Wouldn't you still want EZ days for mitochondrial growth and stress support, esp. for 10k and up?
Please, please, PLEASE stop propagating the myth that lower intensity training is especially effective at enhancing mitochondrial biogenesis. It's not, full stop, something that has been known to be true since the 1960s/1970s.
(Historical tidbit: although John Holloszy is widely credited for "discovering" that endurance training increases muscle respiratory capacity - to the point of being nominated for a Nobel for his work in this area - his were not the first studies of the question. Rather, he thought that prior studies reporting no increase in response to training were simply due to an inadequate training stimulus. As research has repeatedly shown, he was correct: intensity is as, if not more, important as a driver of such adaptation, and the more well-trained you are, the harder you have to train to induce further improvement.)
Why can't both statements be true? How are you defining "low intensity training" anyway?
I always taught that a good training plan involves training regularly at every intensity in the right proportion.
For the tards with reading comprehension issues - the original suggestion - mine - was that high mileage easy days are not anywhere near as critical as T days, That's not even debate-able but somehow it still got a million down-votes.
95 percent of the IMPROVEMENT comes from the T sessions. Clearly if you left out the T sessions you wouldn't be improving at all unless you were a complete newbie. Everyone and their mother does Easy days - there's even entire programs built around them 'easy intervals' for example and for the most part they all SUCK. T sessions are what drives the improvement. Easy days are there primarily for RECOVERY from the T sessions - if you didnt need to recover you could just do T sessions every day. And ramping up mileage and/or speed on easy days is only slowing down the recovery process.
Why this is not plain as day is beyond me but whatever.
There are two guys right in a row a few pages up who are using Thresh training with basically NO easy days - they literally do NOTHING on those days - and getting the SAME type of success as Sirpoc. All that does is completely validate my point that easy days are no where near as critical as most think - especially high mileage easy days.
That's not laziness or short-cutting - it's using the brains God gave u for something other than supporting your hat.
In any case - I don't see a lot of evidence in the strava group that ANYONE is using this training other than Sirpoc. I looked at almost all of the top 100 non-private runners and checked their training and only found Sirpoc and maybe 2 or 3 other guys actually doing even a version of what he is doing. 98 percent of the strava group either does zero T sessions - or they do completely conventional training with one T session thrown in randomly every week or two.
You call everyone a ta*d and yet I don't think myself or anyone else probably has a clue what you are trying to get at???
Are you suggesting that you could get to 95% of the same success with just the sub threshold sessions and that the easy only accounts for like 5%? That's how your first post read. This current post is so non-sensical and full of pure internet rage I can't tell what you are even screaming about this time.
Just to see if this t*rd is following. Say you do the schedule outlined here......E, ST, E, ST, E, ST, Easy long and rinsed repeat versus 4 days off and 3 days sub threshold, you would be almost as good? Because you are basically saying you literally do not get anything other than recovery from the easy days.
If you could take time from your busy schedule of getting mad on the internet to maybe clarify your highly vague posts, that would be nice.
Cry more about the downotes you nerd. Nothing in your post is obvious and you provided zero arguments or sources. And you have the gall to call other people tards. You're lazy b*tch, go on then and cut the easy runs, no one here will give a sh*t.
So how do you know that the phenotypical changes observed over the long term aren't just a function of small biochemical changes that finally sum up enough to matter?
I never ran a 5k when I was a schoolboy runner. Road races just weren't a thing at the time (1970s)
However, in my mid-30s, after racing bikes for over two decades, I dabbled in duathlons a bit, and ran a bunch of them. I don't recall my exact PB, but it was around 17:15.
As you might imagine, in duathlons I would fall way behind during the first run, blast through the field on the bike, then do my best to hold on during the second run. I did ok - top amateur at a world cup race, one step off the podium at age-group worlds, etc. - but I wasn't nearly as good as folks like my friend Phil Ponebshek, who could throw down a 15 flat, not give up a huge amount of time to me on the bike, then back it up with a 15:15 or so.
Interestingly, our physiological characteristics - VO2max, threshold, fiber type - were nearly identical, but his running economy was decent, whereas I required 40% (initially) to 20% (after duathloning for a year) more energy to run at a given speed than even an untrained runner.
ETA: Phil ran for Princeton. I don't know his 5 km PB, but he was better at longer distances anyway...2:20 for the marathon (when the trials cut was 2:18).
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
Thanks Andrew. I actually appreciate what you have brought to the thread this far, and I think most people could agree with some, if not most of your points if you presented them from a place of mutual curiosity rather than superiority.
