Training
Signatures of Fatigue: Why Fatigue Is Your Best Feedback
Why Fatigue is our best feedback I was casually walking past the track, and as seems to happen, I can’t help but notice whoever is running around it. Some days it’s an older gentleman jogging around, others youthful kids experiencing the sport for the first time, but today there were three team sport players. How…
Read MoreLong Term Athlete Development: A Case Study of a 9:15 HS 2-miler becoming a sub 2:17 marathoner
LTAD is one of those buzz phrases thrown around in the athletic world. The intention is noble and worthwhile: Put some deep thought into how an athlete progresses from youth to junior to national class (and hopefully beyond). The problem with LTAD is that it’s mostly theoretical. There are too many factors to control to…
Read MoreA Misunderstanding of High Intensity Interval Training
Interval training. Speed Work. High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). Whatever you call it, performing fast interval work is often associated with anaerobic training. Many coaches, athletes, and trainers believe that the harder the effort, the more anaerobic the workout is. Take your classic Tabata sprints (10 sec on/20 sec off) or the football favorite “gassers,” highly…
Read MoreAn Analysis of Eliud Kipchoge’s Training Before His Berlin Marathon Victory
Seldom do you get a peek under the hood of one of the best runner’s in history. But with the release of his training in the months leading up to his Berlin marathon victory, we get just that with a training log of Eliud Kipchoge. As someone who believes in the sharing of training to…
Read MoreThe Balancing Act- Developing Speed and Endurance
Training is all about balance. It may be a cliché statement, but when it comes to training for almost any event, ensuring that speed and endurance, stress and rest, or any number of factors has the appropriate interplay is essential. When it comes to training runners, or even team sport athletes, I like to keep…
Read MoreTraining Together: Individualizing in a Group Setting
One of the trickiest parts of coaching a team is individualizing within that group structure. We’re left with a balancing act, deciding how much to emphasize group training–taking advantage of working with a training partner– versus catering to the individual runner. In other words, do we give our workout (e.g. 5x1mile) for everyone to…
Read MoreThe Myth of the Non-Responder
“I just don’t respond to that type of training.” Or if you are a science nerd among us, you might say, “I have the non-responder genes for aerobic (or anaerobic) exercise” It’s a convenient excuse, and perhaps with a hint of truth. In fact, researchers have suggested that up to 20% of individuals are non-responders…
Read MoreHow do you get to World Class? A look at the progressions of top 800m runners
A few years ago, I posted a data analysis of the progression to world class for female 5k runners. I’m an inner data nerd, the kind of kid who grew up calculating baseball stats and looking for patterns before we could easily pull all that data off the web. I’m not a stats guru by…
Read MoreA Message to Speed/Power/Conditioning Coaches about Endurance Development
This is likely to be a long rambling and disjointed rant. For this I apologize. How and when you learn something matters It seems like information should be information, after all facts are facts. It shouldn’t matter when we learn facts and theories, as it’s generally assumed they are independent, but this assumption is often…
Read MoreLosing Imagination- Why we all use the same interval sets & the dangers of classification
A while back, during one of those rare moments of inspiration, I took to my whiteboard in my home and began to scribble. The goal was to break down every single way I could manipulate a workout possibly. In the end, I came up with this mess of a picture (and yes, as anyone who…
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