Question for Antonio Cabral

Antonio Cabral wrote:

eurodonkey

I don´t disagree with what you say...But the problem is that if you do that in group everybody went crazy...the slower runenrs ... thinks that if he runs it "the faster-the best" during the winter season, introdutory block or aerobic introdutory phase he will kill himself. Most of the times it´s what it happens.

You're right. That is exactly what happens/happened in groups which were not closely supervised. It is a mistake I made many times in my youth, and again when 'coming back' as a master a couple of years ago. You have a big group doing, say, 6x1000 on Tuesday nights (in our case usually with 200 jog), and it's a good developmental workout for the best couple of guys, but then others hammer themselves too hard trying to keep up.

By the way I'm not recommending such short recovery ratios, just saying that they were commonly written down in coaching manuals and Athletics Weekly articles when I was young in the 1980s.

Will write more later this evening..

Antonio Cabral wrote:

DO YOU SEE ANY BENEFIT, ANY INTEREST TO DO SHORT RECOVERY LENGHT, or your 1:1 ratio than LONGER RECOVERY ?

Yes. There is absolutely a benefit to doing short recovery intervals. There is a benefit to using all lengths of recovery; long, medium, and short. These are my basic guidelines:

Short Recovery. I generally use short recovery intervals for two types of training.

If the purpose is to do a large amount of work at or slightly above lactate threshold, I may have my athletes do 5-6 x 1200 with 1 min recovery. We would do this at a pace that is significantly slower than 5k race pace. We will do this a lot in the early cross country season. We do this instead of standard tempo runs because it is usually very hot when we train in late summer and early fall.

We may also use short recovery if we are performming short intervals at race pace. For example, early in the season, my athletes may do 16 x 200 with 30 seconds recovery. Most of my athletes will run these in 35-42 seconds. The goal is to run the 16x200 @ 1 mile race pace. This allows us to get a larger amount of training time at race pace AND get an aerobic stimulus. If we were to do an equal volume but in longer repetions 8 x 400, we would have to take a longer recovery (maybe a 1:2 ratio) and much of the aerobic stimulus would be lost.

I use an 1:1 ratio when we do longer intervals. I gave the example earlier of a 3k runner doing 6 x 800 @ 3k pace. This could also include a 5k runner doing 5 x 1200 @ 5k pace with 3-4 minutes recovery. These are the workouts that my athletes usually feel are the "hardest". I usually won't use these types of workouts until the athletes are getting close to their top shape for the season. In reality, we won't use these very much, because during the American high school season, we race on a weekly basis. By the time the athletes are getting in good enough shape to benefit from this type of training, we are already racing a lot, so I don't have them do so many "hard" workouts. We will do this type of interval training more during cross country season than during track.

We use longer recovery ratios in a couple of circumstances.

Early in the season, I may be trying to teach the athlete to run longer intervals or repetitions without mentally breaking down. We may have a 3k (actually 3200m here in USA) runner do 4 x 1k @ 3200m goal race pace, taking recoveries of 5-6 min or for a 1600m runner, we may do 4 x 600 @ goal pace, still taking recoveries of 5-6 min. Let's say I have a runner who is capable of 4:40 for 1600. Earlier in the season, he may have been running workouts like 16x200 @ 35-36 seconds with 30 seconds recovery. My athletes ususally think that type of workout is not that hard. However, when we lengthen the repetion, the athletes feel it is very hard, so in order for the athlete to be able to accomplish the longer repetion, the rest has to increase much more than the actuall running length.

Late in the season, we will use long recoveries in order to allow a quality running intervals without the athlete becoming too fatigued. During cross country season, we may run 3 x 1000 @ 3k pace using a 5-6 minute recovery period. This would be considered an easy maintainence workout, rather than a workout where the athlete is trying to still build fitness.

I´m from the old school, the one of training methdology and training nomenclature, that´s why i name special and specific, and not lacatate whatever, or threshold whatever.

The kind of workouts that you wote, i know that were done in Britain and some other countries, that are the good old training school.

The did aerobic training, many miles but they did include fast training, special training, specific training, speed training in their training programs.

We could have been further improve from the 80s till today, rich methdodology development from there to today, but somehow this was lost, we need to recover what´s good from the past to build the modern training.

If you look back to Dave Bedford, 27:30 in 1974, to what he did, 100 to 200miles of training what by the way is too much and he couldn´t carry on and injured, but what he did it was volume mileage training but he also did intervals in every phase of the season.