Your point about specificity and mitochondrial biogenesis is intuitive, as it doesn’t make sense for someone to get better at running by walking (extreme example). I wonder though, are there actually a few “magic” points in intensity that have a disproportionate benefit compared to other intensity levels. Would it not make sense that the point right before lactate starts rising above resting levels (LT1?) be one of these? What about the point right before time to failure starts increasing rapidly disproportionately to velocity (around LT2)?
Another question is the scale that running adaptations happen on. Do the majority take place on a local scale (in the muscle, mitochondria) or a global scale (cardio). The answer to this question decides how effective cross training is, particularly with modalities that don’t utilize running specific muscles.
I never ran a 5k when I was a schoolboy runner. Road races just weren't a thing at the time (1970s)
However, in my mid-30s, after racing bikes for over two decades, I dabbled in duathlons a bit, and ran a bunch of them. I don't recall my exact PB, but it was around 17:15.
As you might imagine, in duathlons I would fall way behind during the first run, blast through the field on the bike, then do my best to hold on during the second run. I did ok - top amateur at a world cup race, one step off the podium at age-group worlds, etc. - but I wasn't nearly as good as folks like my friend Phil Ponebshek, who could throw down a 15 flat, not give up a huge amount of time to me on the bike, then back it up with a 15:15 or so.
Interestingly, our physiological characteristics - VO2max, threshold, fiber type - were nearly identical, but his running economy was decent, whereas I required 40% (initially) to 20% (after duathloning for a year) more energy to run at a given speed than even an untrained runner.
ETA: Phil ran for Princeton. I don't know his 5 km PB, but he was better at longer distances anyway...2:20 for the marathon (when the trials cut was 2:18).
On the bike, what is your 40km/25 mile time trial PB? Whilst you are here, I am just curious. As it's the distance I have heard you talk about when associated roughly to FTP in literature. Maybe others have misunderstood or twisted your words. But genuinely interested if you have raced the distance. 10/25/50 miles is quite common in England, I know from friends I have who cycling there.
I never ran a 5k when I was a schoolboy runner. Road races just weren't a thing at the time (1970s)
However, in my mid-30s, after racing bikes for over two decades, I dabbled in duathlons a bit, and ran a bunch of them. I don't recall my exact PB, but it was around 17:15.
As you might imagine, in duathlons I would fall way behind during the first run, blast through the field on the bike, then do my best to hold on during the second run. I did ok - top amateur at a world cup race, one step off the podium at age-group worlds, etc. - but I wasn't nearly as good as folks like my friend Phil Ponebshek, who could throw down a 15 flat, not give up a huge amount of time to me on the bike, then back it up with a 15:15 or so.
Interestingly, our physiological characteristics - VO2max, threshold, fiber type - were nearly identical, but his running economy was decent, whereas I required 40% (initially) to 20% (after duathloning for a year) more energy to run at a given speed than even an untrained runner.
ETA: Phil ran for Princeton. I don't know his 5 km PB, but he was better at longer distances anyway...2:20 for the marathon (when the trials cut was 2:18).
okay so now listen up, you're applying sirpoc's training regime and easily getting that 17:15 to 15:15 in a year, deal?
Holy smokes for a 40km/25 mile that is absolutely world class for 50 years old+. Truly amazing. Absolutely smokes anything else in this thread for achievement. For real.
For the tards with reading comprehension issues - the original suggestion - mine - was that high mileage easy days are not anywhere near as critical as T days, That's not even debate-able but somehow it still got a million down-votes.
For the tards with reading comprehension issues - the original suggestion - mine - was that high mileage easy days are not anywhere near as critical as T days, That's not even debate-able but somehow it still got a million down-votes.
It is both important, easy and hard. There are numerous training intervention papers where the easy group is the loser group. Its about the right proportion of easy and hard. An easy run shall not be seen isolated. The body needs time to adopt. Supercompensation principle. It has shown in practice that after a hard day, an easy session the next day, is not the worst idea. Slow and fast twitch fibers need different time to recover. Fast twitch fibers need 48-72h to recover. Slow twitch fibers often only 24h. Thats a different recovery time.
Thats why for this Sirpoc method herein, the easy run should really easy, to recover the fast twitch fibers by basically not using them (or almost not using them). Lactate shall not rise above baseline. To be fresh on the next day. Easy days (@Alfie) also mantain fitness as the volume (training h/week or h/year) is still a key parameter in training and intensity can only compensate volume up to a point.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
What about the idea that too much quality running and not enough easy running leads to mitochondrial damage or sub-optimal functioning. Lydiard’s runners used to do a morning jog every day in addition to 100mpw of quality / steady state running. I still think those easy morning runs are what made that system successful.