The Future of Endurance Training

What are elite endurance coaches thoughts on the evolution of training and performance?

As endurance sports continue to evolve, elite coaches are on the front lines shaping the future of training and performance. In “The Future of Endurance Training”, PEZ ToolBox editor Dr. Stephen Cheung explores insights from a 2026 survey of world-class endurance coaches to reveal emerging trends that are redefining how top athletes prepare, recover, and optimize performance. From individualized training strategies and precise load management to holistic recovery and cutting-edge nutrition and technology, this article breaks down the key themes driving innovation across endurance disciplines and offers practical takeaways for riders of all levels.

Welcome to 2026 and wishing everyone a healthy year full of good times on two wheels!

The arrival of a new year is always a good time to look back and look forward. We’ve examined how we as individual athletes can assess our performance and plan ahead through developing SMART goals.

Zooming out, elite coaches are a great source to talk with about bigger trends in endurance training and performance. After all, these are the individuals “at the coal face” of applied sport science, as they’re the ones who are working with elite athletes on a daily basis. Their priority is to separate out the wheat from the chaff, and elite performance quickly finds things that don’t work in real life falling by the wayside.

Elite performers and coaches are also often ahead of sport scientists like myself in terms of exploring new ideas, and we often get our ideas for what to study based on seeing what elite performers are actually doing. A great example of this is in the origins of the polarized training model to begin with, where the sport scientist Stephen Seiler noticed a pattern in the training distribution of elite XC skiers, and then set out to more systematically study the pattern.

Sandbakk et al. 2026

I’ve just started as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, and one new paper published this month is a study led by our out-going Editor, Øyvind Sandbakk of Norway. In this study, world-class endurance coaches were surveyed for their views on trends and priorities in endurance training (Sandbakk et al. 2026).

78 coaches (73 men, 5 women) completed the survey and met the inclusion criteria, which included guiding at least one athlete to a senior international championship medal (e.g., Olympics, Commonwealth Games, European or World Championships).

Coaches came from 18 countries and a wide range across both winter and summer sports, including running, cycling, swimming, XC skiing, biathlon, and speed skating.

Some of the key questions were open-ended:

What are the most important trends related directly or indirectly to improved training practices and performance of the world’s best endurance athletes during the past 10–15 years?

Which advances will contribute to further improving endurance performance during the next 10–15 years?

Survey Says…

From qualitative analyses of the responses, the following 8 major themes emerged:

1. Individualized and sport-specific training strategies.

Moving away from generic training to highly sport-specific training that’s closely aligned with each athlete’s unique physiology. Wearables and power meters are examples of devices strongly used to support this theme.

2. Precision in training execution.

This isn’t just about making sure that athletes do the intended training. Rather, it’s related to theme 1 in accurately prescribing and monitoring both internal (e.g., HR, HR recovery) and external (e.g., power meters) loads.

3. Load management procedures.

This is about assessing training load holistically, including both internal and external load metrics but also athlete perception of effort and other wellness indicators. This also includes working with other elite support staff (e.g., physiotherapists, psychologists).

4. Strategic use of environmental stressors.

Correct usage and timing for both altitude and heat training falls into this category. From my perspective as a thermal physiologist, the massive change towards acceptance and embrace of heat adaptation strategies has been a sea change over the past decade.

5. Optimized nutrition.

We all know the general importance of a good overall diet. This theme includes ideas such as high carbohydrate fueling, carbohydrate periodization, and individualized supplementation (e.g., bicarbonate, nitrates).

6. Holistic recovery practices.

This goes well beyond the latest gizmos like compression boots, but rather monitoring recovery and also the holistic integration of travel, life, work stress. This aligns closely with theme 3 and load management.

7. Health and injury prevention.

Again relevant with themes 3 and 6, prescribing hard workouts is the simplest thing to do in the world. Managing workload and progression over a season or career, while maintaining health and minimizing the risk of injury (physical and others like Relative Energy Deficiency – Sport or RED-S) is the ultimate hallmark of a great coach-athlete relationship.

8. Equipment and technology-driven innovation.

There’s no getting around the importance of technology in almost any endurance sport (e.g., footwear, swimsuits, skis, bikes). These often don’t just make you faster, but enable greater training volume while reducing injury risks (e.g., footwear).

Takeaways

While many of us are self-coached and have limited time and wallets for the latest tech, there are several key lessons we can take away for our own training and development as athletes.

For me, the major takeaway is to move away from generic training towards experimenting and figuring out an approach that works best for you, your physiological uniqueness, your current fitness, your life situation, and your ultimate performance or fitness goals. While almost any plan is often better than no plan, an individualized and customized plan remains optimal.

The next major takeaway is effective load management. Highlighted here is that an athlete is a whole person, so external stressors away from sport are critical to incorporate into an optimized training plan.

Nutrition is another important aspect of optimal training. We’re lucky to have top-notch information from our sports dietician Alex Winnicki. Scour his archives, give him a call, or work with a sports dietician to maximize both your health and performance.

And be a good boy or girl so that Santa brings you the aero toys this year!

Ride fast and far, and have fun!

Our author holistically recovering with great friends at the end of 5 days of bikepacking in Iceland in 2024. Cheers to two-wheeled adventures in 2026!

References

Sandbakk Ø, Herzog S, McGawley K, et al (2026) Perspectives of World-Class Endurance Coaches on the Evolution of Athlete Training and Performance. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance 21:98–105. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2025-0317

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