What is high quality training ? - ultra trail special

The definition is very simple. High quality training is a way to plan and execute workouts and life, to perform better in training, racing and life. If either of these fails, than you either over or under trained. If you trained well and raced well and did that for 2 decades, but being honest with you, your actual real life sucked, than that was not a high performance training. It might have been only a perception, due to brain chemical imbalances caused by malnutrition, however, that is part of high quality training too, so actually your training was not that high quality. Your workouts and racing were, but not your training as a complex.

The only way to determine the improvements is noting everything important down on a way, that it is easy to have a global view on it. I find that the best way to do so, is to create a yearly excel sheet with month tabs and have the weeks in those. Like this way, I can in a couple of seconds check my training volume, intensity and so. 

Training measurements 

There are only couple of things that can actually improve your training quality. Training volume, intensity, frequency, distribution. Sleep, hydration, nutrition, stress management, emotional balance, health.
These are the things that should be noted and planned. 

When we include words like 'high' , 'performance', 'quality' and so into an expression on training, we surely talk about improvements as a goal and not just simply about age related health maintenance. We talk about goals and objectives.

Training volume is something very important, but it is not the only thing that determines high performance. Someone can train only 400hours a year and still be world beater, due to very high quality and low volume training most of the year, but bumped up well distributed training for special events. 

Frequency is something also special. In case of periodization, when we talked about frequency is the reoccurrence of workouts that impact you on a way the extra recovery is needed. This can be CV or muscular stress, nervous system fatigue and so on. 

Intensity is the same. Workouts that leave you fatigued and stoned are more intense than others. This can be due to high volume, high training intensity, high frequency, low recovery time and so. High intensity also can be caused by negative stuff like malnutrition under hydration, under sleeping and so. Try not to sleep well for 3 days, drink only a litre of water and eat in a fast food chain. Your training heart rates will be either super high, so you'll totally smoke yourself or won't even be able to push yourself high enough and still cause tremendous fatigue. It depends. 

The rest is obvious, but also today, we only talk about ultra running workout related topics, not family and work stress, nor health.

My personal experimentation

Recently I have been engaging in a lot of learning, family events, work and stuff, so despite the very early wake up times and late nights, I cannot squeeze in more than 15 hours of training a week and often it comes down to simply 4-5 hours and not more. I cut down the intensity to  reduce stress, but increased training for muscular resistance to maximise time efficacy. 

When I run, I often go out for little jogs of 15 to 20minutes, but using extra minimal shoes like Xero and Fivefingers. This stresses my lower legs a lot. It also makes me aware of my form, cadence, posture and breathing. I imprint good habits, using a quality oriented mind set. During the week itself, it is extremely rare, that I do more than 20 minutes of running at one go. Maybe one run of 1h or 1h30, but not too often. Maybe 1 bike ride, or if I had to go to work, it might be 2 or 4 x 20k on the ebike, but it won't happen every week. 

On the other hand, I really note down my training volume in case of strength training. For long and cruel ultra marathons, I use poles, to greatly reduce impact, improve posture and reduce postural fatigue.
My strength training has the same goal. Improve posture, strengthen everything in my structure, improve grip strength and grip endurance a lot and so.
I basically use kettlebell drills and a lot of swings as my only strength tool. I have been learning about kettlebells for over 15 years, so I really use snatches, high pulls, push-presses and everything to challenge my posture.
The other tool I use is a walking lunge protocol. My goal is to be able to do 20 x 3minutes of uphill walking lunges before my A event of the year. This is stressful and it is hard. It is something that I don't year around, but as time passes I build up to, than leave to somewhat to detrain. It starts simply by 5 x 10 and throughout the months, it builds up from reps to time measurements.
Every training session of running or strength training starts with yoga, mobility, pilates or foundation training. 10 to 20 min. 

All of this is monitored and noted. How many KGs did I lift during the week at what sort of distributions. How many lunge protocols at what level I completed.
Basically, what I do is training myself very strong during the week, to be able to withstand, resist and to gain from the weekend long run. My weekend long run if training for a 100k at this moment is around 5 hours, what is more likely and hike and run. I complete around 30km on very harsh terrain.

This sort of training prepared my body very well. I challenged myself at the end of my last training cycle for a 7h training day. No not a long outing, but a real training day. I basically went out for a 2h40 min quite high intensity run of Zone 2 and Zone 3, pushing quite a lot starting at 4:30 am. Than I completed a 20min Trx Workout with lifting around 3200kg during a KB workout quite intensely. I then did a 2 hour bike ride, with a quality 400m climb in the middle, letting my HR to climb as it wanted. Finishing the day with a 60min high threshold run, of pushing D+400m up and down. Of course there was a lot of mobility, stretching foam rolling and so sprinkled in. 

This is just to show, that despite the zero high intensity general training, when I had to pull out some quite great efforts multiple times during the day, my body was ready. 

We well continue on these though lines, but now I have to go. Volume and intensity are not the only things that we have to look for in order to gain fitness for racing and life. There are tons of other stuff that we can play around with, causing less stress, but creating more performance.

Dorogi Levente