Hey everyone!
Welcome to Tempo Training and Performance. I am so excited to launch this site and begin helping all of you meet your health and performance goals without sacrificing the things that are most important to you. Since this is my first blog post, I thought I would share my story with y'all so that you understand a little bit more about me and the heart and vision behind Tempo Training and Performance.
My love for endurance sports began in high school. I was a member of my high school cross country team where I was surrounded by a group of people that challenged me every day and helped me fall in love with the sport. It was one of the first times in my life that I saw the value of hard work. In running, I saw a direct correlation between my hard work and improvements in my performance and after my freshman year I was hooked.
I continued running throughout high school and was lucky enough to be able to continue my running career at Oklahoma Baptist University. During my time at OBU, my running ability continued to improve thanks to great coaches and a supportive team. I learned that my success in training was impacted tremendously by the guidance I received from my coach who was able to provide each of his runners a specific training plan that played to their strengths and enhanced their weaknesses.
After OBU I went on to physical therapy school at Washington University in St. Louis. This was an exciting time for me, but also frustrating as well. I still had the desire to train like I did at OBU, but I quickly found that the time demands of physical therapy school were higher than I expected. I was in class for 8 hours a day, studying outside of class, trying to spend time with my wife, all the while trying to stay in good shape for races. Needless to say, it was overwhelming and I was struggling big time. I knew that there had to be a way to keep everything in my life balanced, but in order to do that I was going to have to change my perspective a little bit.
For most of my college career, the focus of running had always been to run as many miles as possible, with little time given to interval work as I was taught that the body functions best when it has a good aerobic base. While that is still true, I no longer had the time available to log over 80 miles a week, and I knew that I needed to find a more efficient way to improve my fitness. So, I did what I had time to do. I would run for 5-6 miles at a time, sometimes less, but I would run it faster. I started adding hills to my runs. I still took it easy some days, but for the most part I began running in what I came to know as the steady state zone. I also began to apply this theory to my triathlon training and quickly saw improvements there as well. Overall, I saw my fitness as a whole continue to grow allowing me to run a half marathon in 1:21:00 with less than 20 miles a week of running. I don't say that to brag, I honestly surprised myself. I had no idea how that race would go as my training was not anywhere near what I had done to prepare in the past. However, that race showed me that there was a new way, a better way, a more efficient way to train. A way that allowed me to perform well in PT school, work part time, spend time with my wife, and still improve my athletic performance.
That is why I founded Tempo Training and Performance. I knew that there were a lot of other people out there like me. People that love to be active, but struggle to find ways to train that allow them to live a balanced life. My goal is that Tempo Training and Performance would be a place that helps people level up their performance, but more importantly their life. I want to provide personalized and targeted plans that give people the most time possible with the people that are most important to them. For me, that was spending more time with my wife and our dog Willow (who is super awesome by the way... like seriously, she's pretty cute... check out the instagram @calebwolters). I don't know what it is that's most important to you, but what I do know is this changing my outlook on training has drastically improved my life. It's helped me make the most of my limited time so that I can truly make every second count.
So that's my story. I hope this helps you understand a little more about me as a person, but also what my vision is for everyone who trains here at Tempo Training and Performance. If you haven't already, follow us on facebook, instagram, and sign up for our email list!
Until next time,
Caleb