Going hard every session feels like the right approach. For super sprint triathlete Lochie Jones, it was the reason he stopped improving. He was training in the grey zone, not easy enough to build an aerobic base, not hard enough to develop top-end capacity. Exhausted but not progressing. The shift to structured training zones changed everything.
A Few Years Ago, I Just Went Hard. There Was No Intensity Control.
For most athletes, effort feels like the answer.
Session felt hard? Good session. Pushed through when you didn't want to? Building character. Went as hard as you could every time you trained? That's dedication.
Super sprint triathlete Lochie Jones trained that way for years. He was putting in the work. He was exhausted. And he wasn't improving.
"A few years ago, I wasn't really putting too much thought into how my body was utilising those hard sessions. I was very much just go hard. There was no intensity control."
The effort wasn't the problem. The structure was.
The Grey Zone Problem Nobody Talks About
There's a zone most athletes spend the majority of their training in without realising it.
Not easy enough to build a genuine aerobic base. Not hard enough to develop top-end lactate threshold capacity. Hard enough to accumulate fatigue. Not specific enough to drive meaningful adaptation in either direction.
Exhausted but not improving. That's the grey zone.
Lochie was training there consistently. Every session felt productive because every session felt hard. But the physiological systems that actually drive endurance performance weren't getting the specific stimulus they needed to adapt. The body was working. It just wasn't getting better at the things that matter in a race.
What Training Zones Actually Do
The shift from effort-based training to zone-based training changed how Lochie's body responded to the same hours of work.
The principle is straightforward. Different intensities target different physiological systems. And those systems only adapt when they consistently receive the right stimulus at the right intensity.
Zone 2 builds mitochondrial density. Genuinely easy aerobic work, conversational pace, nose breathing, sessions that feel almost too easy. This is where the aerobic engine is built. Most athletes don't go easy enough to actually sit in this zone. They drift up into the grey zone and wonder why their aerobic base isn't developing.
High intensity develops lactate threshold. The efforts that are genuinely hard. Maximum sustainable intensity. The sessions require full recovery before the next one. These push the ceiling of what the body can sustain before lactate accumulation forces a slowdown.
Mixing these without structure builds neither. The grey zone feels like a compromise between the two. It's actually the absence of both.
Sleep as a Readiness Metric, Not Just a Recovery Tool
Lochie doesn't just track sleep hours. He tracks sleep quality, and he uses it as his primary daily readiness assessment.
A string of poor nights doesn't get ignored and pushed through. It changes how he approaches the next session. Specifically, it changes the intensity with which he goes into it.
That's not a sign of weakness. It's a signal that training load exceeded recovery capacity.
The body doesn't adapt to training during the session. It adapts during recovery, and most of that recovery occurs during sleep. When sleep quality drops, the recovery window shrinks. Pushing the same intensity into a compromised recovery state doesn't build fitness. It digs a deeper hole.
Tracking sleep quality every morning and using it to adjust the day's training intensity is one of the simplest readiness tools available to any athlete. It requires no equipment. Just honesty about what the data is telling you.
How to Structure a Week That Actually Works
The framework Lochie uses is deliberately simple.
Two hard sessions per week. Genuinely high intensity. Full effort. Proper recovery required before the next one.
The rest is genuinely easy aerobic work. Not moderate. Not grey zone. Actually easy. Zone 2 pace that feels almost uncomfortably slow if you're used to training by effort.
Sleep quality is tracked every morning as the readiness check. If it's off, the intensity comes down. The session still happens. The output is adjusted to match what the body can actually absorb and recover from.
Do the big picture things right before chasing the one percent.
What the Supplement Stack Looks Like at This Training Volume
Managing two sessions a day means recovery between sessions isn't optional. The window between them is short. What goes into that window determines what comes out of the second session.
Sodium bicarbonate is used in race simulation protocols by elite triathletes, including Lochie. It buffers lactic acid accumulation during high-intensity efforts, supporting the ability to sustain output at threshold pace for longer. It's one of the more overlooked performance tools used by serious endurance athletes before competition.
Protein after every session to support muscle repair and maintain muscle protein synthesis across a high-volume training week.
BSc Hydrate for the long days when sweat rate is high, and water alone won't replace what's being lost. Electrolyte replacement isn't a race-day consideration. It's a training-week consideration, particularly when sessions run long or conditions are warm.
Triple Magnesium Complex and creatine as daily non-negotiables. Not built around individual sessions but around the training week as a whole. Muscle function, nervous system support, and power output maintenance. These are the foundations that protect what's being built between sessions.
HASTA Certified. Every batch is tested. No guessing what's inside or whether it's clean. Nothing to Hide
The Effort Was Never the Problem. The Structure Was.
Lochie wasn't under-committed. He wasn't under-motivated. He was training as hard as he could, but not getting the return his effort deserved.
The missing variable wasn't more work. It was precision. Knowing which sessions to go hard in, which ones to go genuinely easy in, and how to read the signals the body sends when recovery isn't keeping pace with load.
Structure doesn't reduce the effort. It makes the effort count.
Two hard sessions. Real zone 2 the rest of the week. Sleep tracked every morning. Recovery protected as seriously as the sessions themselves.
That's the system. The effort fills it in.
