66 | AustrAliAn triAthleteSEXTON’S
Scribble...
Brendan Sexton
F
rom my humble beginnings in
sport as a 12-year-old swimmer,
right through to my final year
competing in triathlon on the
world stage there was always an element
of training for endurance sport that
struck fear into my heart: the test set.
The test set is a tool that is designed
to test the progress of training through
a standardised and measurable piece
of work. Test sets come in many forms.
The most common test set variety is a
straight up, old fashion time trial (TT).
Just the athlete and the clock battling
it out with nowhere to hide where the
resulting number could provide great
encouragement and faith in the work
being done or beat an athlete down and
call into question the plan amidst. These
can often be just as much about the mind
as the body. The 400-metre freestyle TT
(my personal love-hate TT relationship)
could conjure such a kaleidoscope of
temperaments within eight laps. Starting
out with brash boldness quickly followed
by contentment soon after would crash
a wave of doubt, then a flash of divinity,
into calculative, stubbornness, ending with
appreciation and followed by either relief,
high-fiving elation or chlorine tinged regret.
Other test sets can be a physical
exploration: until failure/go-until-you-can-
go-no-longer style tests have long been afavourite of sports physiologists I’ve worked
with to establish and measure the body’s
limits. I would be subjected to a VO2 Max
(oxygen utilisation) test once or twice a
year, every year of my career. For this test to
be successful the subject must build to
maximum exertion (usually running or
cycling) and maintain that effort for as long
as possible. Granted, the length of time I
was personally able to maintain said effort
was less than the time it takes a pair of
goggles to fog up after a race starter’s gun
has gone off but the anticipation of getting
to that point in itself was always, to put it
mildly, palm sweat-inducing. No matter
how many times I was harnessed to a
treadmill running at 22km/hour at a 4 per
cent gradient until my legs fell out from
under me the next time testing day
approached I’d go through the same
irrational fear that the result would fall
short of expectation. Not only could a poor
test result indicate I wasn’t physically and
mentally where I wanted to be but it could
allude to ineffective planning and training
leading up to the test – potentially months
of work wasted.
But of course, these fears were often
proved to be unnecessary due to either
positive testing/ trialling results or the fact
that even if results weren’t where
expected form and improvement can
rarely be completely captured in a singleTESTING PATIENCE
Reading into test sets
text by brendan sexton | photogrAphy by shutterstocK.comtest. As an athlete, I began to understand
this over time. I also started to see benefit
from test sets in the valuable vision they
would provide me in proving or disproving
“feelings” that I had about the
improvement or decline of my swimming
cycling, running, general strength, flexibility
and body awareness and control. Now, as