If you look back to Brendan Foster or some others they did the type of intervals you wrote without miss the mileage aerobic runs. I could name many more runners and the training they did because i read Atheletics Weekly since the early 70s.

The problem is that some people become crazy, they got out of every proper training, they lost good-sense. They did imagine that "as-fast-as-best" is the rich training. They did imagine that while copy Coe´s father or every other low mileage training they will be as good as Seb, or win over Seb. many talents were spoiled by poor training. It wss hip to train like Seb. Some people fo today still have Coe training as the must.

Then, the physiologists with weired training conclusions take from poor protocolls experiments took wrong conclusions from the wrong universe of runners. Weired conclusions like low mileage and top intensity or the absence of intensity, top speed, strength and weight training to the distance events, some of that wrong training did ruin the past rich distance training approach, instead of natural progress of the training methodology.

I guess that in many coutries, the top reference is still Sebastian Coe training.

Eurodonkey. You might do intervals, short recovery or you don´t. But the rule that says that if the pace of your intervals is faster you need more lenght recovery, but if the pace of your intervals is slower, then you can approach that intervals with shorter recovery. If the intervals are fast but short-distance you can work with short recovery, but if the intervals are done fast but long distance, you need long lenght recovery. Simple and logic as that. From here to change one to 2,3 or 4 of the 4 interval variants, this is training individualisation.

4 variants

1= pace

2= lenght interval recovery

3= single distance set

4= total distance of sets

Antonio Cabral wrote:

They did imagine that while copy Coe´s father or every other low mileage training they will be as good as Seb, or win over Seb. many talents were spoiled by poor training. It wss hip to train like Seb. Some people fo today still have Coe training as the must.

I am pretty sure that what he actually did was not so strange. To some extent his father believed in keeping others in the dark about the training, but the mileages were probably normal if you assume that they didn't bother recording morning jogs, warmups etc. You get world class milers anywhere between 60 and 90 miles per week.

I have some knowledge of the winter and track sessions he was doing at the end of his career (I trained with him on Sunday mornings in 1987/1988, and Peter was often there). His abilities were incredible, but the sessions were typical specific training for 800+1500. And if you read Peter Coe's books closely, they can be interpreted to agree very closely indeed with the training you are recommending here.

Strangely, the Coe 'low mileage myth' seems to offend a lot of people on Letsrun.com, yet Lagat running world class 5000s at 60mpw doesn't seem to bother anyone.

Thank you kindly for answering my question. I am quite interested in reading all of your ideas and appreciate the responses you have provided to all these questions. You are quite generous with your time and energy.

Seems we may have some shared history. I did get a chance to visit Sporting Clube de Portugal years back when on a visit to an old friend Peter Fonseca, 2:12 marathon, who is now a Canadian politician. I was on assignment and had lived in Europe for two years and so it was easy for me to travel around.

He was living in Cascais back at that time (1990-91) and was training with the club. I had a chance to visit the training grounds as well as the stadium and met Fernando Mamede on a run there on the grass fields.

I enjoyed Lisboa and the surrounding areas, and would have liked to visit more of the country.

All the best Antonio.

My intention is not comment on Peter Coe and D. Martin training, or start a Seb training discuss, i just did my opinion about one post question. But i don´t fear to comment on that training.

First of all, i don´t say that Peter training is not right, mainly because i can´t deny Seb´s huge success. Only one ignorant can be “blind” to what Seb did.

My main target is Seb training in the british training context, and the influence of that training spread all over the world.

However if you ask me what training i prefer from Steve Ovett, Dave Moorcroft, Steve Cram or Brebdan Foster from the 72-76 early period whe he was a 15000m-3000m-5000 middle distance specialist, i prefer all that to Seb´s training, and i had my arguments to my choice.

One of the aspects of history of the middle and long distance analysis and study is that we might go deeply than write the history of success. For example. Paavo Nurmi training was not the best of that period. Roger Bannister Frank Stampfl training wasn´t the best training of that period. Percy Cerutti Herb Elliott training isn´t the best training of that period. These were runners with great talent that were winners, did huge success but in the methodology analysis their training wasn´t the best of each period.

The history of training methodology shall be revisited and re-write. It´s something similar as the universal history, it´s not universal history, it´s just the history of the winners , of dominant civilizations along the past times.

