How to Get Started with Endurance Sports
You can probably ignore 90% of advice on the internet
The hardest part is starting - Simon Sinek
Ain’t that the truth! Starting is harder than keeping going, that’s true of literally everything in endurance sports from my experience and often the experience of others I regularly speak to in the endurance community. However, I bet I can convince you that starting is easier than you think!
So why is starting so hard? Well, I think it’s a mixture of things. There is very good scientific evidence to suggest we put up mental barriers when we treat a goal as a big job. When we think of say, completing an ironman race we can get frozen in our ability to make forward progress because the goal is so huge! We procrastinate because the idea of racing for potentially 16 hours non-stop is hard for our brains to understand especially if we can’t even run continually for 5K let alone 42K.
The other thing to consider is that we often have ridiculous expectations of ourselves, we tend to read all the blogs online, listen to all the podcasts and watch motivational youtube videos about people doing what we are trying to achieve. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to do this, however, most of the time you are getting information from people who have already done this and they often forget what it’s like to feel lost in the beginning. You hear terms like Zone 2, Threshold Session, Brick Session, Swim Drills and you’re going to be instantly overwhelmed with jargon as well as feeling like you have no idea where to start. It’s the age old problem with comparing yourself to others, it’s not fair and completely unrealistic.
You need to start where you are and there are a few shortcuts I can help you with to turn your procrastination into practice!
Ignore Structured Training
Yep, that’s right, I’m a coach and athlete telling you to ignore structured training. Here in black and white, I’m not kidding!
Why? Well, if you can’t run continuously for 5K and you are planning to race a sprint distance triathlon we need to get you to the point where you can comfortably run 5K otherwise we’ve already DNF’d. When you first start out and you are building from the ground up you don’t need structured training, you need to get started. Once you get started you can build on that base. Think of it like a house, you wouldn’t build the roof before laying the foundation, just getting started is laying the foundation.
If you can’t run 5K continuously you need to start by running for as long as you can, but the trick is to just get started, you may not know how far or how long you can run for. So what do you do? Get your shoes on, go out the door and run, simple as that. However, the trick here is to make sure that first run is a positive experience and not dig yourself into a hole that takes a week to recover from.
This is why all the articles (my own included) that talk endlessly about zones and performance and when to do what are utter crap for the true beginner. All this does is turn people away from the sport who could otherwise accomplish something absolutely incredible and find a love for the world of endurance. You need to ignore all the additional stuff and just get going, ignore structure and just swim, bike and run… Well, don’t “just swim” but we’ll get to that one later!
Start, Don’t Overthink It
Yep, like we’ve already said, just get started! Running any minutes or kilometres is better than reading endless training guides and feeling more and more overwhelmed. The human body is an absolute marvel of adaption, if you throw stressors at it, it will absorb it and adapt, especially physical challenges.
When you’re just starting out and you have a goal of say; ride my bike non-stop for one hour. The best way to get there? Go ride your bike for 5 minutes, see how you feel, can you keep going? Have you gone out too hard and need to slow down? Maybe you only make it 10, that’s great, that’s 10 minutes training in the bank! Your body will likely feel a bit sore and tired but that’s a good sign, you’re stimulating those repair systems within your muscles that will build you back stronger!
I think you’re getting the picture here, I always advise people who have never managed to accomplish their goal time or distance to just build up to that first. Don’t worry about times, paces, zones or any of that. Build a solid foundation, give yourself the evidence you need to understand that you are able to achieve the distance or time you have set out to. Your body will adapt and get used to the new stress you are placing on it and the training load which will become your new normal.
Be Patient, Don’t Become One
All this said, it’s very important not to overdo things, especially when you are new to a sport. I get it, high levels of motivation and enthusiasm with every session build up! Try to keep some of that enthusiasm bottled up for days when you don’t feel like heading out on the road, give yourself rest days, try not to do more than 2 days in a row starting off, your body is amazing and will adapt but it needs some time. Building fitness is a lengthy process if you want to make it sustainable.
If you are always training as hard as possible, feeling sore and pushing yourself on each run, ride and swim you will end up a burned out injured mess who falls out of love with a sport you used to enjoy. You need to keep the joy while also figuring out when to push yourself.
Be patient and figure out your cues, days when you feel great absolutely push on and go harder than you planned. If you were planning on a hard session but feel tired or drained, maybe take a rest day. You’ll figure it out through trial and error, but don’t try to push through every time. Sometimes it’s important to build mental resilience by getting a session done when you aren’t 100%, but that’s not every session. You have to figure out when you’re being a bit soft and when you actually need to take it easier.
Building up a picture of what your body is telling you and responding in a smart way is a great skill that will transcend all the data you could ever collect on your sessions.
Get familiar with the Rating of Perceived Effort scale to give yourself a yard stick!
Find your Plateau
This word gets a really bad wrap in sport, Plateaus are seen as a bad thing. I disagree, as someone who has experienced several plateaus and thought to myself “oh well, that’s just my limit” I can tell you from first hand experience you’re looking at it the wrong way.
Plateaus are one of the greatest indicators that your current way of training has found its limit, it’s not the same as you finding your limit. This makes a plateau an amazing measuring post! What you’ve been doing, will at some point not be enough to keep improving your fitness, that’s because of the crazy impressive abilities our bodies possess to adapt, eventually your body will get used to what you’re doing to it and become a more capable version.
When you are starting out, finding your plateau is great! It means you’ve exhausted those initial adaptations and need to go to the next level. So, until you stop progressing just keep doing what you’re doing as your body is still adapting. You only need to consider more structured training and coaching when you hit that plateau and want to go further.
That being said, if you find yourself wanting to get the most bang for your buck when you train there is no reason you need to wait until you plateau. Absolutely hire a coach or follow a plan if you want to learn and shortcut that initial ceiling. Just don’t feel like you need to, you can progress at whatever speed suits you and just keep an eye on what you are seeing, feeling and compare it where you want to be.
When Not to “Wing It”
Running, cycling, hiking, rock climbing… Most sports you can just build fitness by getting going & seeing how you get on. Observing how you adapt and keep cracking on from there is the aim of the game. However, some sports are technical sports that really benefit from building a solid foundation from the get go, otherwise you’re prone to injury in the worst case or just spending more time unlearning bad habits in the best case.
Swimming and Weight Lifting are absolutely sports that you want some good guidance on before you get going. Weight lifting is especially risky if you don’t get shown good technique and how to increase load safely. You want to become a master of those movements before you add KG’s to the bar otherwise you may very quickly come to regret it!
Swimming on the other hand doesn’t carry as much jeopardy, well, unless you go straight to open water swimming without any idea how to float! Swimming is almost a pure technique sport and if you apply running or cycling logic of “get started and work harder to go faster” to it, you will plateau very quickly or like me, start to engrain poor technique and habits that take much longer to unlearn than they did to learn.
If you’re eager to get started in either of these sports, absolutely seek guidance from a PT, swim coach or go to a group lesson with a club that offers entry level coaching. I promise you won’t regret spending a few extra £’s to build a solid foundation.
Like this advice? Want a better understanding of what will take you to the next level in your sport? Why not take my quiz and figure out where your hidden gains are!