When it comes to personal achievement, nothing compares to results. Setting a goal, working towards it, and accomplishing it is extremely gratifying.

To reach a goal you need to measure it. To measure it, you need to ask some questions. What are you marking as success? Is it a feeling? A weight? A performance? Before you can say you have success you need something to compare your success to.

My philosophy about human performance is that what we as humans deem successful is highly subjective and affected by where you stand as the observer, of the success.

At one point in my life I judged success in training by simply getting my running shoes on and getting outside for 15 minutes once a week. I needed to start somewhere!

Contrast that to now(eight years later), and it’s whether I make the 18 hour mark for a high volume workout week, or hold a sub-max effort for a given period of mileage that I qualify a workout or workout week as successful.

Success criteria change. You as an athlete should be prepared for it. They can change on a weekly basis, which is why I incorporate periodization into the training plan (see figure 1).

I believe in hard efforts followed by periods of recovery. In the workouts I craft, some are volume based - getting the time in. “Paying your dues” so to speak. Others are about laying it all on the line for a short period of time - intensity training. Intensity training is highly effective. For those of us with limited training hours, these are some of the most productive workouts we can squeeze in.

My philosophy is this: give it 100% in whatever you are doing. You only live once (as far as we know) so why hold back? The key here is to understand that the 100% means quality, not necessarily intensity. You want a training approach that gives you the right workout at the right time.