REFLEXIONS SINDBALLE

Diuen que si vols milorar la teva posició sobre la bici, t´has de penjar la foto de Sindballe en el sostre de la teva habitació i pensar en ella cada dia abans de dormir-te..

Jo encara no l´he penjat però el què si he fet, és llegir-me i reflexionar sobre el què escriu un dels millors triatletes del món. A banda d´això, la posició és per flipar (només és mantenir-la durant 4h i 18min)Per mi, un mirall en què mirar-me..

Si teniu temps i llegiu en anglès, és molt interessant..
"As the western world slowly wakes up after years of overspending, the new president of the United States called for change. I did too in my own way. One of the cornerstones in endurance sports is "the one who trains the most, the hardest wins". Most pros breathe it, dream it and find immense satisfaction in trying to outtrain everyone else each day. Often the status of doing so is almost worth just as much as good race results. But very few can handle the maniac regimes we put ourselves through, most ends up overtrained, injured and underperform for long periods at the time. Often people pull off their best performances early in their career and rarely are someone consistent enough to race well in race after race, year after year. I have been part of this mantra for years and have done my fair share of monster weeks where I have done race like efforts on up to 5 days out of seven. Needless to say I have had every injury in the book, been overtrained and have fought back from a completely demotivated state more than once. Just to give you a little insight to the madness, here is a few statistics. For the past 5 or more years I have trained roughly 1000 hours each year. For the record I measure 4K swim as 1 hour, actual bike and run time excluding brakes and effective gym time which is a bit stricter than most I know.While others have definitely trained more than a 1000 hours pr. Year, a very big part of my training has been at a relatively high average pace – normally 240-60w/33-35kph on the bike and 4.20-4.00 min/km on the run in the build ups.My max week was 42 hours and 37 mins. In the build ups I have had many weeks of 30-38 hours, where I have usually done very close to race like efforts 4-5 days a week. I have a podium from the biggest event in the sport and two ITU world championships plus some cool IM 70.3 wins and good placing in many races to my record, but I have also……Been seriously overtrained on three occasions and raced tired on many occasionsHad chronic lower back, neck, shoulder problems and have not trained without pain in the past 8 years!Had major brakes from training due to a broken SI joint capsule, jumper’s knee, Achilles tendonitis, and minor breaks from plantar fasciitis and shin splints.Despite all the low’s I have loved every minute of my career so far. I love pushing hard in training and racing, I love the people, the nature and the process of dedicating myself to a single goal. The journey has made my understanding of success deeper and more passionate than ever. But in the past years despite delivering the best result of my career so far, I have felt a gradual loss of energy and more and more on the edge. Some will say this is what it is like being close to your potential…..I believe I was seriously fatigued from chronic injuries and years of too much too soon. I believe there is so much more in me if I train less, but more focused to gain overall consistency. So this winter I have made a very big decision for me – to but my body first in everything I do. This has meant taking the first 4 week complete vacation I have ever had. Heal every pain with a lot of rest, treatments and focused strength work alongside a small amount of easy training with high technical quality that is completely dictated by the progression in injury recovery. This means that if I can only swim 800m before comprising the healing process I will swim no more. So far things are going really well with my new body first approach. It seems like all the twist and turns in my body is slowly unwinding, I am getting the right, strong activation patterns back in my muscles and feel greater efficiency and body awareness than what I have felt in years. The future will tell if I am on the right path to lift my game that extra percent or two &#61514"

Josep.