In line with the other comments on the great climbers and Lance Armstrong: Jerry Rice was well known for following a conditioning regimen that went way, way beyond everybody else’s. He looked fluid and “natural” on the field, but his running sessions in the off-season were so strenuous that other NFLers who tried to work out with him would typically finish either zero or one of his workouts, then never come back. The sprint intervals, accelerators, cone drills, catching drills, and mountain runs added up to too much punishment for them. (And then came the afternoon session, which was for lifting weights.)

Meanwhile, Rice completed workouts at that level six days a week, every single week without exception, throughout every off-season. His baseline level of work was just a lot higher than others were willing to contemplate.

– we are always impressed by Peter Croft and Dean Potter’s amazing free-solos and long link ups. What you don’t hear about is how Croft regularly has thirty and forty pitch alpine days (climbing easy ground, mid-10s and more often below), on routes that for most rock climbers are really very moderate. Potter does much the same. This base training is esssential, and a whole lot less glamorous or interesting than putting up 5.13 routes ground up, or freeesoling 12s.

– Lance Armstrong’s Tour seasons featured two and three hundred kilometer base days from September into December (six days a week), followed by hundreds and hundreds of hours of riding hills and doing accelerations. Incredibly boring and repetitive. And all so that, for about four hours during an 85 hour Tour, he can drop the hammer on his opponents. It’s weird– a year of training for four hours of performance.