Videos

Load, stress, strain—they're terms we hear a lot in sports science, but what do they mean? Your internal response to external load will change as you become fitter and more durable. Dr. Stephen Seiler explains all.

Coaching works best as a process of building performance, rather than a hot pursuit of an outcome. Coach Julie Young describes the performance gains a busy executive experienced at the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. Breaking from his habit of cramming for the event with just six months of training, he committed to year-round coaching, incorporating strength and stability work and building the mental resilience that made him a better athlete.

When athletes show up at the lab to test lactate threshold or metabolic efficiency, they are often fixated on a goal or data point. Julie Young encourages coaches and athletes to take a broader view, and notice gaps that might exist in fitness. The lab simplifies the path forward, showing how the body is responding to training and taking us back to the basics.

To achieve a top performance an athlete must be both physically and mentally prepared. It's the mental piece that can be the toughest to coach. Joe Friel talks with Coach Julie Young about how she develops athletic potential and resilience over the course of training her athletes.

How does an athlete’s personality affect how you write their training plans and give feedback? It can be far more varied than you might realize.

There are some tough conversations early in the athlete-coach relationship as you identify where the athlete stands in relation to their goal. Coach Dave Schell talks with Joe Friel about how he gets buy-in from athletes, and creates a dynamic training plan specific to their individual needs.

Learn from Joe Friel and a handful of master coaches on how to become a more versatile coach, adapting training to the needs of each athlete you work with—from novice to elite.

Dr. Stephen Seiler explains why polarized training is a winning strategy for the long game of endurance sports. By balancing the stress of training, athletes see bigger gains over time.

It can be very easy to train at a moderate intensity all the time, which can be a surefire way to land in an overreached state. Polarized training can help prevent that—and in this video, Dr. Seiler explains how.

Scientists have worked closely with athletes and coaches to define the polarized model and explain how it works. Who leads the way? Dr. Seiler talks about the scientific process playing out in valuable ways in both research and the real world.

Is 80/20 really the best mix of intensities? And what's the best way to categorize training? Dr. Seiler has a simple method to get you started.