Sport

Paddy Heaney: A superstar you may not be but it's amazing what bite-sized chunks of training can do

American golfing superstar Tiger Woods
American golfing superstar Tiger Woods American golfing superstar Tiger Woods

Ten in the morning.

Ten in the evening.

Ten in the morning.

Ten in the evening.

Ten in the morning.

Ten in the evening.

Welcome to my world. Or, to be more precise, welcome to my head.

Ever since my chat with champion runner, Tommy Hughes who told me he runs 10 miles in the morning and 10 miles in the evening, six days a weeks, I have found myself repeating that phrase umpteen times a day.

Ten in the morning.

Ten in the evening.

Ten in the morning.

Ten in the evening.

It’s like a drum beat. I can’t stop it.

I wake up and I am struggling to summon the motivation to get on the bike. I think of Tommy (60), last marathon, 2:27:52.

Ten in the morning.

Ten in the evening.

I understand why it resonates so much. Having immersed myself in the business of coaching and training, I fully appreciate the absolute importance of consistency.

It provides the foundation of all improvement.

Back in the day, we were led to believe that all progress was gained through Herculean efforts. You had to bust a gut.

The sign of a good session was if half the squad ended up buckled over vomiting.

It’s believed that a lot of this dangerous and often ineffective training stemmed from the American military. Army training wasn’t really proper physical training.

It was essentially character training. It tested a man’s ability to withstand hardship.

After World War Two, a lot of U.S. Army officers got jobs as professional coaches, particularly in American Football.

With the top-down, drip-feed system that exists in sport, the insanity became a culture.

Meanwhile, behind the Iron Curtain, they were relying on sports science.

Interval training was made famous by the matchless exploits of Czech runner, Emil Zatopek.

The Romanian professor, Tudor Bompa is accredited with the pioneering concept of periodization, where blocks of training were followed by interludes of lesser intensity which allowed the athlete’s body time to recover and adapt, then go harder for the next block.

Russian professor, Yuri Verkhoshansky developed plyometrics in the late 60's and early 70's. In Ireland, we started doing box jumps about 10 years ago.

The Russians were at it 50 years ago.

Some Eastern Bloc coaches are still miles ahead of the game.

The best example is British rowing coach, Jurgen Grobler, formerly of East Germany. With Britain, Grobler has coached crews to Olympic gold medals in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Not bad.

Because rowing is such an eye-balls-out event there is a popular notion that most of the training is conducted with the same flat-out intensity.

That’s a myth.

Tim Foster was part of the foursome which helped Steve Redgrave win his fifth Olympic gold medal at Sydney in 2000.

In ‘Four Men in a Boat,’ Foster revealed Grobler’s training methods.

The day started at 8am with a 20km steady state row. This was followed by a weights circuit.

After the weights, the squad rowed another 20 kilometres.

Foster writes: “It was time on the treadmill: seven days a week, forty-nine weeks of each year. That was all there was to it.”

Twenty in the morning. Twenty in the afternoon. Sound familiar?

Ground-breaking research has been conducted in Norway by the American professor, Stephen Seiler who recently gave a presentation to the Northern Ireland Athletics Federation.

Seiler’s research on elite endurance athletes who’ve won World Championship and Olympic medals shows that at least three quarters of their training is conducted at 68 to 75 per cent of their maximum heart rate. (This is a steady-state, manageable intensity)

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that even if someone manages to replicate the astonishing consistency of men like Tommy Hughes and Steve Redgrave, there is no guarantee they will end up breaking world records.

Yes, metronomic consistency coupled with gradual progression will lead to utterly astonishing improvement.

That much is guaranteed.

But forget the infantile theory that 10,000 hours of ‘deliberate practice’ can turn a Sunday League footballer into Messi.

In The Sports Gene, author David Esptein pointed to the American Dan McLaughlin, who quit his full-time job in order to devote his life to becoming a professional golfer.

McLaughlin was inspired by what he had read in the best-selling books Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

McLaughlin was convinced that after 10,000 hours of ‘deliberate practice’ he would one day be teeing off with Tiger Woods.

McLaughlin started on April 5, 2010. He was due to hit 10,000 hours in 2016.

To gain entry for the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, McLaughlin needed a handicap of two or less.

After four years, the best he reached was 2.6. He quit.

But that’s merely a cautionary tale.

Most of us can still exceed our wildest expectations by simply breaking our training into bite-sized chunks and slowly increasing the volume.

Ten in the morning.

Ten in the evening.

To quote Saint Francis of Assisi: “Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

Last Friday, the weather forecast was horrendous, wind and torrential rain.

I informed the troops that our bike ride would still be 75 miles.

It was going to last just over 4 hours. If you don’t want to get wet, stay at home.

We left at 7:30am.

Shortly afterwards, we were riding towards Gulladuff. It was lashing.

I spotted a figure running towards us.

I recognised the gait immediately.

He wasn’t even acknowledging the rain with a cap. The head was tucked down. And he was motoring.

“All right, Tommy.”

Ten in the morning.

Ten in the evening.

I’ll not lie. My heart soared.