Brothers Josiah and Yaro Middaugh recently announced the launch of their new endurance coaching business, Middaugh Coaching.
Although the business is new, neither is new to coaching. Josiah has been coaching and training athletes of all levels for 15 years, while Yaro has been coaching for 10 years. Yaro and Josiah have been able to collaborate to help each other reach their very different goals.
Their method is rooted in science and personal experience. Both Josiah and Yaro have young families and they are not willing to sacrifice time with them to train. This obviously makes optimizing training that much more important. A constraint on time is one thing that most endurance athletes have in common.
This balancing act pushed them to experiment with many different training theories to maximize the training for themselves and their athletes. This naturally led them to block periodization. In block periodization athletes focus on only one or two target components of fitness each week and a block of training usually lasts only three to six weeks allowing for many peaks throughout the year.
Concepts such as cumulative training effect and residual training effect guide the organization of training blocks. This approach is seen to be much more effective and realistic for athletes with many races throughout their season.
Block periodization was originally developed for senior elite athletes with several years of training experience. Superior results were achieved with fewer total training hours; risk of over training was reduced; and the training regime allowed for multiple peak performances in a calendar year.
Coincidentally this approach has also been found to work well for age group athletes with several years of experience and limited time available to train.
The traditional periodization model can still be very effective for the athlete training for just one specific race per season such as a marathon, or for younger, developing and beginning athletes. Middaugh Coaching personalizes its program to meet the needs of each individual athlete. The brothers note that ‘It is never a one size fits all approach and there are different paths that can lead to the same outcome depending on an athlete’s experience and needs.’
The launch of Middaugh Coaching will allow Yaro and Josiah to pursue their passion and combine their knowledge to help endurance athletes reach their goals.
