Finally, I am able to start writing something about the book 'Ultratrail with Monoallenamento', which has reached its third edition. On March 6, 2023, I picked up the first box with the first copies to distribute at the upcoming conferences.
Apart from small revisions, the considerably added part concerns the useful measures for UltraTrailers who have passed 40 years of age, a time of profound physical changes mainly related to recovery times. For almost all athletes, the 40s are a sort of watershed, especially for those who push themselves hard in sports.
Athletes are much more aware of physical changes compared to sedentary people since they experience what they can actually achieve with their bodies every time. Usually, the more an athlete "pushes," the more they feel the age factor! Conversely, if a person spends their life sitting before they turn 40, they will still feel numb and painful after.
The mind of an athlete does not change, and the desire to do is very high despite age, but the "body" tool necessary to achieve one's dreams requires different timing to still accomplish great things, provided that the strategy is optimized to succeed.
It always saddens me when I see people of a certain age pushing themselves "beyond every limit" but continually stopping due to joint pain of all kinds, when simply transforming their training program would allow them to fully trigger the process of overcompensation and always be ready for adventure in the best condition. After all, it is often a matter of learning to listen to the signals that come from our body, as it happens at all ages, but beyond a certain point in life, the warning signs increase tremendously!
Well, the Monoallenamento technique was born during the time of my Tempio del Fitness Gym back in 2005 when I was starting training for Cromagnon 2006 (a race from Limone P.te to Cap D'Ail through the mountains). Even though I was only 30 years old at that time, I was already looking for a way to combine the various fitness activities that I was teaching, weight training, and ultratrail, of course. In about two years, I had laid the foundations of Monoallenamento, and the book was taking shape in my head during that period. I realized that training like crazy for tens of hours a week would not take me anywhere, also because even then, I could not ask for anything more from my recovery abilities, at the risk of constant overtraining and probable joint consequences. After some experimentation, I noticed that with a single weekly outing on Saturday, I was able to complete many tens of kilometers in a single solution, rest on Sunday, and be ready to work in my center again on Monday. Everything was working very well. So, I was ready to cover thousands of kilometers safely between races and workouts thanks to the weekly Monoallenamento technique. In the end, thanks to this strategy, I never had any sports-related joint problems in the following decades, as did all the people who followed this training regimen for long-distance walks. Moreover, I add that people who were previously subject to wear and tear pain caused by "traditional" training solutions have resolved every discomfort after a few weeks of Monoallenamento! It was a great satisfaction for me every time I learned about it.
Too often, due to an innocent "eagerness to do", ultratrail is mistaken for a classic but longer running race, and the wrong approach of "conventional" athletics training is proposed... Thus falling into the trap of exaggeration due to the impressive distances. However, to have a long career in the face of extremely long foot journeys while respecting one's health, different criteria must be applied. If one continues to suffer from injuries and ongoing rehabilitation, then the training approach must necessarily be reviewed, since the problem is certainly upstream at the cost of a prematurely short "career"! I can say this as an Osteopath, as well as a Coach and Athlete.
In conclusion, even though Mono-training is fundamentally built to respect recovery times at every age, the additional themes of this third edition serve to explain that people after the age of forty and beyond should pay further attention to their training routines in order to maximize the implementation of my work "to the nth degree", without giving up anything.
Below is the detail of the reference links related to my ultratrail and trail
articles:
Very long distances |
Routes |
Competitions |
Solo adventures |
Publications |
Training strategy |
UltraTrail eBook
