Endurance Nation | Triathlon Coaching, Ironman Training, Half Ironman, Beginner Triathlon

Without a doubt, these Out-Season training plans are the cornerstone of our success as a long course triathlon Team. Built on our radical approach to endurance training–Build FAST First, the Put FAR Under It – athletes using our protocols experience significant improvements on just six to eight hours of training per week:

• Avg 10k Improvement: 2 minutes and 30 seconds
  
• Avg Half Marathon Improvement: 4 minutes and 47 seconds
• Avg Bike Threshold Power (FTP) gain: 15%
• Avg Power-to-Weight (w/kg) gain: 15.7%

Many other plans are basically written by a guy who read a book by a guy who read a book. Our plans are driven by our combined experienced of nearly 20 years of long course triathlon coaching, and, most importantly, the results, feedback, and continuous improvement loop you would expect from a team of over 400 athletes. These plans have been updated and improved seven times in five years. When was the last time your training plan was even touched? Can your 1:1 coach produce similar improvement data — actual data — above?

Out-Season Training Plan Improvements for 2010
We are in the process of improving our Out-Season training plans for the 2010 long course triathlon season. This is an annual process that involves pouring over Team data from 400+ members and reviewing athlete feedback, etc. Here is the short list of improvements, a result of the coaches and team putting their heads together:

• Plans lengthened from 16 weeks to 20 weeks.
• “Cold” and “Warm” weather volume options given for key workouts. Every Saturday ride will include options for “if you are stuck on a trainer for 1:30″ and “if you can get outside for 2-3hrs.”
• Training blocks broken down as:
  • Weeks 1-8 focus on lifting power/pace/speed at Lactate or Functional Threshold
  • Weeks 9-14 shift to lifting power/pace/speed at Vo2Max
  • Weeks 15-20, we return to focus on Lactate/Functional Threshold performance
• Testing / Benchmarking process and frequency improved.
• Now includes technique and fitness focused swim guidance.
• New Gold Level OS Plans will have a podcast AND video for EVERY week of your training plan. That’s nearly 4hrs of detailed guidance from Rich and Patrick to help you make the most of this critical training phase.

Plans will be released to the general public on Sept 1:

• Priced starting at $179 ($9/week!), the same price as 2008 but four more weeks!
• Newsletter subscriber (you) discount: 10%, good through September 30.
• Twitter Follower Discount: 20%. Simply follow TeamEN on Twitter and we will publish a special discount for you on September 1, good through September 15.

Background on the Endurance Nation OutSeason
Ironman Coeur d’Alene (26 EN athletes) and Ironman Lake Placid (37 athletes) are in the books. The results of our athletes, the team vibe of 25-35+ at every race, 60-70+ at the race week team dinner, a waiting list of nearly 200 athletes…something is working and we’re going to let you know the secret: a very large part of Endurance Nation’s success, as a team and as individual race performances, is built in our Out-Season. Specifically, our Out-Season training plans.

To review the Endurance Nation long course training season:

• Out-Season: 16-20wks, “Build FAST, then put FAR under it.”
• General Preparation: Everything until 12wks out from your race. “Training to train, putting the FAR under FAST.”
• Race Preparation: Starts 12wks out from the race. Focus on the FAR and race-specific intensity.

Why is our Out-Season so powerful?
First, it has been proven across three seasons to make you SIGNIFICANTLY faster than your old self. How do we do it? We focus on low volume, high intensity training. Low volume, cuz it has to be, because you are a real person in the real world, it’s winter, and you don’t need to be training hours and hours for a race 6-9 months away! High intensity because low volume creates the opportunity for the high intensity that will make you faster on race day. In short, we build your Fast in the Out-Season. With only 6-8hrs of total volume per week, our athletes achieved the documented gains above. Can your coach or training plan demonstrate similar documented gains?

Second, low volume conserves your head, your job, your family life, and those always-precious SAUs (Spousal Approval Units). One consistent comment we hear from our team is how much focused, time efficient work they are getting in at a relatively low time-cost, and that this work definitely pays off with faster performances all season. That is, they are getting faster and fitter with less impact on their personal lives than ever before. This is huge money in the bank for when you need to get a green light for those 5hr+ rides closer to your race!

Third, it’s an incredible team building opportunity for us. Our Out-Season, November 1, 2009 through March 31, 2010, is a golden opportunity to get the entire team on the same training, learning, experience-sharing, accountability, and comarderie page. The entire team is training, talking, and thinking about the same things, without the distraction of racing. In addition, we will hold back some team-only features that will not be included in the general-public training plans. Specifically, we have created a power-training protocol proven to boast Functional Threshold Power an additional 10% in only 5wks.

If you think the Endurance Nation team-only experiences and resources are for you, join our waiting list. If not, these training plans are certainly an excellent alternative, to be published September 1, 2009.

