Friday, March 17, 2017

Recovery Weeks Don't Sell Books, But Training is Useless Without Them

A lot of training books and programs are sold by their "special workouts" and sometimes impressive mileage. When you read about the Olympic runners, an article will often cite how many miles per week they do or what kind of strength training they do. However, the least sexy part of the training programs are rarely ever mentioned... The recovery weeks.

Recovery weeks are equally important as a lot of the workouts or mileage you will read about, but they don't get much credit. These are the points in the training cycle that make those high mileage weeks have an effect. Testosterone and cortisol have a chance to return to normal and in return, you can actually benefit from those Instagram worthy workouts.

I've created some charts of 3 world renowned coach's training programs and zoomed out to get a full view of their training programs that everyone seems to only talk about the mileage and workouts. We can see how they cycled STRESS and RECOVERY weeks to make the training stick.


ARTHUR LYDIARD
Everyone associates Arthur Lydiard with 100 mile weeks of training, but what very few people realize is that once a person is out of the base phase, mileage takes a huge dip and the runner will spend 14 weeks out of the year working on hills, sprints, and specializing for their event. This plan is mostly for a 10k and faster specialist. He refers to his base phase as "marathon training." Essentially, the mileage was high enough that the other phases ARE the recovery. Here is what his phases look like:



Conditioning Phase (Big Mileage):
Consists of 45 minutes to 2 hours of running, averaging roughly 1.5 hours per day of running. He highly advocates for jogging on top of this mileage, but most of the paces can be at a fairly quick clip.

4 Week Hill Phase, 4 Week Anaerobic Training, 4 Weeks Coordination Training, and 2 Weeks of Sharpening (Lower Mileage/Higher Quality): 
Mileage takes a significant drop in all these phases. He keeps a long run of 1 to 2 hours each week for all of the phases, but generally workouts will be at most 1 hour in length. Several of these are sprints or 1/2 hour jogs for recovery.

Read some more on Lydiard's method here.


 JOE VIGIL
Famous coach of several Olympians including Deena Kastor, apparently he was doing something right. If you read his training, it's incredibly basic, but what stands out is how volatile his weekly mileage looks. Essentially, the athlete quickly builds a base within a month, then starts do decrease and increase by as much as 20% every other week.

A presentation on his training can be viewed here



JACK DANIELS
Another very famous coach of several Olympians and famed Exercise Scientist, I took this from one of his marathon plans in his book "Daniels Running Formula." For the most part, it follows an up 2 weeks, down 1 week kind of path. During the later stages of training when mileage is high and workouts are harder, he throws in a couple descending weeks to really allow the runner to recover from the tough sessions.




Summary
All three of these coaches are sure to implement mileage drops at some point to avoid stagnation and increase adaptability for the athlete. Lydiard seemed to have chosen a path of keeping the runner at high mileage for a fairly long period of time, then making a big drop when competition nears. Vigil does an up one, down one approach, and Daniels does an up two, down one method. Whatever your approach, don't just look at the mileage or workouts they prescribe, but be sure to keep some mileage variability within your training to keep those legs fresh and able to adapt.

Friday, February 17, 2017

A Quick Guide to Break a Plateau and Absorb Your Training

Inevitably, there will be a time in everyone's running career in which they hit the dreaded plateau. Most everyone's first thought when their times are stagnant or getting slower is to make workouts harder. It's completely natural to think you must work harder to improve, but that's generally not the case...particularly for the more advanced runner that has been running a lot. More speed at a faster pace seems logical, but hopefully this will shed some light on the situation. This is a cheat sheet for getting back to an upward trend.

To completely understand the situation, you have to understand the concept of general adaptation. You have a baseline fitness, apply a stress, recover from the stress, then within a certain time frame, your baseline fitness increases assuming that cycle happens properly. Supercompensation is what the desired effect is. Keep following that progression and you're getting faster!

Here's what happens when you hit a plateau within steps:
Step 1:  Do some training
Step 2:  Recover a little bit
Step 3:  Do some more training, thinking it will help
Step 4:  Repeat steps 1-3 a few times with no results
Step 5:  Get frustrated and do too much too fast or workouts are too hard
Step 6:  Get slower or injured or both

Here's what it looks like on paper:







You are not quite getting past the recovery portion of the general adaptation cycle. You keep hitting the next hard workout at baseline fitness and never let the body fully recover from the damage done to it. Ideally, the next hard workout should happen at the point of supercompensation in which the body is at a new base of fitness and you don't keep taking dips. Anything harder will quickly drive your fitness lower and your frustration will go higher.


Steps to Bust Out of the Plateau
Now that you know where you sit on the spectrum of adaptation, you can feel better about working less to let the supercompensation happen. The difficult part is to recover enough, but not lose fitness in the process. Here are the steps to take when you feel as if your fitness hasn't been going anywhere for a while:

Step 1: Rest
Take a couple rest days. Two or 3 days off will not hurt your fitness. It will let the upswing happen if anything. You might feel a little rusty those first couple days, but generally you should feel pretty good.

Step 2: Rebuild a Mini Base
Start back with the Basics for 1 or 2 weeks. That means basic easy mileage, and basic speed. I'd suggest 50% of your previous mileage for the first week, 75% for the 2nd, and 100% for the 3rd week. It won't take long to start feeling like there's some pop in your step again and you didn't have to lose any fitness in the process. Just a temporary mileage reduction.

For a person that is mid-season, they can come back with some interval style workouts, but I would suggest doing half of what you were doing. For example, if you were doing 3 miles of interval work, just do 1.5 miles and call it a day! You'll maintain fitness while not overdoing yourself and pushing your body back into fatigue. You don't have to lose fitness at this point, and this can be used as a springboard into better fitness within just a week or two.

