How long do you "trust the process" for before moving on?

As a coach who works primarily with marathoners, I always say two full cycles of marathons. So if you come on-board in March and we run a fall marathon, see it through until, at least, the following fall marathon. If you don't see results as expected, you are free to do what you like. Most see results. You can also get a person who responds well to a particular type of training out of a book. Perhaps a guy who has been running lots of miles with no structure then decides to follow Daniels (no diss on his book), and makes great gains right away because they just added speedwork. Then they stagnate. And soon start saying this guy or that guy didn't work for me. The key to a good coach is knowing how to improve runners based on their weakness.

As someone in their late 30s who has been training for over 20 years "trusting the process" is relevant for most/but not limited to any type of duration. Some seasons athletes I manage, or myself you see minimal results for the season but then the next season extreme growth. If you are practicing the correct principles in training and doing event specific work, then stick it through for 2-3 seasons, if you need a new stimulus after and are stagnating , switch it up.

keep in mind, every season you are going to enter in with different needs that need to be met more than the pervious season, so slight change is always good.

Easy training and how it develops your aerobic performance is also so counterintuitive that it's violated or abandoned quickly more often than any other method. Most find it doesn't work right away (even though it's openly stated that it takes months and results are gradual), so they've basically given up on it before really starting it, because conventional wisdom and their trained instincts say you can only get better by running faster.

I would say when you have stagnated for 2+ seasons and aren’t enjoying yourself.

It depends how early into a new methodology you are. That said, I think once you have a solid basis, you should make no more than one change in your training on a yearly basis. This can be a volume increase, a new type of workout, a schedule change, etc. Early on you can do this every 3-6 months, but once again only make one change at a time. If you find yourself needing to change more than that, you either need that reminder to "trust the process", or you need to start from scratch because you made some major mistakes early on.

As far as metrics: generally the only metrics I consider are (in order of importance): health, race times, and enjoyment. Time in the market beats timing the market, and this is true for running as well; it's a long journey to the top, and there are no shortcuts. Staying injury-free is the key to making that happen. Being process-oriented is vital, but there is certainly a place for results as a validation tool. If I run 5 seconds slower per mile in every race distance from one year to the next, then ceteris paribus, my training plan got worse. This also leads into the last metric, because getting worse at running sucks. Getting better feels good. Enjoying the daily training is important too. This is one of the reasons I love double T so far - the workouts are a blast because you feel so fit and strong, you're only really straining once a week, but you still get the satisfaction of putting in huge workloads (20+ mile days twice a week every week). Most enjoyable and effective training I have tried yet!

I think regardless of training methodology these are the only metrics that matter in assessing. What surprises me is how much some people will endure in regards to the latter two in the name of "trusting the process." Again, I think a certain amount of commitment is needed to a training style and, especially for younger athletes, preaching patience needs to be reinforced sometimes to dissuade the magical idea of instant gratification. The surprise comes from people who seem to not enjoy their current training and not be reaping the race results but still feel a level of commitment to it.

I suppose that was what I was looking at in this thread and just generally seeing what people's individual feelings were. Since training is mostly a personal pursuit, I don't think many would persist long with something that wasn't making them faster or that they enjoyed (and I would certainly hope no one would persist long at all with training that was detrimental to their health) and yet some do. I am reminded of that meme I see circulating showing the man with the pickaxe turning his back on a long, dug tunnel with a view to the diamonds laying just the next layer of rock. While I often see this used for humor with messages like "keep gambling" or other such joke motivations, I do find it a good illustration of just how dogged some people can be with their training ways and how moving to something else can feel like giving up just before the promised rewards. A very interesting discussion!

That's called shallow talent. Pretty quick off low mileage due to good genetics but limited ability to improve for any number of reasons. If you don't improve on 80 mpw vs 40 mpw in the marathon, it's simply not your event.

Don’t trust your process if it involves “lactic endurance system”

Yeah time to stop trusting the process and my pathetic childish antics.