We hope that you are excited about the potential to significantly improve your 2010 performances by doing the hard, smart work in the OutSeason. The results of our athletes speak for themselves! We’ll let you know when the plans are available for purchase, on September 1, and don’t forget to follow TeamEN on Twitter to receive a Twitter-only 20% discount!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Endurance Nation is just over two years old, the product of much coffee and discussion between Rich and Patrick at IMCDA ’07. What started as two coaches with zero athletes between them is now a truly global Team of over 400 members…in less than two years. The Endurance Nation you see today is MUCH different from what we envisioned…and that’s a good thing.

As we prepare to re-open the Team in Fall of 2009 (you should join the waitlist here) with a whole new host of resources and infrastructure to enhance our work, we are conducting an internal review – where we are, how got here, and where to go now. Making this public is not only true to how we work, but might even prove interesting / useful to some of you.

As a business, Endurance Nation is centered on five basic principles:

1. Know what you are good at…and do more of that.
2. Know what you are not good at…and don’t do that.
3. Listen to your customers.
4. Don’t just give your customers what they want, give them what they need.
5. Build a business that supports your desired lifestyle.

After a great deal of self-assessment, we determined that:

• We are both good communicators and teachers. Comfortable with writing and speaking on a broad range of topics.
• We are comfortable with technology: podcasting, video creation, social networking platforms, etc.
• We spend most of our time building as we go, preferring to run now with an 80% plan than wait for the 100% plan to develop, confident we can tweak and fix problems on the fly.
• We both prefer to manage a very, very small number of very high quality relationships. When we move away from this, our potential for making mistakes increases.
• We have a great deal of experience with leading and fostering communities.
• Neither one of us is willing to compromise our preferred lifestyle. For Patrick, this means spending tons of quality time with his two young daughters. For Rich, this means leveraging his flexibility to work and travel anywhere, anytime.

We applied these items to an analysis of the common coaching models in the triathlon space. Our assessment:

One-on-one Coaching Model: One coach with a small number of clients paying a high monthly fee.

• Not scaleable; there is only so much of you to go around and so much space you can rent out in your head.
• High risk, as a significant percentage of your income is dependent on the training, racing, lifestyle, and family budget whims of a small number of people.
• Very little opportunity for individual growth / development.

Cloning Yourself: Recruiting and training additional coaches to work within your brand.

• More scalable but inefficient. In our experience, it takes a lot of work to put a new coach in front of enough people whereby they and YOU make enough money to make it worth your while.
• Risky, as someone else is on the street representing your brand.
• You spend less and less time coaching, more time managing others.

Selling Your Time: Testing, opening a physical location, running local coached workouts, etc.

• Unacceptably high fixed and lifestyle costs: facilities/overhead, insurance, time, etc.
• Not enough scalability, only so many places you can physically be.

Selling training plans: Generic training solutions delivered electronically via the web.

• Excellent scalability.
• The creation of supporting materials is very easy for us, given our communication skills.

Our respective models, over coffee at IMCDA in 2007, was a combination of the 1:1 coaching and training plans models above. We recognized that we had each taken it about as far as it could go, working solo, and had reached a significant fork in the road. By combining our efforts and strengths, we could carve out a new road and go in a completely new and unexplored direction. The resultant business model would:

• Leverage our significant 1:1 long course triathlon coaching and training plan experience to create the most effective and detailed training plans on the market. Our goal was to create affordable solutions that worked for 95% of the people, 95% of the time.
• Leverage our communication skills, our relative comfort with technology, and community-building expertise to solve the remaining 5%.

With a whole lot less than the above written on a few napkins at a local coffee shop, Rich and Patrick returned to their respective Coasts to begin cutting ties with the old model and building the new one. We quickly settled on the name Endurance Nation as being representative of the larger movement we were trying to create. At the end of the day, thousands of triathletes across the US wake up stoopid early in the morning to train solo and live vicariously during the work day by surfing tri forums. It was – and is – our mission to unite these self-coached athletes through world class training protocols and an online community that fosters learning, encouragement, and athletic development.

We are excited to share our coaching and business development story with you. Stay tuned for our next installment in the coming weeks.

Got questions or feedback? Post away in the comments, we read’em all!

Popularity: 18% [?]

Please visit TriathlonExecution.com to purchase. Use code ENIMCDA09 to save 20%. Code expires on May 15, 2009 so don’t delay!

TriathlonExecution.com, powered by Endurance Nation, launches two new products: Course Overviews and Coaches’ Talks, with Ironman Coeur d’Alene as the debut of this new tool.

1. Coaches’ Course Talk — 90+ Minutes

More than 1.5 hours of in-depth information regarding your next big race. Rich and Patrick merge their coaching and racing experience with the renown Four Keys system to create the ultimate pre-race resource. Available either as an .mp3 file or as a screencasted video you watch on your computer. Includes:

• Race week schedule for each of the last 5 days leading up to your race;
• Course analysis of each leg of the race, with specific details and insider pacing and strategy tips.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 15% [?]

Ed Note: This post is part of an admin series on what sets Endurance Nation apart from other triathlon coaching groups, companies, and clubs. If you like what you see, please check us out. We have a 30-day FREE trial and all new members before 5/1 (when we close the doors for the season!) get a FREE copy of our Four Keys DVD — a $37 value!

