Good Fartlek Workouts LOOK

Good points.

Group can also mean faster runners with slower runners together.

With a bit of creativity in an "enclosed" area of sorts you can set it up so that when fast runners are recovering slower runners are speeding up, so as to have a team running together in parts without giving up their own "individual" intensity needs.

Also there's nothing saying some runners can't keep going on for longer. You know: "oh can we play just for 5 more minutes?" Would that be an ideal result for some athletes to achieve? Not quitting at the scheduled workout but feeling good enough and having fun enough to desire more? How may athletes are that motivated when they approach their workouts and how many just want to get it over and done with? Which athlete would you prefer?

Again the emphasis is on play to break the monotony and just having athletes run always by themselves or only with peers of similiar abilities.

You can destructure all you want. No harm in occasional destructuring.

So you have some knowledge you might want to share.And how are the Kenyans you have observed doing it? Is it always structured?Do the athletes perceive the necessity to implement their own motivational mechanisms or are they just doing what their coaches are telling them to do?

Officer Notta Jag wrote:

the point could be wrote:

You might want to ask Henry Rono about that.

I might... or I might want to base it off the fact that I have spent more time in Kenya in the past 10 years than Henry has.

Yes - it is always structured when they say they are doing "fartlek." However, their easy runs can vary tremendously in pace based on how they feel. I suppose you could call that a type of fartlek. Most of the guys I trained with and/or witnessed use much less recovery than in the USA. i.e. you would never really see anything like 3+ mins rest. In fact, the hard efforts themselves are usually shorter i.e. I don't recall seeing any hard effort above 3 minutes.

Easy runs: Do you mean, by feel choosing a predetermined speed to keep more or less constant for the whole session, or a variety of speeds decided while running depending on how they feel?I am thinking it must be the latter. In progression slow to fast or switching back and forth between different speeds?

Officer Notta Jag wrote:

However, their easy runs can vary tremendously in pace based on how they feel.

get it rite wrote:

Wrong. The term "interval" refers to a rest period. There is no rest during a fartlek session. Class dismissed.

Huh? In a fartlek, you run some parts faster and some parts slower. On the track doing intervals, you run some parts faster and run some parts slower. How does one have "rest" and the other not?

Obviously, there are distinctions between intervals and a fartlek (although the line is blurry, in my opinion), the existence of "rest" isn't one of them.

I meant that if they have called a day an "easy" day that could vary from sub 6 pace to 8+ mins pace depending on how their body responds. They don't force anything. To a lesser degree you could see the same thing within a single run i.e. pace changing based on how they feel. That is distinct from their fartlek though where they do use a set structure.

Thanks for your description Officer.I liked your wording so i hope you don't mind (in this particular case) if i quoted you selectively to reiterate some key characteristics of what i see as being Fartlek.

Officer Notta Jag wrote:

... depending on how their body responds...They don't force anything...pace changing based on how they feel...

So lets agree, just as an exercise, that the most important aspect of Fartlek - Speed Play - is mental, as much as it is the Play that affects the Speed.

So the word Play makes me think of Theather. Ok? Acceptable?

Lets move on. Does it bother you if i call a Fartlek a Structured Improvisation? Too contradictory?

Ok? But how can I make Drama a training tool for competitive results?

So, Running Drama. In Theater - where "performances" also take place, what comes immediately to mind is Commedia dell'Arte, where actors (Drama Athletes) with more or less established characters have only a loose "canovaccio" (narrative structure) as opposed to a set script.

They will try to act out - helped by their confidence in Improvization, an enjoyable and universal story.

So, Commedia dell' Arte = Fartlek. A training session is a theme, a possible story, a "canovaccio". But how do you do it? Really, just the first three canovacci that come to mind.

1) SOLO: like an on-stage monologue with much, frequent, creative ad libbing on a central theme. Delivery is the accelerator;

2)RUNNER and COACH: a very interactive back and forth with the coach (director), based the boundary defined by what the coach suggests and the runner believes. The best stage seems to be the track.

3)THE PACK: Like group role-playing with some dominant characters leading but also sweeping, herding if you will, the followers, the object being to be as reciprocally supportive and cohesive as a team could be.

Just free associating here. Maybe stretching the box boundaries waaaaaaaay toooooooo much. Probably impossible to even start thinking about.

DumbnessPlease wrote:

get it rite wrote:

Wrong. The term "interval" refers to a rest period. There is no rest during a fartlek session. Class dismissed.

Huh? In a fartlek, you run some parts faster and some parts slower. On the track doing intervals, you run some parts faster and run some parts slower. How does one have "rest" and the other not?

Obviously, there are distinctions between intervals and a fartlek (although the line is blurry, in my opinion), the existence of "rest" isn't one of them.

What the previous poster means is that "interval" refers to a break (rest) period. i.e the interval between halves in a football match is the "half-time" break. For some odd reason the term "interval" has been usurped to also mean repetitions of some sort, at least in America. Some claim that "intervals" are repeats where the rest period is the primary consideration (altered), whereas "repetitions" are those repeats where intensity is the primary consideration and rest is secondary (meaning it is generally longer). This is the difficulty in terminology (even in English) where idioms and words have different meanings in different cultures i.e. American English and "English" English, let alone that which is translated from German - as might be the case with Gerschler and Reindel (the authors of "Intervalle" training). When these two were doing their studies many decades ago (1930-40's), the interval segment of the equation (200m at HR180, 200m at HR120) refered to the rest period, jogging in this case).

True swedish "speed-play", the meaning of Fartlek, can be whatever you want it to be, but is generally unstructured to some degree. However, the purpose of the session has been altered in time (by some) to reflect different "adaptations". So-called (see Bowerman/Dellinger) "Polish" Fartlek was structured "time-oriented" changes of the pace/recovery dynamic (also called "Intervals" in the US). They termed Lydiard Fartlek as what might now be termed as Tempo-runs (see Daniels, etc.).

All that this shows is that the complex use of language when terminology differs can be somwehat confusing, unless one also understands the purpose (even basic physiology) of different methods of training.

From what I have been able to to find Polish Fartleks (including past LRC threads - just google with quotes) sound great!

They seem to have more to do with drills and exercises as in circuit training as opposed to unstructured, self-motivated, free, varied-speed, playful running.

As we all know, fartlek means "speed play", but that is all. Why does that mean it cannot be structured in some way? Play is often structured. A session of running hard between every other mail box has created a structure. My opinion is, it is fair to say fartlek can have structure. The biggest difference for me is that it is incorporated into a distance run rather than on a field for example, or a track, doing work/rest intervals.

For me, the term is getting at playing with your speed, some short bursts, some 80% for longer periods, etc etc. Not that it is necessarily random or unstructured.