In this episode of The Athletes Compass, Paul Warloski, Dr. Paul Laursen, and Marjaana Rakai discuss how everyday endurance athletes can make meaningful progress with limited training time, especially when balancing work, family, and life. The conversation centers on the “minimum effective dose” of training, why context and goals matter, how to use intensity wisely, and why consistency is often more important than perfection. They also explore the role of strength training, aerobic base work, walk-run programs, HIIT, recovery, habit stacking, and practical scheduling strategies for athletes training around five to seven hours per week.

Key episode takeaways

• The best training plan depends on the athlete’s goal, background, fitness level, and available time.
• Five to seven hours per week can be plenty for some goals, such as a 5K, 10K, half marathon, or gravel event, but may be unrealistic for many athletes targeting an Ironman.
• Consistency is the first priority: spreading workouts across the week is better than cramming all training into one day.
• For newer athletes, walk-run sessions can produce major aerobic gains without any high-intensity training.
• HIIT is time-efficient, but it is not necessary or appropriate for every athlete.
• Three hard training days per week is likely the upper limit for most athletes.
• Strength training is worth the time investment, even if it is only 10 to 20 minutes at a time.
• Recovery counts as training, and sometimes performance improves after backing off.
• Calendar blocking, commuting, dog walks, playground workouts, and habit stacking can help busy athletes stay consistent.
• Doing something is usually better than doing nothing.

• Paul Warloski - Simple Endurance Coaching
• Marjaana Rakai | Nordic Performance Lab

Depending on the fitness level of the athlete, you don't have to do HIIT training or high intensity training at all. You might find that the max gains are happening in walk runs just because the fitness level is relatively

Hello and welcome to the athletes compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. Most elite endurance athletes are working on 15 to 20 hours a week, but as everyday athletes, we are balancing workouts with jobs, family and everything else life throws at us. So the real question becomes, how do you make the most of the limited time that we have today? We're diving into what actually moves the needle.

how to structure your training, use intensity wisely and build fitness without burning out. So since we're all busy athletes and working and having families, if an athlete only has five to seven hours, what should we prioritize to see meaningful improvement?

Yeah, that's a tricky one. And I think that's a question that we're, you we can all, it's really important, right? Like it's, if you've got that limited time, how do I get the most bang for buck out of that time? And as we often say within, our walls is that there's probably lots of, there's more than one way to skin a cat that context always over content. And

there's probably not a one size fits all answer. But how do you want to frame that, MJ, from your perspective? Even with your coaching hat on and you're giving advice to an athlete, how do you answer that?

first question back to the athlete is what's your goal? What do you want to achieve? Right. And then, and then

Nice. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, are we talking Iron

Man? Then we might want to have a conversation.

You're right, like if you only have five to seven hours and you want to do an Ironman, you need to really ask yourself, that realistic goal? Because Ironman training takes so much, like sure, you can probably, and it also depends on like what have you done before.

Yeah, your past experience. Yeah.

Right? Like

your history and where you are at your level, ⁓ somebody who is at the high level of fitness, maybe they can swing an Ironman to finish with five to seven hours a week. But it will be probably quite painful experience for most if they don't have a really good fitness level.

Yeah, can I just

mention the podcast I did with Sammy Inkenen, the entrepreneur who's actually had the, like he set at that point in time, he set the record and won the age group overall on eight to 12 hours per week was kind of what he did. you have to also, like again, we always say, where we started context. So Sammy came from a pretty solid endurance background to begin with.

But then, and then he had that goal and how he did that on eight to 12 hours was very targeted workouts. So it was quite specific Ironman race intensity for most of those workouts. And maybe with the exception of a long ride weekend. And that was it, that's sort of how he did it.

Yes.

he didn't come from a couch. he's, ⁓ so we have to, like we have to know the person in front of us. Like what is the background? ⁓ So yeah, I think.

No. No.

No, no.

Yep.

Yeah,

there's not a one size fits all answer to this. But maybe one of the key principles, even before we go to what you prioritize, is like, first of all, prioritize first and foremost the actual work itself. Because everyone's sitting here and we've got our own weekly calendar where we've got to accomplish certain goals, right?

you know, family time or work time or commute time and all these sorts of things, right? You've got, there's only 24 hours in every single day or right across the week. And most of us use a calendar, an electronic calendar. Some of us probably, you know, still use old fashioned written calendars, but either way, if you had five to seven hours a week, you can actually slot in those exercise times. Like that's sort of the first principle. It's like, all right. ⁓