What want to say about Coe´s training is that is a breakthrough from the binomial speed/intensity/anaerobic versus quantity/extensively/aerobics. Resistance is the main quality of the training to abler to run faster. Then both speed and endurance do the same importance as training direction.

I can´t comment what Coe´s did that is secret, i just might comment about Peter and martin training they wrote in the books. I don´t say that Coe did low mileage, i really don´t know if he did 50-70-100-120 or 150 miles per week. I DON`T BUY THAT STEVE DID LOW MILEAGE, i don´t buy that one. I just try to see what are the resuklt of his training, and i see that Coe´s training fits very well on middle distances but not in long distances as well.

Let´s admit that Coe did 120 miles, this doesn´t chanmge my opinion. What i can say is that Peter denies the interest of aerobics high mileage to favor high anaerobic intensity. It´s all written in Pete and Martin book.

Just see the result of that training. To emphasis in anaerobic training is demonstrate by the inability to Coe perform on longer distances. I know...I know. Seb never did interest in compete in long distances, but however if Seb´s training did strong aerobic enhance with his kind of training he was quite “obeyed” to run fast 5000m and 10000m as well as cross. So, what i see. I see one training that works for the middle distance events (800-1500-2000m up to 3000m eventually ) where the anaerobic power and aerobic condition is prevalent, the it´s not as good for long distance events where the aerobic is prevalent.

This doesn´t happen with classic british training like is the Cram or Morcrooft or Ovett training. All this runners were able to run long runs than the middle distance.

So, what is the wrong part of all this. The wrong part is when british coaches and runners, coaches and runners all over the world they did imagine that by training something similar to Seb´s training they will improve in long distance events. I´ve seen some long distance, cross, road, marathon runners training like Seb did. Just see how is kind the training of some runners from the BM club, namely the ones that were coached by Frank Horwill, that is a kind of second-father, kind of guru of the Coe´s method. I know some runners that ask for advice in Sir Frank, and they were smashed by training speed, kind of flat out all the time. The parody is Frank´s marathon training – 40-50 miles and fast workouts every new day on.

In my opinion the rich distance training is not the one that thinks that high mileage is interesting than speed/intensity, neither the training that thinks that speed is interesting than mileage, neither the training that thinks that aerobic is more important than an aerobics or vice-versa. Both speed /intensity/quality/anaerobic and quantity/extensive/endurance/aerobics BOTH DO THE SAME INTEREST, the same importance.

Greetings, and keep on your good memories while training with Coe.

Great posts on this thread Antonio.

In trying to develop training guidelines, what often troubles myself is when to include race specific work.

I think I understand that you stress the importance of the specific work and that it must be done as soon as possible.

What I have been told numerous times is that too much lactate work, or work under acidosis, damages aerobic ability heavily.

Therefore regarding Specific work, is the goal to progress it so it is not heavily lactate inducing at first, such as shorter repeats and then moving to longer as "peaking" time approaches?

But I assume even if aerobic ability is being hurt, but the athlete is racing better, than that is successful, but then the question is how long can that be kept up?

Thanks in advance.

When you build one training program, be early phase or late phase of periodisation, whatever, the workout sequence doesn´t need to be done with specifc workouts exclusively.

The workout sequence might include specific workouts as well as special or generic.

The organisation of every "non-linear" and non-fragmental training periodisation can have multiple zones of workout stimulus during the same period.

Besides we can think bout the same workout unit/session and one single session might cover a large spectrum of paces from aerobic to anaerobic, from special to specific.

Imagine this workout session. Just one example. 2Xmile/90% 10k pace + (5min recovery) + 4X1000m/10k pace + (5min recovery) + 6X200m/110% 10k pace out + (5min recovery)+ 8X10secs hills rec=long recovery.

This workout example covers multiple range of pace in one single workout.

We might train every kind of stimulus at any moment, all depends how much dosage percent of every kind of training.

Don´t fear anaerobic training if it´s done in parcimony and with the necessary period of regeneration after that is done.

It´s just an urban myth that aerobic training "kills" the anaerobic and the anaerobic kills the aerobic. What might kills any kind of fragmental zone of shape condition is the miss of some training type.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Imagine this workout session. Just one example. 2Xmile/90% 10k pace + (5min recovery) + 4X1000m/10k pace + (5min recovery) + 6X200m/110% 10k pace out + (5min recovery)+ 8X10secs hills rec=long recovery.

So combining paces on one workout is as or more effective than if each was done alone on separate days?

