The Endure EQ Vol. 026 | The playbook for developing your endurance engine

Published about 2 years ago • 3 min read

Hello Reader,

Welcome to Vol. 026 of The Endure EQ.

Every week you'll get a deep dive into a topic related to endurance training, maximizing your potential or reaching peak performance.

Let’s jump in.

The playbook for developing your endurance engine

In the last Endure EQ volumes we have covered each of the major endurance domains, what they do and how they impact your training.

Let’s tie it all together, making it actionable for your training.

If you follow this playbook you will build an efficient and fast endurance engine.

When it comes to building your endurance engine I like this simple training poem from Steve Magness:

I modelled my philosophy off of this.

Because it works.

It’s the basic building blocks you need to build your own endurance engine.

The basics of building an endurance engine (using SET)

Our training philosophy aligns with the training domains we have been talking about for the last few weeks.

The bulk of your training will be easy - moderate.

Some training will be hard to fast.

And occasionally you will dip into max efforts.

How to split it up over a week

If you have no-idea where to start with endurance training it can be useful to follow the 80-20 method.

I first learn about it from 80-20 Triathlon by David Warden and Matt Fitzgerald

They explain that 80% of your training should be easy. The other 20% is split between the other domains.

The idea is that when you look at your whole training week this is the rough percentage. Not each individual session, each session can have different time in zone.

You can estimate this well by adding up the time in each zone. (You can also review this easily with most training softwares after the week is complete.)

Hitting each zone

With endurance training you want to work in all the domains.

But another great coach Alan Couzens points out that you only want to handle 1 zone at a time.

The body doesn’t do well when we have every zone in a given training period.

So what you can do is have various blocks of training throughout the year where you emphasize the different zones.

Most EE athletes start with primarily endurance based with some VO2 work, then adding a tempo block, then adding a threshold block, before coming back to race specific work.

The idea is to build the lower and upper zones first and then get more specific with your race pace.

Most of your training should be easy to moderate.

Easy training will serve as the foundation for all the other zones.

Your main goal with this domain is to accumulate a lot of time in this zone. This domain will improve your fatigue resistance and serves as a foundation for overall health. But the key is keeping it easy.

The simplest way to think about this is a pace that you can sustain all day long.

Some of your training should be hard.

Once you have a foundation built you want to start adding in some intensity.

This can be done through your tempo and threshold work. These zones improve your metabolic fitness while building race-specific adaptations. Meaning it will help you race faster.

Work in this zone would be considered your race-pace.

Occasionally you want to go to max.

Once and a while you want to push yourself to the max.

This can be done through your VO2max work. The absolute max in aerobic performance. These short intervals will increase your total range of ability for your endurance engine.

Sustain this for years to come.

Including all the parts to build your endurance engine is step 1 of the equation.

Step 2 is learning how to sustain it for years.

You can do this with:

Proper recovery
Strength training
Trusting your timing

Endurance gains take time.

Learn the building blocks and build up your personal engine.

I put together a PDF with workouts from each zone.

Grab it here ➔ Key Workouts Training Menu.pdf

Happy Training!

- Chandler

When you’re ready here are 3 ways that Excel Endurance by Chandler Scott can help you:

Join our free community: find more resources, ask questions, and share workout ideas. Join Community
EE Training Squad: Monthly sustainable training and access to on-demand race programs. Join Squad
1-1 Coaching: Take your training to the next level with 1-1 access to Chandler. Coaching Request

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