Reality Check
Posted on Jan 31st, 2008 by Tony Gentilcore Tags: Endurance athletesPart of my job as a strength coach and trainer is to save people time. That is, to help people achieve the results they’re looking for in the shortest amount of time possible. Conversely, part of my job as an honorary member of the “Secret Society of Jedi Knights” is to be awesome and make chicks want to hang out with me. Surprisingly, it’s not my fake light saber that drives them crazy, it’s my cloak. You know, cause it makes me look all mysterious. Not to mention it really brings out eyes.
In any case, last weekend at Mike Boyle’s 2nd Annual Strength and Conditioning Winter Seminar I listened to Mike himself talk about his ongoing struggles with training endurance athletes, and I couldn’t agree more with what he had to say. People who like to run either have a genetic predisposition to it, have a type-A personality, or they do it because it allows them to have a competitive outlet into adulthood; or it’s a combination of any of the three.
Unfortunately, as Mike noted, all the traits above are at first positives, but they can rapidly become a negative because what makes you train (you’re good at it, it’s easier, personality, etc) also makes you train hurt. In a nutshell, he went on to say that endurance training probably isn’t good for most people (GASP!). I totally heart Mike Boyle.
Tell me if this looks familiar: The Endurance Cycle (again, from Mike).
Train………………Injury………………..Rehab/Physical Therapy
Train………………Injury………………..Rehab/Physical Therapy
Train………………Injury………………..Rehab/Physical Therapy
I’m willing to bet that many of you reading this who are avid runners can relate to this never ending cycle. I’m also willing to bet that your physical therapist pays off his/her mortgage thanks to you.
So what can “we” as fitness professionals do? Well, as Boyle put it…..”you can’t change their personality but you may be able to change their training.” In other words: what can we do to keep these people “healthy?”
[Warning: this is the part where I start sounding like a broken record.]
1. Intervals: as counterintuitive as it may seem, interval training develops aerobic capacity better than aerobic training. The fastest way to increase VO2 max, the standard measure of aerobic fitness, is through interval training not long duration distances.
Journal of Physiology, “Short term sprint interval versus traditional endurance training: Similar initial adaptations in human skeletal muscle and exercise performance.” Sept 2006, Vol 575 Issue 3.
Study specifics- comparison of 20 minutes of interval training (30 sec sprint/ 4 minute rest) with 90-120 minutes in the “heart rate zone.”
Results- same improvement in oxygen utilization. One hour per week vs. 4.5-6 hours per week.
As I stated above, a large part of my job is to get people the results they’re looking for in the shortest amount of time possible. If someone is looking to improve their aerobic capacity, which do you think I’m going to choose? Not only will interval training get the job done infinitely faster, but I won’t have to deal with all the nagging injuries as well (less ground contacts compared to long distance training).
On an aside, I’ve never really heard anyone say, “you know I really wish I had a physique like a marathoner.” Something to ponder.
2. Resistance Training: As Eric Cressey has noted on several occasions, a University of Alabama meta-analysis of the endurance training **scientific literature revealed that ten weeks of resistance training in trained distance runners improves running economy by 8-10%. For the mathematicians in the crowd, that’s about 20-24 minutes off a four-hour marathon – and likely more if you’re not a well-trained endurance athlete in the first place. Not only will they get stronger and improve force production (improved times), but they’ll also stay a little healthier due to the fact that they’re not on the road or on the treadmill as much.
** Jung AP. The impact of resistance training on distance running performance. Sports Med. 2003;33(7):539-52.
A great “real world” example would be my girlfriend; lets call her, um, Kate Beckinsale.
Before we met, she was an avid runner. It took a lot of work, but I eventually convinced her that she didn’t have to be doing all of that endurance work in order to stay “fit.” Instead she started to lift weights more often and performed more interval based work. Fast forward a year. She went for a 3.5 run with one of her friends last week. I think her friend’s name was, let me see here, Jessica Alba. Yeah, that’s it.
“Kate” reported no issues what-so-ever in regards to feeling winded or tired afterwards. Matter of fact, she said she could have easily gone longer. This after having not put on her jogging shoes in over a year.