I do, I'm gonna budget five to seven hours. Where is that gonna go, right? So first of all, actually make sure that that logically fits, that there's spacing. In other words, your five to seven hours isn't all on the Sunday, right? That's probably not gonna be a good method. Remember the first and foremost, the principle of training is the regular ⁓ consistent cell signaling, consistent body signaling and telling the body, I need to adapt to a stress. So first of all, make sure you're.

breaking up that five to seven hours across your entire week because that frequency of, ⁓ call it training stress, is going to be the first principle that you want to have. that first and foremost, even before we decide what exactly it is that we're gonna do, because either an aerobic stimulus, you're gonna get some sort of an aerobic stimulus. How hard and intense that is is probably gonna be variable, but.

get the stimulus in because that's the money, right? Like that's the good stuff that's gonna really benefit your overall adaptation and development.

Yeah. But taking it back to five to seven hours, if you choose another sport that has one sport, that's actually a lot of training time. Like say half marathon or 10K or 5K run, that's already a lot of training on a weekly basis. So again, it totally depends on your goal.

Yeah, that is.

Totally, totally, but then in any of those sports, you might want to add in an hour of strength training too, right? Two 30 minutes of strength training in there as well. It's broken up across the week. That could be really good alternate. And six hours, you know, five to six hours of the endurance one. Cycling would be less neuromuscular demand, running would be more. But you're right. If we're talking running, well, five hours of running a week is pretty substantial actually, so.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, totally. Once again, as we started with context is everything.

Is there a minimum effective dose? That was a question we had on the forum. What is the minimum that I need to do a week to improve? And this is a contextual question as well.

It is Paul mean, and this is what Athletica does its best to try to attain in the individual when they onboard or even as they kind of go is what is the fitness level? And that would be kind of going back to your ATL, CTL stuff if you've heard of those in training peaks, et cetera, right? Like this is the predicted fitness that you have.

So that's one contextual factor. How often do you train and how much do you train? And then what is your power profile or pace profile? And that starts to answer your question, Paul, in terms of what is the minimal effective dose. Well, it's something that relates to both of those. And we actually have a really cool metric.

that captures that and it's called our Athletica Workout Reserve. So you can actually, you you want to, a minimal effective dose would be occasionally, you know, every week getting towards a workout reserve number that is zero, that in other words, that's close to battery depletion. So you can actually use that metric to find that minimal effective dose from a intensity sort of standpoint as well.

You know, and it's, that's not the be all end all. There's, you don't necessarily have to use that as necessarily gold standard. The body's incredible in terms of its resilience and how it bounces back. And I reflect on MJ, how, you know, she did all of this training for her Iron Man, Iron Man Texas, I believe it was, or maybe it was Nice World. It was one of the two that she did in her recent past.

And then all of a sudden she started setting all of these. She was doing nothing for the most part, like relative to what she was doing.

I was training but I...

Yeah.

No, but not relative to what you were doing before Iron Man. And then she started hitting personal bests like three months later. And I was like, what is going on? And of course she'd had this rebound effect. clearly that, it wasn't due to the training that she did in the three months prior. It was the training that she didn't do in the three months prior and the freshness that was being brought forth.

Sometimes less is more people,

sometimes less is more. Or I would say rest is training too.

Yeah

Exactly.

Recovery is training too.

Yeah, right.

So Paul, you talked about targeted workouts at the Ironman intensity. mean, are we talking about high intensity training? Is that the most effective use for of time for busy athletes?

for sure high intensity interval training, HIIT training is well, you know, well known to be, highly, effective getting a great dose in a short amount of time. It's just so established. All the studies ⁓ with Martin Gabala and that lab and others are really showing the time efficiency of that training method.

So, you know, if you are super limited with your training, you can use that method and it's very effective in certain individuals. Comes with caveats, got to be careful about the stress that you're also adding at that time. And so it's not a ⁓ panacea for complete, it doesn't work in every single individual in every single context, but it's certainly one that you might want to kind of play with.

Is there a limit of how many hard sessions a week drive adaptation without leading to burnout or over training or overreaching?

I think, three is probably the max. or at least three hard days where you could have, you could have double, two hard workouts in the day in the context of maybe a triathlete or an elite, an elite runner, say for example, they would, you know, this is really where the, the Marius Bakken Norwegian method, the double threshold day kind of comes in, right? Where they really just package, they package the intensity.

just the right amount of intensity control with the sub-threshold ⁓ sessions two times in the day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and ⁓ they protect the day that sort of follows. And if you break up into your week, you've got seven days, and if you think in general 48 hours between, you're really only gonna fit three actual hard days in there where the...

the day that kind of follows or two days follow need to be kind of the recovery window. And that's what Bakken kind of discovered was optimal for his method and that sort of speaks to the Norwegian method. So I would just say a max of three hard days a week is pretty well established, Paul.

