Top coach Chris Hinshaw, regarded as the most successful endurance coach in the sport of CrossFit, explains why your endurance sucks and how to fix it.
Hinshaw has worked with top CrossFit athletes around the world, including Rich Froning, Mat Fraser, Haley Adams and Katrin Davidsdottir.
When he entered the sport, Hinshaw believed that CrossFit athletes weren’t training their endurance efficiently and in many cases were not coming even close to reaching their potential.
Source: leah hetteberg on UnsplashWhat he found was that most people were increasing their VO2 max through CrossFit workouts, but would neglect training their lactate threshold, which essentially is the highest intensity one can sustain without crashing and burning.
The main reason why your endurance sucks is lack of lactate threshold training, as the vast majority of CrossFit workouts aren’t long enough to get you there.
Why Your Endurance Sucks and How to Fix It
Listen to Chris Hinshaw explain why your endurance sucks and how to fix it. The top coach goes into great depth and provides a lot of valuable information.
Hinshaw goes over how to improve metabolic conditioning, which is the ability to use fat as fuel so athletes aren’t totally reliable on glycogen. He also explains how to properly assess workouts by knowing your own ability and knowing how to tackle the task at hand and where you might find sticking points.
He answers how he teaches athletes to overcome mental limits through the way he designs his sessions.
“We as coaches, if there is a weakness in an athlete, all we do is we create programming to really modify that weakness and actually create a stimulus to make it a strength,” Hinshaw says.
“When I look at maximising adaptation, I really focus on pacing and getting the athletes so they have a multitude of gears, and they can dial in a particular pace based upon the workout, based upon the time domain, and they can do it without looking at their watch.”
Read more: How To Run a 5-Minute Mile
Image Sources
- 5-minute mile: leah hetteberg on Unsplash
- Rotator-aromas-run_0: Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc.