Consistency trumps everything else

This winter, my primary goal is to simply be consistent. I was doing well with consistent running in October and November and then ran into a tough two weeks. I've convinced myself that I'm back on the consistent-train this week!

I have since added biking to the mix, and consistency is still my main goal. Of course, I soon realized that to be consistent in both run and bike workouts requires a cut in volume, which I didn't want to admit at first but intuitively knew would be needed.

Joe Friel wrote a post about top ten training errors at http://www.joefrielsblog.com/  All of his information is good, but I particularly liked his note about consistency:

#6 mistake: Inconsistent training.


Correction: High goals? Don’t miss workouts. Ever.

Comments: Consistency is the single most important aspect of training. It’s more important than long or intense workouts. You’ll improve faster by working out frequently and regularly rather than by doing hard workouts with lots of days off in between. This comes down to moderation and infrequent attempts to find your limits. Pushing yourself to the edge frequently leads to soreness, illness, injury, burnout, and overtraining. These will cause you to miss workouts and lose fitness. You gain fitness at a much slower rate than you lose it. But, let’s face it, you will miss a workout on occasion due to things you have little or no control over—weather, work, family activities and other responsibilities. When these happen you need to do some workout rescheduling. Try not to miss any of the key workouts on your schedule.

He's absolutely right. Before making consistency a top priority, I would have argued that you can be kind of consistent and still be good. And I think that's true. But to WIN, consistency is an absolute must.

I want to win, but that's not why I do triathlons, so I don't get too mad when I lose consistency. "Frustrated with myself" is a better description.

But after seeing what just six weeks of real consistency can do for fitness, it is certainly always at the top of my training goals. Just be consistent. Even if it means an hour of really low intensity....the consistency will give you a benefit.  It's important to point out that he mentions "moderation" and "infrequent attempts to find your limits" because that is exactly what I'm finding in my own adventures in consistency. Two hard workouts per week at the most, and the rest are a moderate level with a specific function that he mentions in his other posts.