Elite endurance athletes are regularly doing two or more hard training sessions per day. Not just strength training in addition to a session focused on running or cycling but sometimes two workouts in one specific sport. Why do they do this and is it something that could benefit you?
A well trained aerobic system is incredibly fast at recovering. At peak performance your body can recover 100% from aerobic efforts in 12 hours or less. For this reason it can make sense for endurance athletes to double (train twice in a day) If you have the time and are able it may be worth considering but there are a few rules you should follow.
Rules to follow
- When combining multiple types of training in back to back, the general rule is: first coordination then speed then strength then endurance. You can combine coordination and then strength but not the other way around
- The reason: the coordination as well as the speed abilities decrease with the length of the training, in a fatigued state no efficient coordination or speed training is possible anymore.
- Ambitious runners separate the corresponding units completely and do at most a relaxed endurance training on the same day as coordination, strength and speed, but this takes place in the other half of the day.
- If the endurance training is very intense, there is no room for any other training on the same day (except for a relaxed second endurance unit like a shake out or alternative sports like aquajogging or light spinning).
- If you don’t want to focus everything on top times and efficiency, but you do want to achieve the best possible general fitness, you can mix the contents together without thinking too much about it.
How to plan it
If you want to plan two training sessions in one day you should allow at least four hours of recovery between each session. the more the better. the best is to do one session early in the morning and then the second in the evening.
In 2PEAK you can add the days in which you have time and are willing to do two workouts and the plan will calculate when and what types of workout you should do based on all of your goals.
If you go in to settings > Change training schedule, you will see this screen where you can add workouts on days. You can say when you are able to train multiple times a day and 2PEAK will plan appropriate workouts in accordance with the rules above.