Because I want to keep it to 2 workouts a week, but with a tempo and special intervals, that is already 2.

Would the hills serve the same purpose and be as effective if done after such a special run or should they be done solely as a workout in themselves on another day?

Thanks.

It´s not more or less efective to run one single interval distance or one workout pace zone target than 2 or 3 whatever. It´s as effective in both ways.

The benefit of doing multiple-pace it´s that permits to run more than 2 pace zones, while keep the norm of 2 hard workouts per week, what is really vital in my opinion. In my opionion if you don´t confine to 2 hard week workouts maximum sparsely one of the other by at least 2 days of aerobic runs you don´t get enough overcompensation.

The natural sequence of the workout pace is from the slow ones to the fast ones, or aerrobic ones to anaerobic ones.

However in some specific cases it might be changes the order of te sequence.

If you think that every kind of effort (be special, specific, be intrevals, hills what so ever) might be not so effective put after or in between other kind of effort, then the solution is to have a very long recovery before to run the next workout. Example: instead of 5min recovery in between efforts you might use 20-30-60min recovery if you think that quite complete recovery able to more productive and efficient workout profit.

In my opinion very solution can be implemented to avoid more than 2 workouts per week, or 3 workouts in 10 days.

On the subject of Coe and his mileage and what works for different people; perhaps because he had a lot of natural speed, low 22 for 200m he could get more benefit from low to medium mileage than runners who don't have natural speed?

Since Jon brought it up, I will pile on to get Antonio's thoughts. While it depends on what Jon means by "a lot of natural speed", when I read Coe's book long ago, I got the opposite impression. Jon is focused on Coe's low 22 for 200m as showing natural speed. What struck me was that, when younger, looking at the graphs in the book, Coe was better at longer distances rather than shorter.

That might be one way to show not so much natural speed but rather speed developed by neuromuscular practice as Jon so often supports. I lean toward the idea that Coe developed his speed with huge amounts of neuromusclar and other gym work. He could get away with slightly less mileage because not only did he do so much that he was too tired to run but also because he had more natural endurance than speed.

I don´t know how much mileage Coe did, if it´s low mileage, high mileage, whatever.

I just say it´s impossibe to run 1:41.73, 3:29.77 or 3:47.33, world records, and olympic wins with just "natural speed". No way. It requires hard training !

Wha? He had low 22 speed, he sometimes trained with sprinters. But that kind of speed is genetics plus training. Bekele could do all the speedwork he wanted but he would never run anywere near that fast, just as Coe could never have run low 26 for 10000, maybe high 27?

Yes he worked very hard on his endurance, and he also desperately wanted to be the best in the World at 800, 1500 and the mile.

Your question about intervals is divided in 2 main interval kinds, specific intervals and special intervals.

Specific intervals. Let´s take your example (20x200m, 10-12x400m, 6x800m). Let´s imagine that your goal is to run 5k in 15:00min. The specific workout that you want to run for that purpose it´s your 6X800m. This is top specific, long intervals. Let´s think that on your top shape condition you resist to this 6X800m workout with 3min/stand and walk recovery. To run 6X800m your 5k race pace each 800m is done in 2:24.

Then your 5k specific workout is 6X800m/2:24 average rec=3min/stand and walk. Remember that 6X800m is 4.8k total

HOWEVER YOUR SHAPE CONDITION IS NOT VERY GOOD and you can´run 6X800m yet because you are in the early season, but you want to run one workout that does some specificity.

The solution ? Try to run the same total distance but short sets. For example you try 12X400m in 72secs average. It´s the ssme total distance 12X400m = 6X800m = 4.6k , it´s the same 5k race pace, but it´s easier. To maintain the level of stimula AS YOU DID REDUCE EACH SET TO AN HALF (400m is 1/2 of 800m) YOU SHALL REDUCE THE INTERVAL RECOVERY TO AN HALF LENGTH. half of 3:00min it´s 1:30min (or 90secs)

Your 400m workout goes like this: 12X400m/72secs average rec=90secs.

Now imagine that you are in the early season and 12X400m is still very tuff to run. Follow the nsame logic you can try

24X200m for 36secs with 45secs intreval recovery or 16X300m in 54secs average (still 15:00min 5k pace) and with 70secs (67.5secs if you want accurate recovery calcul).

Think that you are familiar with 12X400m, but not ready yet to 6X800m. You can try 8X600m for 1:48 average (still 15:00m 5k pace) and with 2:15 interval recovery this time.