If we bring this conversation down to somebody who hasn't ⁓ done a lot of endurance training, I think, and I have a friend who is doing our Kickstarter Couch to 5K program and she's sending her screenshot to me of her heart rate profile. And just in three weeks, she's, she's, her, like her heart rate.

for those 30 minute sessions, which is walk, run sessions, used to be 160s, like super high. And in three weeks it has stabilized. So her heart rate is now at the max, like 145. And a lot of the session she's somewhere between 120 and 130. So my point is...

Hmm

Depending on the fitness level of the athlete, you don't have to do HIIT training or high intensity training at all. You might find that the max gains are happening in walk runs just because the fitness level is relatively low. So you can get that aerobic base gains with walk runs three times a week, 30 minutes max.

Which is amazing to witness, right?

What?

Totally. And I so love that you brought that in. I I was talking about the Marius Bakken Norwegian method for the elite elite, but you just brought it right back to the everyday athlete that's just starting out in a completely different context. And I think some of the problem is that they are getting that message that they've got to do the high intensity sort of stuff too. And MJ has just given this beautiful example where no, no in...

⁓ In fact, we really want to work on our metabolic health first and foremost in that context where we're just starting out. And we want to have our three days of training in that week as math training, right? Remember the episode that we've done with Dr. Phil Maffetone and where we're really kind of using that MAFF method where 180 ⁓ minus our age and cap that as a heart rate in terms of a ballpark.

to kind of gate heart rate at or below that marker. And we see that, as MJ just discussed, with time and repeated regular math training at that heart rate, the pace goes higher, the walking periods become less and running more, and the heart rate goes lower. And that's all aerobic efficiency at the end of the day. Another topic we've spoken on.

Thank

you know, yeah, the aerobic efficiency, the fat burning ability, the mitochondrial development, the, you know, the heartbeats that are more efficient. All of this happens first and foremost. And if it's the context where you're just getting, just getting going, I would a hundred percent follow that method first and foremost, before we start adding in any of these time efficient, high intensity methods. That's for a little bit later on when we really start to ⁓ continue to take it to the next level.

So there is a place for this zone one, zone two training or, know, should we, is it focused on that metabolic health, the aerobic efficiency or should we be okay with the heart rate being in the tempo zone? I mean, how should we, we stick with the aerobic efficiency model?

Yeah, well, I think we need to go back to where MJ started with when we asked her first question. It's like, well, what's the goal? What are we training for? And typically, the answer to that question will be an event, a performance in the aerobic area, right? And most, if it's past two minutes, it's all aerobic, right? So, that's, yeah, you're trying to, like, developing that aerobic efficiency.

Right.

which includes metabolic health, is first and foremost. So yeah, these Zone 1-2 training sessions very much have a place. And again, when we go back to an example like Sammy Inkenen, he's coming first and foremost from a huge history as an endurance athlete in his past first. And then he, in that context, well then we're adding, you know, very targeted, probably the tempo stuff that you mentioned, Paul.

which is Ironman specific in those days, but he's coming at it with a Norwegian or kind of Norwegian-like Scandinavian background of endurance training from 20 year history first and foremost. So context everything.

Is strength training worth the time investment for time crunched athletes? And what's the minimum effective dose for that? Yeah.

Yes, of course it is!

What are we talking about? Of course it is!

Explain yourself. What do you?

Yeah, I agree. You're

our strength trainer, expert MJ. Elaborate.

I mean, again, like you will have to know the athlete, somebody who has not never done strength training before. mean, 10 minutes a day is going to be better than zero. And then you can build from there. Like every other day, do something, do these mini, mini sessions, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, like 20 minutes, a lot of time.

lifting weights or doing body weight exercises, doing some jumps, 20 minutes is a lot. And you can do it on the playground, ⁓ out and about, do it in the middle of the run or even before the run as a warm-up. ⁓ So if you're thinking of time management, you can combine ⁓ different methods, you can combine strength,

as a warm-up for running. If you've never done this before, try it. Because when you're doing, when you activate your, your running muscles with some strength work, body weight strength work, like even five minutes, and I swear you run much better, much more efficient than without that warm-up. ⁓

Yeah,

I love that. I just wanted to, encourage the listener to use your imagination with respect to the strength training work. So much can be done with body weight exercises. Learn the technique to do a single leg squat or even a single leg squat assisted. So imagine you're, you're a mom and you're at the playground with your kids.

Mm-hmm.

