Building Endurance
There's no other way - pain, pain and more pain! No magic bullet here folks, you have to
continually push your body to it's current limit and then go through the "pain barrier"
(which is mostly mental), and you have to do this all the time so your body can adapt,
improve and establish a new upper limit of performance.
Physical Aspects
The body gets things done by muscle power. Muscles contract and relax to move the different
parts of the body. When they do this 2 things happen - they consume "fuel" - primarily oxygen
and body sugars, and they give off waste products - primarily lactic acid and heat which the
body gets rid of by sweating. So to do things faster, harder, longer we have to reshape the body
to provide more oxygen, and eliminate wastes better, and we also have to provide more fuel. For
"fuel" see the next section - Nutrition.
Muscles and lungs need to be stressed in order to grow bigger ...
A Kendo shiai is primarily fast paced action. The effect on the body is as for sprint style
sporting events and uses what's called "fast twitch" muscle. But if you are going to train solidly
for a two hour Kendo session, or compete in a weekend long competition, then you also need to
develop and improve your "slow twitch" muscle for endurance.
To develop fast twitch muscle action you need to
train repeatedly in bursts of very high intensity for short times followed by a brief rest and then
another burst etc. The rests are as important as the burst.
To develop endurance and the slow twitch muscles, you need to train at medium
intensity for extended durations. To train both, obviously you need to combine the two. An example
of this would be to go for an hour long run and during the last 10-15 minutes, sprint between one
set of lamp-posts then jog the next set, then sprint the next, jog, sprint etc. Not only is this
training your muscles, it is also growing your oxygen capacity by increasing the size of your
lungs and making them more efficient. You will find that you don't puff so hard during warm-up etc
and if you had a medical test, you'd find your lung capacity had increased.
When you first start seriously doing endurance training, you'll notice afterwards that your
muscles will be stiff and sore. Assuming this is not from straining or tearing them, it will be because
of the build of the waste product - lactic acid. Your body produces this as a by product of the
conversion of sugars and oxygen into muscle energy, and it sits around the muscle until the
body can break it down and get rid of it. When you start out, the body isn't used to doing this
so it takes a long time. As you keep doing it, the body responds and increases it's capacity to
get rid of the wastes. So, you will have some "pain" but the body cannot grow without putting the
stress on it in the first place. It truly is a case of "no pain, no gain".
Nutrition
If I've really pushed myself at Kendo training, I often come home and am quite hungry - just like
your car, the body needs fuel! If you are serious about your Kendo and want to increase your endurance,
you will also need to be aware of your bodies fuel needs - i.e. nutrition.
For an endurance "athlete" what's most important is providing the type of fuel most readily processed
by the muscles - sugars; both complex (glucose) and simple (sucrose). Simple sugars for the fast, instant
energy and complex sugars for the sustained effort. These sugars are found in carbohydrates, but
also, you need to provide protein and fats in
smaller amounts to grow the muscles. Also, you need to replace the salts and minerals lost by
sweating. Most of you will be aware of the various sports drinks such as Powerade, Gatorade and
Replace. These drinks are formulated to have the fast and slow release sugars in rapidly absorbed
forms as well as the many other items needed by a hard working body (such as potassium and sodium).
Additionally look at the kind of foods eaten by Marathon runners or Multisport athletes, or think
about what you take on a long tramp - carbo's; in the form of muesli bars, scroggin (trail mix), barley
sugars, chocolate etc. You may have also heard of "Carbo loading" and "pasta parties" for endurance
sport athletes in the days prior to a big race. Bannana's are especially good as they're high in
natural sugars and also potassium/sodium. Many fruits are similar but banana's are king! If you find
yourself having muscle cramps during/after training, chances are you need more salts. Try a banana when
you have a short break. Some people drink salted water but I always found this unsettling on my stomach.
Try the replacement products that are high in potassium and sodium if you're prone to this.
I've also found for running especially, those "squeezies" (Leppin squeezy, enduro shots etc) are
really good form of endurance nutrition when taken properly. They are small and light and easy to
carry on a run - much easier than a stack of banana's! But for long events, at some point your
stomach just wants to feel something "solid" in it so you generally should mix it up a bit.
Example from when I did the Coast to Coast - during the mountain run (around 4-6hrs for most people),
I made sure I ate something every 20 minutes and drank then too and also drank at every river crossing.
My eating cycle for each hour then went something like - muesli bar, banana, carbo squeezy, repeat. It's
a balance of what your body needs and what your stomach can tolerate during the effort. Usually you can't
eat too much during hard exercise but for sustained training/events you need to train your body to
accept it. You do this naturally as you train.
I didn't mention specifically yet about fluids... The body needs water. In fact if you try and feed
body as above without water you won't get very far! In fact for most sports you don't special
nutrition as long as you have water. Water also provides a cooling effect, although drinking
really cold water can be a bad thermal shock to your body during an event. Keeping the fluids
up during endurance training is important and can be combined with salts and minerals replacements
as mentioned at the same time, but the main thing is the water. Drinking just replacement drinks
is not a good thing - you can "over-Cho" (Cho = carbohydrates) your body and it will not process
and your performance will decrease. I speak from personal experience! Instead alternate plain water
with replacement type drinks.
But it's not all Carb's - Fats and Proteins are also important. Protein is the stuff of muscles
and is needed for them to grow. Fats are actually also a source of fuel - when all the body sugars
are gone, the body starts breaking down stored fats and uses that. (That's actually why if you want
to slim down, you have to exercise to the point where the body starts doing that). For an endurance
athlete it's important to have some fat tucked away for when the carbo's run out.
All things in balance - carbs by majority, then proteins but also the fats. And don't forget the
fluids of course!
Endurance Training
"Slow and steady wins the race" - as the tortoise said to the hare.
Just as you start Kendo with small steps, so you increase your endurance the
same way - in small incremental steps. When you start out, you need to "pace yourself" and slow
your rate of "doing" down so that you can last the whole session. As your fitness (endurance)
increases, you can increase your rate. Eventually you will be able to go "hard out" the whole
session and then you'll need to increase the intensity or duration to improve further.
If you are serious about endurance training, you should find out about heart rate and optimum
heart rate training zones, but you can get a lot of mileage out of some common-sense monitoring
of the signals your body is sending you.
At the end of a training session, if your knees are shaking and you can't lift your jukdo/shinai,
then you have trained to your limits. If you reach the stage where you vomit, then
you have trained past your limits. Training past your limit is not a good thing
to be doing regularly! I've only ever been there once! Training to your limit is necessary for every
session in order to grow and improve. A bit of rest and nutrition and your body will recover for the
next session. Train past your limit and your body will need much more rest. Train under your limit
such that you haven't even raised a sweat and you may as well have not bothered at all!
