've got you're not sore at all, like ever, then a kind of question is okay, maybe your scale is a little bit uh unbalanced where you're just you're going too easy too often. In which case it's going to be hard to find those the performance that would really be indicative of your potential because you're not stressing the body enough to bring about that adaptation so that you can perform that way. I want you to know that hard work matters, easy stuff matters. I don't want you to walk away with this idea that you're never supposed to push yourself. I don't want you to think that you should never find those boundaries is going to do nothing but keep you below that threshold. And you're not going to observe your potential if you don't push the envelope sometimes. But you have to be willing to accept the costs of pushing the envelope. There's going to be times where you train a little bit too hard, a little bit too often, for a little bit too long, and you can get hurt. That's part of the game. And it has to be expected to a certain point. You can't realistically think that you can get through consistent and persistent training and see progress without running the risk of eventually observing failure. That's it's it has to happen. It's part of the learning process. So don't be afraid of the uncomfortable. Don't be afraid of not being optimal. Be okay with being out of balance, but be smart enough to know how long you can remain out of balance before you do too much damage or too little damage to where your progress is going to be hindered, whether that's through injury or just through lack of stress to the body. So I think that this boils this topic down. So I hope that you got a lot out of this episode. If this episode resonated with you and allowed you to see training in a different way or made you sit back and really evaluate how it is that that your method of training is, I hope that you'll leave a comment and a review or subscribe. If you know that there's somebody else who may benefit from this, please share the episode. We don't monetize the podcast with Katie and I. We're not trying to sell you hip mattresses and supplements and whatnot, and we don't have commercials. So we try and keep this podcast pure and unfettered. But the way that it reaches others is by you sharing it, by you leaving comments and reviews. That helps the podcast a great deal. And I thank you for that. We also have the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast Group. So it's a private group on Facebook. We developed this group from episode one. We wanted to build a community which give people a place to interact with each other, learn from each other, share advice, share insights, give you guys access to us directly, allow us a platform to share additional content outside of just the long form content that we send out. All you have to do is just go in and you'll look up the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast group on Facebook, answer one simple question and agree to the group rules, and it lets you right on in and we'll grow the community together. Thank you for that. And I hope that you'll consider. We also are active coaches, so if you want to consider bringing on taking on a coach, if you're sitting back after listening to this episode, you're just like, man, I still don't understand how to train well. I train hard all the time, and this is what's happening, or I'm training easy all the time, and I don't know how to mix these things together and build a cohesive picture because I don't know how to keep these balanced. And I just I don't know what workouts may be good to do. So I'm constantly researching. So a lot of your time is spent trying to build a training plan than it is actually executing it. Feel free to reach out. You can go to taboolarassa racing.com. I do custom training plans and I also do one-on-one personal coaching as well. So head out to the website and check out all the content that I've had that I have out there, all the different packages that I offer. I'd love to reach out to chat with you on how I can help you in your journey and see what we can do together. So again, head out to taboularassa racing.com and check that out. Again, this has been episode 103 of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. I've been your host, Coach Justin, and I look forward to talking to you guys again next time. So until then, enjoy your training and reach out if you have any questions. But I will talk to you guys again soon. All right, talk to you later. Bye-bye. That wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience, humility, and resilience. Lessons that carry far beyond the workout. Progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts, it comes from consistency, discipline, and doing the work when it's not glamorous. Wherever you are on your endurance journey, keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day. If today's episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey. Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another. We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie. Until then, visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey.buzzsprout.com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Have questions or comments about the podcast? Feel free to send us an email at the endurance athlete journey at gmail.com. For all things coaching, visit Coach Katie at fuel the number two run.com and CoachJustin at tabooleromsterracing.com. Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. And remember to find Julie in the journey.