Coaching Article 5. Some golden rules.

1) The rule of overload:

For any fitness component to improve it must be overloaded.
This is the most important training principle.
Overloading a particular fitness component may be achieved in a number of ways.

Frequency: To improve fitness you must train frequently. Training a fitness component once every few weeks will have little effect. You need to train at least 2-3 times per week.

Intensity: This means how hard you train or the degree of physical effort required in a training session.

Time: The time you spend on the bike will have a big influence on how you improve. Time could also mean the length of efforts or recovery.

Type: The type of training you do should reflect the event(s) being targeted. Why waste your valuable time training something that is not relative to your event.
That leads us onto the next rule.

2) The rule of specificity:
Training should be specific to the movement, muscles and energy systems of the sport or event that are being targeted.
In other words there is no point spending all your training time doing thousands of kilometers on the bike (aerobic endurance) if you are riding the sprint on the track, where most of your energy will come from your anaerobic energy system.

3) The rule of recovery:
It’s not how much training you can do but how much training you can recover from. Imagine if you didn’t need to recover you could train harder and harder each day and just get better and better.


When you stress your body through physical exertion it breaks down and then repairs itself over a period of time. You need to rest to allow it to repair itself. It strengthens itself so that next time you stress it in the same way it is better prepared to handle it.
This is adaptation.

4) The maintenance principle.
The frequency of training a given component can be cut by 2/3rds as long as the intensity and duration of each workout is kept up.
There are many fitness components that make up a training programme and you generally need to focus on a particular component for a period of time and then move on to the next.
In most cases you will want to maintain the gains you have made in that particular area while you focus on the next.

5) The 6 week rule.
The majority of the improvements you make by training a fitness component occur in the first 4 -6 weeks. After that it tapers off.
The implication of this is that, if you want to best utilize your time, you should change your training component at least every 6 weeks.