It's a perfect place to get your own exercise as well. So do those single leg squats there. Even just double leg squats if that's where you're at and need to start with. Just body weight, air squats. And then usually you've got monkey bars up there. You could do some hanging. Maybe you can do a chin-up or two. You could have push-ups as well. You could do planks to work on your core. ⁓ You could do lunges. And there's so many different little things. And again,

while your kids are playing anyways, you can have some fun with it. And then that all totally counts. It could be as short as 10 minutes even, but it's a short stimulus that will go towards improving just your overall function and muscular strength, which will come back to developing resiliency and durability for your endurance sports, cycling and running.

Yeah, and the injury prevention too.

Absolutely.

Mm hmm.

I'm working with an athlete who has a really busy life in general. He's got two young kids and trying to work and work in the family, you know, manage time with with with the boys. And we worked really hard on or working really hard on the idea that consistency is what matters, even if it's short.

out, you know, even if it's getting out for a walk or doing some body weight strength training, you know, 30 minutes a day just to build that. And that's Paul, what you said in the very beginning of this episode is that that consistency is what matters.

Yeah, that's right. So, and again, I like to bring it back to our calendars. Many of us are in this, that follow this whole space. are type A individuals. Many of us are organized with calendars and you're sitting there with your daily calendar. You need to really work towards, have a little ad lib and go with the flow in your life, but you can also really slot in these times too and prioritize those times.

And when we do prioritize those times, just like we prioritize an online meeting date, meeting, an in-person meeting date, ⁓ whatever it might be, actually put it in there into your calendar. From the Athletica standpoint, there's a calendar, you can just go to your profile and actually put in your calendar

⁓ your athletic session into your calendar and you can actually see it right there. So you can, you know, that's all that's in your mind. It's part of your life. whether it's 30 minutes or two hours, can go in there and that time is earmarked for you to do what it is that you want to do. And then it helps to make sure that it actually gets done to pulse point consistency. You can make sure that this is nicely spaced out across your week. Once again, not

Don't put all five to seven hours in your one day. We want that frequency of stimulating and we want that frequency of that consistency ⁓ element hitting us through across the week if we can.

And then you can do habit stacking or whatever it's called. You know, go for a run and listen to your podcast. Like many of our listeners do, they are probably cycling or running right now. When they're listening to this, ⁓ commute times. If you can commute, you know, log that.

Yes.

Yes.

A lot of our athletes, I see their calendars and there's several, you know, like they bike to work, run to Cindy Maloney, she runs to work or runs or swims during the lunch break and then eats by the computer, I guess. ⁓

Yep.

Totally. Yeah, or

walks to work as well too, right? We know walking is beneficial for your recovery and your aerobic development. It counts as zone one training. yeah, really maximize the efficiency of those necessary commuting if you can. And that will come back to help you across recovery and aerobic development.

And a hot tip from me, rescue a dog so that the dog will take you for a walk.

Yeah.

Perfect,

perfect.

Dogs require the walking, so a time to get out. So if we're looking at a very beginning, everyday endurance athlete, what does, and then we'll do this for kind of intermediate as well. What does an ideal week of training look like for a busy athlete? Let's kind of plan out what a week might look like for athletes with limited time.

Yep.

Yeah,

they do.

Let's go with MJ on this one because she's got that experience, right? So limited time athlete, just starting out. ⁓ What's your experience there, MJ?

Okay, well, if my friend Celia is listening, I'll make sure that she will. I'm gonna create her plan. So now she's doing couch to 5K plan, eight weeks. So she's got five weeks left. So I know that she's built a good base to take it up a notch. if she's walk runs about 30 to 40 minutes, three times a week.

Then I would add two strength sessions. So we're into ⁓ five sessions now. And then I would add one longer session. I know she likes to bike, so she could take her mountain bike and go rip around the mountain where she lives in the middle of Norway. ⁓ And that's your six day and then one day rest, six day training week.

Beautiful.

Yeah, I would fully agree with that. What about for a slightly more advanced person who's maybe targeting a 10K or ⁓ a 60 mile gravel race or something that's moderately challenging? How would we change that schedule?

Sure, so maybe on this athlete, they might be a little bit more advanced and have that larger aerobic background. so perhaps this athlete is ⁓ very used to just doing continuous work when they do their training. ⁓ That's usually, they would fall into that category. So in this case now, Paul, we still want to prioritize the aerobic development sessions, but.

now we can begin also adding on some of the intensity work as well. within Athletica, say for example, we have at least one 30-30 high intensity interval training session in that week because we know that this targets the larger fast twitch muscle fibers and also the larger ventricular contractility, cardiac output aspects, VO2 max.

