Training must be based on need. Duh. Did I need to say that? Naturally, any athlete's needs are plentiful and run the whole scale from endurance to sprint speed to tons of technical work. It brought me to the sport in the first place. Now a multi-eventer, my needs are multiplied by a factor of 10.

Foremost, we all have a desire for success, the need to succeed. To download a training program from the web, to follow the chapters of a book, even to follow the program of a busy coach, might not meet your individual needs. Well, I asked myself what would I like to achieve. Personal fitness? A healthy lifestyle? Too look younger? To feel better? Sure, all of that but I wanted more. I wanted to be among the best. Period. First, among the best distance runners. After the ‘discovery' of middle distance running, among the best middle distance runners in the world. Maybe even among the best 400 m runners in the world. Now among the best multi-event athletes. Always in my age group, I (don’t) need to point out.

Logically, my training must be such to enable me to meet my high goals. It will take planning, long term planning as well and might take years of preparation. Will I get there? I surely do not know, but I will not fail due to poor planning and sloppy execution of the plan.

All my planning will be based on my core need, my desire to be among the best. My long term, medium term, and short term planning will never lose its focus on my personal goal. If I lack endurance, this weakness will be addressed. If it is speed endurance (as it currently is), I concentrate on the appropriate work. If it's the development of strength that is needed, it will become my focus. A stronger lower back will bring me into the gym. The need for more core strength and better developed abs will see me adding 100 sit-ups in the morning, 100 in the evening. More flexibility? See me ordering a Pilates video tape. Technical disciplines make it essential to find a coach or a few coaches, to be precise. For the discus, shot put and the javelin, I found one of the very best, Mr. Jeff Gorski of Klub Keihas. Since Brian Magerkurth left town, I’m looking for a coach for the pole vault. We know that every training session must have a special purpose and that purpose is to address a special need. “Fail to plan you you'll plan to fail.”

Quality control comes next. We have to be able to say whether our training has been successful or not. How do I feel? Is there progression? If it has not been successful, it is telling me something I better listen to. Listen to my body is one of the most, if not the most important aspect of training. My body can adapt upwards and turn the training load and stress into performance gains. That is successful training. Or it can adapt downward. That is called fatigue and over-training. Believe me, over-training needs to be avoided. I found out that my mind is stronger than my body. I paid for the experience with fatigue and injury. And I decided to become more cautious and patient.

2005/2006 I concentrated on the pentathlon, short distances, technical disciplines, long jump, hurdles and just plain speed and speed enduraance with a lower mileage than in earlier years, Next, I tried to gear up for the 2007 World Championships in Italy. It was a long season, too long. I trained hard and I believe even too hard. I went away from counting miles to counting training hours. As said before, all training should address a need and should be fine tuned for the individual athlete. Again, I decided against a strict periodization of the annual training cycle. Looking back, I can say I was successful but I certainly did not follow the schedule 100 %. The 2008 season was a strange mix of approaches with a rather less defined goal and it showed. I was not happy even with the excuse of getting Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever from a tick bite. The 2009 season is yet another transition period as I enter the last year of the M 55 age group. To get a focus, I will concentrate on the German Pentathlon Championships as in Germany I can compete in the M 60 age group. After that, I will cruise through the season concentrating on gains in endurance, speed, speed endurance, VO2max and AT AND as well as on the technical aspects of most events..

Just click on the flash button to your left and you will get to the different parts of the program. "my program" is detailing the whole training year. You will find all workouts, miles, goal times, the whole works. "track ready" shows my typical warm up and cool down routine for a track session. "train speed" will show you a very wide variety of work outs and the required speed to reach my goals for the season. "weights" is outlining my gym work, again very much in detail. By the way, it takes a bit time to open the files from my website. Of course, you can save all files to your computer and look them up at your convenience. Feel free to contact me with questions, suggestions, critique...

One thing about the plan: It might be too ambitious. Like last year, I might have to adjust my training overload in the microcycles as it could be excessive. I will not hesitate to make necessary adjustments if I find that I don't get sufficient recovery between successive training stimuli. Well, come back to this page a few times over the course of the training year as I will keep you informed.

Very interesting will be the results of my weight training schedule for the year. You can find the program by clicking on the weights button on the left. I show the all heavy, all the time schedule for the whole year but believe I will make adjustments early April to add an explosive and plyometric element to the show. I got a basement gym at home that I find uch better than anything you can find at a so-called 'modern' gym. I have trap bars, 2" thick bars, kettlebells, camfered bars, trap bars, everlast punching bags to schlepp around, a power rack... all kind of strange things to get stronger, much stronger.