Note to Reader: to protect the anonymity of those mentioned above (my girlfriend and her friend she went jogging with), I used the names of celebrities that I would totally make out with. That is of course assuming my real girlfriend was actually into those sort of things, which she isn’t. Sigh
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Comments ( 3 )
Dr. Tim added these pithy words on Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:00 pm |i Tony,
Lets see. A strength preson takling about how bad runners train/overtrain and get injured.
I’m 54 years old.I started running when I was 21.The first running boom.
The first race I dd was a 8.2 mile,placed 499 out of 1000,64 min.
The next year same race top 100,48 min.
No internet to get info from so I read ex phys texts from the library and anything from acomplished runners. Long and slow it was.
I found out that to run fast you had to run fast.
My first marathon was 1979 a 3.29 ,next was a 2.56 in the fall.
A 2.53 the next August,then a 2.45 in Nov @ Phily.
I think the wrong bdy type starts running. injury is poor mechanics,poor recruitment,POOR power to weight ratio.
When I got plantar faciaitus,orthoics-more PF-found Dr. Phil Maffetone. No injury for 7 years.Till I sprained my ankle.
The running community does a diservice to over weight people also socetity at large.” want to be long and lean,pilaties,run.
Stocky is stocky,sprinters are sprinters
Why do you thik Ceaser Milan wants the dog walked for 45 min a day.
Move yourself first,DON’T train for a marathon your first year,I took six years to do mine.
Oh yeah Tony, every thing Mike Boyle said was right.
Fund raising teams,with the 2nd running boom leave alot for people hurt> Along with the continued misinformation about heart disease,high cholesterol, high blood pressure.
Dr. Tim
Hak added these pithy words on Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:00 pm |Amen brother! Amen!
I ran my first half marathon last December. Out of the 10,000 or so runners, I would say that at least 60% were overweight by more than 20 pounds. While I think it’s great that these folks are getting out and exercising, biting off something like a half marathon or full marathon can be problematic.
From my experience, many people take the challenge of a marathon not from a runner’s perspective, but from a fat loss perspective. Somewhere along their journey to getting lean, they started running. Then, the holy grail of completing a marathon went from a fickle notion to a huge personal challenge. “If I can complete a marathon, I’ll prove to the world that I’m an athlete.”
Again, nothing wrong with this approach because it gets people off their ass and the marathon is mostly a mental challenge, rather than a physical one, at the pace most age groupers run/walk it.
The catch is when they try and do a marathon, or continue to do marathons, with all of that extra weight. That’s where your never-ending injury cycle comes into play. There’s no balance in their training, or their life.
Even though I was as slow as Rosie O’Donnell backing away from a tray of donuts, I would still rather have my physique than those elite runners, (aka living skeletons) who were blowing by me.
George Beinhorn added these pithy words on Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:01 pm |Intervals certainly do increase VO2Max. However, it’s well known (source: Lore of Running, by Timothy Noakes, MD) that VO2Max, though an important factor in endurance performance, isn’t the only, or determining one. Thus, world-record holders in the marathon have had lower VO2Max than their competitors. Also: in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, interval training was THE primary training method for distance runners. Then, in the late ’60s, Arthur Lydiard’s endurance-trained runners came along and blew all of the interval trainers away at distances from the mile to the marathon. Lydiard’s runners used intervals only after four months of endurance training. Similarly, Mark Allen, seven-time winner of the Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon, only began to win the race, after a handful of unsuccessful attempts, when he began training with Phil Maffetone, who assigned him several months of very low-intensity aerobic-paced running at the start of the yearly training season. Only after building this base did Allen begin his six-week intensive training phase, which Dr. Noakes believes may have been the hardest endurance training that any athlete has ever done. In other words, the advice, so often heard from strength-trainers, to avoid aerobic exercise even if you’re running marathons, is grossly misleading. A good example of a pure interval-trained distance runner was Emil Zatopek, who set world records at 5,000 and 10,000 meters and won the Olympic 5,000 and 10,000 meters and marathon. Zatopek’s winning Olympic marathon time in 1952 (2:23:03.2) would be considered extremely pedestrian against today’s endurance-trained elite runners. So - please, stop spreading this unsupported, mythical, entirely speculative advice regarding marathon training.