Even though this reason is only number 5, it’s one of my favorite ones because it’s such a no-brainer. In fact, it’s so obvious that I think most people miss it: Endurance Nation is 100% Age Grouper focused.

“Age Grouper Focused” means…

…that the coaches who wrote your plan are age groupers themselves.
We aren’t pros who train 40 hours a week and just give you a flavor of our personal training. We aren’t academics who pour over published results from studies of untrained male 35 year old cycling performance gains, and use that to guide our work. We are coaches who train like you, who have taken our combined 15 years of age-grouper experience to create a suite of plans that are effective, easy-to-implement, and connect you to your fellow triathletes.

…that your plan has been refined and improved annually by people just like you.
Sure, we read all the same books that you do. Difference is that our versions of the plans have been implemented and refined by well over a 1000 athletes. A typical 1:1 coach works with (maybe) 20 folks a year…it will take them 50 years to stack up the same level of info and experience that EN has working with Age Groupers. Add to that the fact that all of our plans are balanced to account for your life, and they are built around the concept of Training ROI…what’s the least I can do

…Team EN is about YOU (the athlete), not about US (the coaches).
Take a closer look at that 1:1 coaching relationship. It’s very heavily weighted to the coach who is the expert, who gets paid before they talk to you, who is hard to set up a phone call with, who requires more money to meet you in the real world, etc. I know…I have been there. Inside EN, Rich and I are really just and extension of the membership. If there’s a need for clarification, or a request for new guidance, or an idea for a new project…we take it on. In fact, I think we have 3 member-driven projects going on right now behind the scenes! That’s just so cool…And we definitely don’t take ourselves too seriously.

…we have a much bigger focus than just triathlon.
At the end of the day, this is all just a game. Getting too dialed into triathlon, or any extracurricular endeavor, for that matter, just isn’t good for you. All of our members are just regular people. From stay at home moms to orthopedic surgeons to accountants to web development peeps….we all moonlight as triathletes. A large part of our community is built around who we are in the real world, and this is reinforced when we all get to meet up at our various races across the US.

IF you are looking for a unique training experience with folks who share your passion for triathlon, your quest for self-improvement, and your desire to be your best without sacrificing life, family, or work…check us out. We are, after all, home of triathlon’s only FREE 30-day trial. See you at the races!

Popularity: 9% [?]

As of May 1, 2009, we will close the door to new membership. After 5/1/09, athletes interested in joining the team will have to wait until Fall 2009 when we reopen.

Membership and Team Coaching is only $79/mo, and includes a free 30-day trial!

That’s right — closed. Shut. Locked. We enter the dojo, close the doors, put on our Race Prep Training and Execution Sensai robes and create a team of racing ninjas. We draw the line in the sand and you are either on the Team or you are racing against us.

Team Focus
At the end of the day, our ability to perform is a direct result of how we have prepared to race. Having half the team focused on racing but the other half still learning the basic parts of how we train, how we build fitness, etc., will only take away from our overall mojo. Closing the doors means that we can facilitate this team focus by eliminating the newbie factor until we are all better prepared to welcome new teammates (Fall 2009).

Race Execution Focus
We are seriously invested in getting our athletes ready to have their best possible race. You can see that in our Four Keys DVD (Amazon); it’s also reflected in our writing and is essentially the foundation of our training methodology.

In 2008, the switch from Learning To Train to Learning To Race was both sudden and powerful. Everyone started paying attention and playing along — it was almost as though everyone wanted to cram for the big test. People who had been quiet all year were suddenly very, very interested in the forum.

As a result, our learning and knowledge cycle sped up by several iterations. Every race simulation weekend, every actual race was an opportunity for people to put our Race Execution guidance to the test and then report back on it to the rest of the team. Athletes closely tracked their statistical counterparts (by w/kg and vDOT) to identify performance gaps and areas for improvement. The results: a boat load of PRs and incredible race day performances.

In 2009 we plan on riding this wave with more purpose; focusing the team on execution and conducting both on-site pre-race events and valuable off-site learning opportunities. Team EN will never be the same after it exits this six month racing focus.

May 1 is Your Last Chance
You’ve likely been following our blog, our videos, podcasts, become a fan of Endurance Nation, or have otherwise been curious about joining our team. Your last opportunity to join our team of over 400 long course athletes for the 2009 season will be May 1. After May 1, very little to no free EN Goodness will distributed outside of the house. In particular, you’ll see nothing from us about how we teach our athletes to race. We are at team and some things we just don’t share. But you will see 20-30 EN athletes at every US Ironman this season and you will hear about their PR’s and experiences!

$79/mo with FREE 30-Day Trial
Create a 30-Day FREE trial and we will immediately begin coaching you — FREE — for 30 days.  Please take our coaching, our support, and the Team for a free test drive.

Best,

Patrick and Rich

Popularity: 13% [?]