Canova Full Program

summary

RE: Canova Full Program 3/5/2012 11:55AM - in reply to CANOVA FAN

Renato Canova Training Program

Background

Renato Canova (born 1943) is an Italian who coaches professional Kenyan athletes. He began coaching Italians in 1970 in sprints and multi events and switched to middle and distance for women in the late ‘80s but abandoned coaching his own countrymen 15 years ago because he felt they didn’t have the basic aerobic development nor the desire to compete at a World Class level. His mentors were Italian coaches Luciano Gigliotti who coached Olympic marathon champs Bordin and Baldini and Georgio Rondelli who coached track gold medalists Cova, Antibio and Panetta. He will generously share his methods with anyone and constantly promotes his methods and wants to be considered a successor to Lydiard in the line of great coaches.

Training

Canova’s Training Program has four distinct phases – The Introduction Phase, The Fundamental Phase, The Special Phase and The Specific Phase.

Introduction Phase

In this phase the runner builds what Canova calls “The Aerobic House”. This is the developmental phase where an athlete builds endurance through a gradual increase to very high mileage up to 100 MPW and beyond including the use of long runs. This Phase lasts 10-12 years. It should be noted that Canova does not actually coach this phase nor work with developing athletes. He only coaches Kenyan athletes who have already completed the introductory development phase by age 18 and are already world class and aspiring to be the best in the world. He feels Italians and other Westerners’ lifestyles and goals are not conducive to completing this phase before age 28 so he no longer coaches any Western athletes.

Fundamental Phase

After completion of the Introduction Phase, runners are now ready to cycle through the other 3 phases for the rest of their competitive careers. This is where Canova starts coaching his pro Kenyan athletes. It should be noted that these phases would be of no use for American high school or college coaches since none of the athletes they coach will have competed the Introduction Phase prior to them beginning to coach the athletes. They will not have built a sufficient “Aerobic House” to handle the intensity or benefit from the remaining phases.

Because Canova’s pro athletes have a strong desire to make as much money as possible in races over a relatively short pro career, his Fundamental phase differs from Lydiard’s base phase significantly because he incorporates all aspects of training simultaneously into this phase including medium fast runs, long fast runs, hill sprints and interval training whereas Lydiard’s base phase was purely aerobic training. Canova wants his athletes to be only a few weeks from race sharp during the entire calendar year for the rest of their competitive career so these phases are relatively short and a runner can go through all 3 remaining phases several times in one calendar year.

Canova disagrees with Lydiard that aerobic training can indefinitely increase the capability of the runner and says that after the “Aerobic House” has been built, the runner has to “progress” to significantly more intense training year round to continue to improve and reach their full potential. Much of this training has to be “specific” i.e. close to race pace according to Canova and that Lydiard’s aerobic pace running is too slow for continued improvement. This is where Canova feels he has improved upon and eclipsed Lydiard.

His detractors point out that there are several other Western coaches who are coaching Kenyans and Ethiopians with just as much success as he and are not using the same approach as him. Unlike Canova, these coaches carefully guard their training methods and do not promote themselves therefore Canova has become the de facto expert on post Lydiard training. Furthermore the detractors state that with their lifestyles, their genetic advantage of having ancestors who evolved at altitude and the relatively huge financial incentives for a Third World athlete, any method would be successful with these athletes. In addition other detractors point to the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs in all pro sports being a major contributor to the remarkable performances in the distances. Indeed, Canova and his fellow Italian coaches have been defending against these charges since the 1980s when the Italians had their remarkable run of domination in the distance events. Canova emphatically insists all his athletes are clean but does admit most of the Africans lie about their ages but he doesn’t like this “fraudulent mentality”.

In the Fundamental Phase, Canova advocates continued high mileage and running twice a day most days and his marathoners will run up to 150 MPW or more and track runners running somewhat less mileage. The mileage is usually slightly lower than the runner used to “build the aerobic house”. The runner typically does 3 and sometimes even 4 intense workouts a week with a single easy day between the hard days, however he even occasionally schedules back to back hard days such as hill sprints one day followed by a hard fast run the next day. Canova likes to call these easy days and the second run done each day as “Regeneration” runs.

Canova prefers to not talk in term of aerobic/anaerobic and instead percentage of race pace. However, these regeneration runs are relatively slow and generally at the borderline between what most people would call low aerobic effort and jogging. His marathoners will run them at 2-3 minutes per mile slower than race pace. Therefore you can see the major difference between Lydiard’s base phase which is 100% in the aerobic range and Canova’s Fundamental Phase (and the phases that follow) which is 100% just outside of what Lydiard would call the aerobic range. The workouts are at the top of or just above and the regeneration runs are at the bottom of or just below the aerobic range. Of course runs above the aerobic range work both the anaerobic and aerobic metabolisms and there is no exact line between the two.

He does not believe in taking days off and says days off actually delay recovery from the intense runs. He does not believe in any long easy runs once the aerobic house has been built. The regeneration runs are short to medium in length. Long runs are always done hard and fast and count as one of the 3-4 intense workouts per week. Regeneration runs are 40-50% of volume.

He also believes women and men should be trained the same in terms of volume and intensity and only the speed will be different as it is for different men of different abilities. It should be noted that Canova believes raw speed cannot be improved to any significant extent and therefore he likes to focus on developing speed endurance and training the central nervous system to utilize what speed you have by doing explosive hill sprints. He does not believe in doing short flat sprints to work on speed as current Ethiopian pros such as Kenenisa Bekele who weekly does 10 x 60. He believes in working on all aspects of training in every phase because he says you lose what you do not use and hence the name “Fundamental” phase.

The intense days include hill running once or twice a week such as 10-20 x 60-300 meters up 15% grade (steep) on firm, not soft surface, various intervals and fast medium distance and fast long distance steady state and progression runs. However everything is run no faster than 110% of race pace or slower than 80% of race pace. He also includes circuit training - core work, jump squats and bounding and skipping etc.

Special Phase

The Special Phase is similar to the Fundamental Phase with continued high mileage and 3-4 days of intense workouts separated by regeneration runs but now the workouts are getting even closer to race pace. Longer workouts are run at 90% of race pace and shorter workouts are run at 105% of race pace (i.e. 5% faster).

Specific Phase

The Specific Phase is similar to the Special Phase with continued high mileage and 3-4 days of intense workouts separated by regeneration runs but now the workouts are basically right at race pace hence the name “Specific” phase. For example a marathon runner would do 15 miles at race pace. The end of this phase contains a taper prior to the target race.

Next Cycle

In the next cycle the runner goes back to the Fundamental Phase and repeats the 3 phases. The speed of the workouts are increased to adjust to the new level of fitness that has been attained and of course they must be increased to force an adaptive change otherwise the runner will not improve. This is the principle of super compensation.

Sample Schedule

No sample schedule can be provided without confusing the reader. Why? Canova has provided more than 50 sample schedules over the years on the internet and no two schedules are close enough to each other to be called a generic Canova schedule. He says this is because different athletes have different strengths and weakness and are training for different events and also he doesn’t like to repeat workouts very often to prevent the athlete from adapting to a specific workout rather than improving race readiness. So you need to generate your own schedule based on the boundaries of the guidelines he provides for each Phase and suit them to your own strengths and weaknesses and tailor them to your specific race distance you are training for.

Race Strategy

Pacing

Canova believes in running even to negative splits, never positive splits.

Tapering

He likes to do 40 minute easy runs both the day before and 2 days before and with the last hard workout 4 days before the “Championship Race”.

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