Training
Why tapering can be a dangerous thing!
Getting fit is the easy part. Getting fit at the right time is what makes our sport difficult. While we spend the majority of the time getting race ready, often times we let all of that training go to waste by messing up the final preparation for the race. It’s probably the most nerve racking part…
Read MoreClassifying Runners- Fun with numbers
In my book, I had an entire section on individualization and how to classify runners. Most coaches rely on simply splitting Instead, I tried to expound upon a model using a Fast Twitch vs. Slow Twitch fiber continuum for each event. Where we expand and instead of classify someone as a 5k runner for example,…
Read MoreInterview on Training, Zone training, altitude, and other sacred cow myths of training
I don’t normally post links to interviews I do on this blog, as I like to reserve it for original content. However, Mladen Jovanovic interviewed me for his site complementary training and Mladen did a great job asking some really hard, thought provoking questions. We didn’t go over your standard running/training questions, but instead Mladen…
Read MoreHow do you get to World Class? A glimpse using 5k data
In another life, I could see myself as a sabermetrics junkie. Some of you may be asking what in the heck that is. It’s essentially the use of statistics in sports, or in simpler terms think Moneyball. When I was younger and baseball was my sport of choice, I’d spend hours pouring through the stats…
Read MoreTraining to Failure: Good idea or bad?
One of the reasons I recommend grad school, is not for the classes, but for the informal theorizing sessions you have with classmates and professors. Even several years after being out of school, I still look back to some of those informal after class sessions and realize how those talks were when we would get…
Read MoreA Peek Inside- Training log of Ciaran O’Lionaird in build up to 3:54 mile
In speaking at a couple coaching clinics this summer, one of the things that struck me was how many people came up to me and would talk about the HS training logs I posted on here. They’d talk about how after reading my training philosophies and then seeing the logs, it helped conceptualize things quite…
Read MoreLong term development: Coaching HS, college, and professional runners
I was fortunate enough to give a presentation for the Gulf Coast Scholastic Track Coaches Association Clinic this weekend. In the talk, I focused on the keys to long term development. I don’t like giving generic talks on training, so my hope was to explore some of the differences between coaching at different developmental ages.…
Read MoreRevisiting Singles vs. Doubles- This time with Mice
Back in the day, the importance of a distance run was thought to be that of putting constant pressure on the heart so that it will adapt. In other words the theory went that you wanted to keep your heart rate up for a prolonged period. So the logic went, the further we can go…
Read MoreStimulus and Adaptation- A complex and simple look at the training process
I’m going to be a bit ambitious here and try and break down the process that is training. If you read my last post on stress, hopefully you realized the myriad of factors that might affect training and adaptation. What I want to try and potentially accomplish is to break that process down and look at…
Read MoreThe Stress of Life: How stress can impact your workout
The Stress of Life: Adaptation is a fairly simple process. You apply a stimulus, or a “stressor” to the body and it adapts. Go lift weights, break down some muscle, and your body responds by making the muscle stronger. The actual process along that path is very complex and we’ll go into that shortly, but…
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