Where's the Forest?

by Jonas Colting

I often tend to make easy things more complicated. Fortunately I´m aware of this personality flaw and when the tendency for me to complicate things does occur I´m in the habit of audit and I scrutinize this behavior. It´s not so much a flaw as a side effect of ambition and the need for being on the upslope of development and the learning curve. It really doesn´t matter if something is good when good always can be better and if the speed isn´t high enough there´s hopefully another gear to shift into and straighten out the curves and bends in the process.

The other day I watched the people in a triathlon club perform a workout, all of them being recreational and age group triathletes with limited time to spare for training. I watched them play around in a gymnastics room doing jumping drills, plyometrics and a runaround of things. When inquiring upon the purpose of their workout I got the answer that it was “good for our running dynamics.” I thought to myself, "Not as good as doing actual running." My thought was especially true if that was indeed their purpose and goal and there´s only a precious few hours per week to use for training.

If you're expecting a fast track to improvement and success, it´s easy to look elsewhere for the magic bullet or the key to making those weak links in the chain of performance ironclad and strong.
That track can very well lead one astray into the confusing world of alternative training, zone therapy, spike mats, connective tissue massage, shamanism, power yoga, eastern herbs, bowel cleansing, compression socks and what not. Once lead astray it´s easy to forget the obvious answer to the question on how to become a faster runner -- actually run!

That logic naturally goes for the other two disciplines in triathlon. While we´re on the subject, triathlon has always laid claim to the effect of cross training, that by doing the mix of training, the specific capacity in the various disciplines also improves. I´d like to call bullshit on that one! Swimming improves swimming and not much else. Cycling improves cycling and definitely nothing else, rather it's the contrary as evidenced in terrible physical posture and tightened hips. I´ll admit that running and the high level of cardio development actually does have a positive effect to a limited degree on cycling, at least in the sense of losing weight and managing climbs on the bike.

Of course, who am I to say anything since I'm the last person to follow my own reasoning and logic! I keep finding one activity after the other in order to implement it into my training routine. And sure enough, the time spent in the gym with weights or in nature's own gym, or at the physical therapist or personal trainer with mats, sticks, balls or ropes has been valuable, but it has also been balanced with long continuous periods of purely swimming, cycling and running. Sometimes long and slow; sometimes fast, hard and short. That includes all of those natural components of strength, agility and functionality that come from triathlon. These periods of limiting myself to basic triathlon training have also been the most successful ones from a fitness and racing standpoint and I've been the least injury stricken.

So if you have a hard time to, as we say in Sweden “see the forest for all the trees” in your training, it´s not really that complicated. Just step out of the forest to the closest trail. And run! Simple as that.