Step 3: Re-Build the Workouts
Progress your workouts every 2 weeks from baseline. Keep an eye on how you feel. If you feel sluggish for a workout, push it back another day until you feel good again. Feeling good is a sign that you've reached the supercompensation effect. Feeling poorly is often a sign that you need more recovery. Repeat steps 1 through 3 if you start feeling like you've hit another rough patch.

Step 4: Schedule Regular "Down Weeks"
Reduce mileage and workout intensity about every 3rd or 4th week to avoid stagnation. Cut your mileage by up to 20% and workout intensity should be kept to a minimum. It will help absorb the previous training and prep your legs for more intense stuff down the road. These can be seen as mini-tapers.


Summary
Do not make the mistake of doing more! Taking a step back doesn't mean you're losing fitness. Look at it as a springboard to better fitness.





Thursday, February 9, 2017

A Non-Linear Approach to Janell McKinney's Boston Marathon Training

This is a simple Non-Linear, periodized training plan I've had going for Janell McKinney who we've been coaching over the past couple months in preparation for the Boston Marathon. She just recently had her first "test effort" 5k on a rolling course and ran a solid time of 17:59 which was only 3 seconds off of her fastest 5k on a flatter, more predictable course. She maintains a really great blog that you can view here https://runcanvas.wordpress.com/. I would classify Janell as one of the top female runners in the Kansas City area and loves to put in the training. She will go quite far with her positive attitude and work ethic. This is how we are approaching her training:

A Non-Linear approach vs Linear

Linear
A linear approach to training is very useful and still works for many people. Generally, it consists of a Base phase, a phase of Threshold or Tempo work, and a phase of a few weeks of Interval style workouts. Sometimes it's in a different order than that, but there are definitive points of change in the training from easy mileage to faster training. It is a good method to follow, but it has its flaws. The main flaw is that the runner finds themselves trying to get their speed back after they've spent several weeks in a base phase. This leaves them injury prone at the beginning of the next phase and feeling a little flat at the end of just doing easy mileage for several weeks. Also, if the runner plans on doing a handful of races before a major race, they often under perform because they lack any "gears" for racing.

Non-Linear
A non-linear approach is nice, because a runner doesn't have to spend several months trying to get certain types of fitness back. You start with the basics of everything (mileage, speed, and race specific training), then gradually build on it within micro-cycles. We've chosen to do a 3 week cycle for Janell.We focus on a little bit of everything within those 3 weeks and add to each cycle that goes by. I feel that it does a good job of keeping a well rounded individual and allows them to race well at all distances. The closer we get to race date, the workouts will get more race specific.

Here's what Janell's training cycle looks like:

1 week of the basics:
Basic Endurance / Threshold / Basic Speed

1 week of the specifics:
Marathon Specific / Speed Endurance

1 week of support paces:
Blend workouts of Marathon Specific+Speed Endurance / Endurance+Basic Speed

*After each 3 week cycle, we will either reduce recovery, lengthen time spent at a speed, increase mileage, do a test effort, or possibly a combination of all of it for the next 3 week cycle.


Basic Speed
Just short sprints of 10 to 30s in length to help with better mechanics, finishing speed, and "feeling bouncy." We don't progress on this stuff much other than try to maintain it throughout the entire training cycle.

Speed Endurance
This is the stuff that is 5k pace or a little faster. I don't typically like to add distance to these types of workouts, but they are mostly about 3 miles in length and we start with a chopped up workout such as 12 x 200m quick/200m jog and morph it into some longer stuff like 800's, 1000's, or maybe miles with very short recoveries. 
The blended workouts will often be a mix of marathon pace with hits of 5k or 10k pace. These usually end up feeling like a good tempo run at the end rather than hard intervals.

Threshold and Marathon Specific Runs
With these types of workouts, we are mostly just working on building the amount of time you're on your feet at goal pace or a little faster than goal pace. Nothing fancy about it.

Mileage
I generally think more mileage is better for marathon type runners, but the most important thing to do is progress someone from what they were doing and add a little bit every 2nd or 3rd week and ask the important question, "How do you feel?" I like the runner to dictate their own mileage within 5 or 10 miles per week of what I give them. For example, if I give someone 60 miles per week and they are feeling tired or sluggish and feel they need an easy day of just 4 miles or a day off, and they only hit 50 for the week, that's perfectly fine! They probably needed it. Doing this lets them determine where they feel the most comfortable and fit. Most of the time, I find that the workouts are what makes people tired...not necessarily their weekly mileage. For Janell, we will raise her mileage, but it should be comfortable for her to hit. We are not necessarily looking for a set number.

If the runner is still beat up from a workout or race and they want to push it back a day, that usually gets the better result and they should do it. If I dictate exactly what days they are to do workouts, it creates dependency and can sometimes lead to just feeling overdone if they are not properly recovered. I prefer the athlete have a desire to do the workout and able to feel themselves getting stronger every cycle. We adapt to the athlete, not the other way around.

Janell's Schedule Prior to her Test Effort 5k



Janell had already been doing a moderate amount of mileage before we started, so I felt pretty comfortable boosting her miles fairly quickly after she caught a bug and had to take a few days off. 

This was her first cycle before testing her fitness at the 5k. Ideally, I'd like to get a test effort every 4 to 6 weeks to keep the runner race sharp. Racing is also a form of fitness and needs to be done from time to time in order to keep the athlete from feeling flat.

So far, so good on her first cycle! For our readers, feel free to incorporate some of this into your own training. Be sure to start with the basics and work your way up!