Disclaimer - I write programs for people as part of my job. But that doesn't change any of the information below.
So we have already recognised that I am biased on this topic but my bias comes not just from my work but my degree in Sports and Exercise Science and it's this part that I'm going to focus on.
To really understand why a program is such an important part of paddling well, there are two basic principles you need to understand.
Our body adapts to stimulus (training) we put on it.
The law of diminishing returns - When a stimulus is brand new we get big adaptations and the longer we apply the same stimulus the smaller the adaptations our body will make.
Now this might sound like a fancier way of saying training makes you better and your improvements slow down, which it is... but this is where a program should come in to save you from the dreaded plateau in results.
Before we implement a program though, lets look at what happens to the unprogrammed paddler and if you picked a paddler at random out of the whole pile, there's a decent chance you've chosen someone who has paddled for multiple years, never really followed a program and has been in some sort of a plateau for the majority of their paddling life.
When this paddler started they were wobbling around in a beginner boat, spending most of their energy on staying upright and anxiety, and were moving super slowly. Over the next 6 months to a year they may have literally doubled their speed and progressed to an intermediate ski and paddle 3-4 times a week. They're hooked and continue paddling almost every day but they have stopped getting better. Why? Because their body is lacking the stimulus to make any adaptations.
Their body has grown used to paddling roughly the same distance at roughly the same intensity for years now. Its good at it, the improvements have been made and lacking a reason to adapt to anything new, their body focuses on other things and leaves paddling alone. So what this paddler needs is to give their body a new stimulus that it will receive and go wow, I'm not used to this, I need to make some changes.
And it doesn't have to be more sessions per week, it just has to be different. This is where a good program keeps your body guessing. Sure it's still paddling, and it should be relevant to your goals, but by changing up elements like intensities, effort duration and session scheduling a good program can continue to tweak the stimulus and decrease the effects/speed of the law of diminishing returns.
Now importantly you can't just do a different session every single day and that be the key to success. You do want your body to adapt to stimuli that are relevant. Doing 10 second sprint with a resistor band probably isn't the best training for a Molokai. So a program needs to stay within the confines of your goals but tweaking the individual aspects enough that your body doesn't become too comfy. It should also be periodised into blocks of adaptation that you can build upon, so that bigger stimuli can be added without causing injury or too much fatigue.
If you've read all of this and maybe there's a red flag or two that has appeared in what you are currently doing then maybe it's time to make a change in what you do on the water and start paddling to improve rather than paddling to just paddle. If you've been doing roughly the same thing on the water for years now you're probably also getting pretty bored of it, a program should feel like you're making some progress. Whether it's through the session as you tick off efforts, through the season as you move from base to peaks or even if its as simple as getting "fitter".
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result so if its been years of 10km straight paddles 3-4 times you might be going insane...
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