That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it.

Whats a season? Three months? Six? I mean probably need to give it a whole year but you should see improvements somewhere in one training cycle. Maybe thats speed or endurance etc. I have definitely had an athlete not respond before and change their training as I got to know them etc.

My advice is around 6-9 months. I had some success and then went to another more known coach because I wanted a more professional approach. All he did was give me harder workouts and I regressed significantly as a runner, I stayed longer than I should've and just got injured.

There are only a small number of things which work.

How much they work is determined by your genetics.

If you don't improve quickly then you lack the natural talent.

A famous new yorker changed it a bit...."verify, then trust."

Too many lying politicians when it came to the migrant crisis in ny.

Guardian Angel / Vigilante (netflix) - Curtis Sliwa

I can totally relate to this. I "trusted the process" for five years of college and only improved by .85 seconds over 5 years in the 800 (at a DI school known for producing good 800 m runners.) I was doing way more things right (better eating, sleeping, never drank) and was more consistent in running decent times, but took me 5 years to beat my HS PR by that minimal amount. I'd occasionally go back to visit my HS team and would jump in a workout with them (like over a break if it was similar to one we had planned or like after we were done for the season) and could barely keep up doing stuff that would have been much easier in HS for me. We did way more speed and strength training in college, but I felt I lacked the endurance and lactate tolerance I had from our harder HS training. The only reason I even PRed at all in my very last race was mostly shear will power and my best and last season I finally stopped listening to the coach's bad race advice telling me to go out faster and went back to my more even split approach I had success with in HS. I stayed at the school for academic reasons, but if I'd really wanted to get better at running, I probably should have either transferred to another school and team or switched to training under our sprint coach who had better results getting 800 runners who were already good in HS to improve. I eventually realized the only reason my coach was known for producing good middle distance runners was he lucked out with some really talented, but undertrained HS recruits who improved a lot under him. He had very little success getting HS standouts to improve more under him.

I noticed the opposite in that it is the coaches who prescribe regular interval workouts from the get go at paces of 5k effort etc who are the ones who keep pressurizing their athletes to "trust the process". As the group of athletes under the coach inevitably all get slower with race results declining further and further over the months, these coaches will claim things like the athletes had maxed out on their talent, that the athletes' previous training ruined them so that they could not respond to the coaches training etc. Not once will these coaches actually acknowledge that their training methods suck and every athlete under them will have to keep trusting their process in order to seriously underperform ..

This sounds a lot like my college coach. He did get a lot of people to perform, but for those where the training just wasn't working, sometimes entire event groups, he'd get defensive and try to blame it back on the athlete like ways described in your example, and refuse to make any tweaks. Then he'd go on about "trusting the process" and threaten to pull scholarships etc...so annoying.

This is actually a scenario I find tough because, even without the threats of losing scholarship, being part of a team is a big training benefit. When I started this thread I was mainly thinking of athletes trying out new training methods on their own and seeing how different people made the decision of whether to stick with it or try something new. For a college team though, that is a tougher decision. I could understand having a pretty high tolerance for "trusting the process," even in the face of poor performance and feeling, just because being on the team is a key part of the training experience.

That really is a dilemma in terms of evaluating the earlier metrics of enjoyment, performance, and healthy. On the one hand, it is undoubtedly more enjoyable to run with teammates and be in that environment for training than running solo. But then it is also not enjoyable to deal with a coach who is so autocratic with how he runs the team and to do training that isn't as effective for you. I'm curious how people in these scenarios proceeded? Is there a breaking point where you no longer feel it's worth it to put up with coach/training to be one the team or is it generally just an annoyance you try to make the best of?

If you have a smart watch then you can monitor recovery metrics like HRV, RHR, and sleep quality. Also, something like MyFitnessPal can give you amazing insights about your diet.

My point is, it might not be the running part of your training plan that is holding you back.