WDM Coaching

More running and more aerobic work aren’t always the same decision.

The bike can support your engine without adding running impact. It can’t reproduce every demand of running, and it still adds training stress.

Choose it for a clear job, not just to make the week bigger.

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Moving faster only helps if the reps count. Once cadence starts costing depth, control or accuracy, you’re adding work and carrying more fatigue into the next run.

Race pace includes the movement standard.

A race plan needs more than target splits.

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The best plans tell you what to adjust when the race stops matching the numbers.

The last rep isn’t automatically the most productive one.

If rep speed drops, your position changes and the intent disappears, you’ve gone beyond the point where the set is doing the job we programmed it to do. You might still complete the rep, but completion alone isn’t the target.

For most strength work in a HYROX programme, I want you finishing with 2–4 reps in reserve. That’s enough load to create the strength stimulus while keeping the quality high and the recovery cost under control.

The set doesn’t exist in isolation. What you spend on it affects the next set, the next run, the next quality session and the rest of the training week.

This isn’t avoiding effort. It’s applying the right amount in the right place.

Move every working rep with intent. Stop before it becomes a grind. Leave useful reps in reserve.

A warm-up is usually treated as preparation. Get warm, move through the routine and begin the session. But before a quality session, it can also provide the first useful information of the day.

Easy movement gives your breathing and movement time to settle. Steady work begins to show how the effort is building. A few short session-specific exposures give you a chance to check the planned pace, load or movement without committing to the full set.

That doesn’t mean changing the session because the first few minutes feel flat. It means noticing when the response clearly doesn’t match the purpose.

If the target already feels forced, movement quality is changing or the effort is much higher than expected, adjust the pace, load or volume before the first working rep rather than waiting for the session to unravel.

The programme gives you the starting point. The warm-up helps you confirm how to execute it today.

Easy runs are not slow races.

The purpose isn’t to see how fast you can move while still calling the session easy. It’s to add aerobic work at a cost low enough to preserve the rest of the week.

Your normal easy pace can feel comfortable on one day and become too expensive on another. Terrain, conditions and accumulated fatigue all change the demand. The number on the watch might be familiar, but the session is no longer producing the same cost.

That’s why the pace has to move. Keep the effort around RPE 3–5 and conversational. If you can’t speak comfortably, slow down, choose flatter ground or switch to low-impact aerobic work.

An easy day doesn’t need to look impressive in the training data. It needs to build the aerobic system and leave enough available for the next quality session.

Protect the purpose, not the pace.

Rest is often treated as the empty space between the work.

Athletes cut it short because they feel ready, want to finish sooner or think starting early makes the session tougher. It does, but it also changes the session.

Recovery determines how much fatigue carries into the next repetition. That affects the output you can reproduce, the movement quality you can maintain and the demand created across the set.

Fuller recovery can protect high-quality output. Shorter recovery can deliberately train repeatability under fatigue. Neither approach is automatically better. They serve different purposes.

If pace, load, reps and recovery are prescribed, they belong to the same session. Change one and you may change what the session is training.

Another strong week (and a bit) of racing across HYROX, fitness racing and running.

Podiums, PBs and debuts. Good athletes doing the consistent work that keeps things moving forward.

A deload shouldn’t be an emergency response to a programme that has already fallen apart. It should be a planned reduction in training stress that gives the athlete room to absorb the work before beginning the next phase.

Productive training creates fatigue. That doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong, but it can temporarily hide the fitness being developed underneath it. Pace may feel harder, outputs can become less repeatable and normal sessions may require more effort even while the athlete is still adapting.

One poor session doesn’t prove that a deload is needed. The concern is a developing pattern in which quality sessions become less consistent, soreness persists, warm-ups feel unusually demanding and technique begins to deteriorate earlier than expected. Waiting for performance to completely collapse means the reduction has probably arrived too late.

A deload doesn’t have to remove every useful training stimulus. Total volume, session density and station accumulation can be reduced while familiar movements, technical rhythm and small doses of quality remain. The aim is to lower the overall recovery cost without disconnecting the athlete from training.

This is also different from a taper. A taper prepares the athlete to express performance at a particular event. A deload creates room to recover, adapt and continue progressing through the programme.

Train, accumulate, reduce, absorb and progress again. Don’t wait until training stops working before you make room to absorb it.