Maintenance principle

This is an important thing to note when planning a long-term training program. It allows you to shift training emphasis from one system to another system and still maintain original benefits through less frequent attention. The ability to improve a system, maintain it while building another system relies heavily on this principle.

Imagine a case where you are thinking of a marathon which is scheduled 11 months from now. You have done 2 marathons before and you know you can cover the distance. What you are not confident is the speed and you desperately want to improve on your time. The maintenance principle says that you should be confident of keeping up your endurance while spending not more than once a week of long distance running while spending the rest of your training sessions building up speed.