And hitting that once a week is a great thing to do. So there would be potentially one of those sessions on there. And then maybe on the weekend, at least as we begin to progress towards the targeted goal, we would be doing race-specific efforts for short periods of time. So we'll call this moderate intensity training. In the 10K example, threshold work for, you know,

four to five minute segments at that targeted race pace or in the gravel bike context, periods of 10 minute periods at race pace as well. ⁓ So, you know, maybe in that intermediate category, almost two high intensity training sessions in that week. Still with the extra stuff as well that MJ with the two strength training sessions in there and lots of other aerobic development around that. So classic.

polarization structure, you've heard of that before, with that 80-20 sort of ⁓ philosophy overarching it. And probably a little bit more time availability in this athlete because ⁓ they probably prioritize their aerobic training or their endurance training a little bit more now because they have that history.

Yeah. I also like to add for my athletes, like for Celia, maybe the next phase would be, would add like that little hit of high intensity interval training after their strength workout. And it can be as short as like five minutes.

warm up and then 5 30 30s maybe they are hill sprints because I know she lives on the mountain so she goes and does strength on the garage or whatever and then goes run up the hill ⁓ five times 30 seconds and those are those are really nice to do after strength strength work.

for sure, and after maybe you've just gotten going as well, right, with some of these aerobic development sessions, and then yeah, like you said, like okay, now you're ready to be challenged a little bit more. Let's try some, yeah, short and sharp repeated high intensity sessions, right, 30 30s or whatever, even just five of them.

And

it only takes like 15 minutes, right? Five minute warm up, five minute cool down, and then five minutes in between go hard.

huh.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yeah, and makes you feel pretty good about that too, right? Gets the endorphins going even maybe a little bit more.

So to wrap things up with busy endurance athletes, everyday endurance athletes with five to seven hours or so of time available to them, if we had to give these athletes three rules to follow, what would they be? And we've kind of, I think, talked about these already, but what would they be? What would you give them for a rule to guide their training?

Well, for me, rule number one starts with a calendar and prioritize these training sessions just like you do prioritizing all the other aspects that are in your life. Write it in the calendar, block out the time. That's your time that you get to do your activity. This is something for you, right? So gate that time and then that's half the battle. And then you just have to follow your calendar and then don't.

You know, don't have too many distractions when you go and do that work. That's your time. so that's rule number one for me,

Okay. MJ, what would you do?

Rule number one for me is try not to be a perfectionist. Know that the hardest part is to leave the front door and commit to that. Just leave the front door. If you have to bring kids, you bring kids, but go into it in the mindset that anything is better than nothing and it doesn't have to be perfect.

And as we parents know, sometimes the hardest part is to get the kids out of the door, especially if you live somewhere where you have to dress the kids. ⁓ Hashtag three kids get out the door. It takes half an hour, few sweats and tears. ⁓ So yeah, the hardest part is actually getting out.

Ha ha ha.

And I just want to back what MJ just said there that's so important and that is doing something is usually better than doing nothing. And we have a really cool feature in Athletica called the Workout Wizard that gives you all of these different things you could potentially switch that up to. Different modes of exercise for different contexts, for injuries or niggles, ⁓ or for if you're short on time, if you've got more time, if you want more stress, if you want less stress. So don't forget to use that.

really cool button that's on every single tab just about in your Athletica training plan because again, you've got that time blocked out but maybe something doesn't totally suit your context. Well, find something that does and often again, doing something is better than doing nothing.

Yeah. And my rule would be to, you know, to add to what you two just said is that the consistency is what matters and that doing something every day is going to help you metabolically, aerobically, muscularly, and it's going to help the process of your training, even if you only have 20 minutes and you know, that's something and that's a good thing.

Anything else you two want to add to this discussion of time management?

again, so, you know, the hits, it's science, right? It's the training programming, solutions to the training program puzzle. It's just like, our life is a puzzle and training is a puzzle piece that you're kind of also trying to solve. ⁓ And this is where, again, I think you partly solve it in your calendar. So it's like, how can you slot in the sessions ideally that you want to do?

within the puzzle of your life. we are all, you I'm sure you're listening, the listener is nodding and agreeing. know my, I certainly have a bit of a puzzle in my life and I'm sure Paul and MJ can relate to. So figure out your own puzzle and use all these tools and strategies to help try to solve it.

Thanks for listening today to the Athletes Compass podcast. Take a moment now, subscribe, share, and let's keep navigating this endurance adventure together. Improve your training with the science-based training platform, Athletica, and join the conversation at the Athletica Forum. For Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warloski and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you so much for listening.