Actually if yoiu follow my interval training logic, you have a large range of intreval training design to fit your need. Example: 8X400m/72ses rec=90secs+ 7X200m/36secs rec=45secs or 1X800m+5X400m+10X200m. Just examples.

Then, as soon as the shape conditioon improves you do the opposite move, from short SPECIFIC intervals to long intervals

All this workouts aren´t as specific as 6X800m. Eventually more specific would be 3X1600m (mile)=4.8k total distance or 4X1200m = 4.8K or even 2X2000m+1X800m. But this very long distances would be very hard or impossible to run at race pace.

This the logic of progressive specific workouts from early to late season.

Now teh Speecial workouts, be both type, faster or slower than race pace are done with different logic.[/quote]

Antonio,

Your explanation about specific intervals was very helpful, however you didn't explain the logic of special workouts at faster than race pace.

Is the purpose of these workouts purely mechanical?

If this is the case, could I take as much recovery as necessary to complete the set?

Or is there also a metabolic element?

If this is the case should the recovery time be limited?

If so, how much recovery would you suggest for the workouts you suggested at the beginning of this thread?

(10-12x400m @105-110%RP and 20x200m @110-115%RP)

I look forward to reading your response

Many thanks

Tom

Antonio Cabral wrote:

In special pace (that does some percent of specificity) you have 2 different pace approaches, one faster than race pace, te second one slower than race pace:

1/One approach is FASTER THAN RACE PACE, while do short intervals to hold on that fast pace: Example for Tom. 10-12X400m/72-75secs (approx. 105-110% faster than race pace) or 20X200m/32-35secs (approx. 110-115% race pace). As you might understand as shorter is the interval set, faster can be the pace. All this can be done with short length interval recovery, active recovery as first choice).

Specifically how much recovery would you recommend for these intervals? and what would be a typical progression of sessions in this phase? (20x200m, 10-12x400m, 6x800m) or would you suggest a more gradual approach?

Also could you provide details of a typical progression of the intervals at slower than race pace in the special phase? (interval distance and recovery duration)

Many thanks

Tom[/quote]

Your question about intervals is divided in 2 main interval kinds, specific intervals and special intervals.

Specific intervals. Let´s take your example (20x200m, 10-12x400m, 6x800m). Let´s imagine that your goal is to run 5k in 15:00min. The specific workout that you want to run for that purpose it´s your 6X800m. This is top specific, long intervals. Let´s think that on your top shape condition you resist to this 6X800m workout with 3min/stand and walk recovery. To run 6X800m your 5k race pace each 800m is done in 2:24.

Then your 5k specific workout is 6X800m/2:24 average rec=3min/stand and walk. Remember that 6X800m is 4.8k total

HOWEVER YOUR SHAPE CONDITION IS NOT VERY GOOD and you can´run 6X800m yet because you are in the early season, but you want to run one workout that does some specificity.

The solution ? Try to run the same total distance but short sets. For example you try 12X400m in 72secs average. It´s the ssme total distance 12X400m = 6X800m = 4.6k , it´s the same 5k race pace, but it´s easier. To maintain the level of stimula AS YOU DID REDUCE EACH SET TO AN HALF (400m is 1/2 of 800m) YOU SHALL REDUCE THE INTERVAL RECOVERY TO AN HALF LENGTH. half of 3:00min it´s 1:30min (or 90secs)

Your 400m workout goes like this: 12X400m/72secs average rec=90secs.

Now imagine that you are in the early season and 12X400m is still very tuff to run. Follow the nsame logic you can try

24X200m for 36secs with 45secs intreval recovery or 16X300m in 54secs average (still 15:00min 5k pace) and with 70secs (67.5secs if you want accurate recovery calcul).

Think that you are familiar with 12X400m, but not ready yet to 6X800m. You can try 8X600m for 1:48 average (still 15:00m 5k pace) and with 2:15 interval recovery this time.

Actually if yoiu follow my interval training logic, you have a large range of intreval training design to fit your need. Example: 8X400m/72ses rec=90secs+ 7X200m/36secs rec=45secs or 1X800m+5X400m+10X200m. Just examples.

Then, as soon as the shape conditioon improves you do the opposite move, from short SPECIFIC intervals to long intervals

All this workouts aren´t as specific as 6X800m. Eventually more specific would be 3X1600m (mile)=4.8k total distance or 4X1200m = 4.8K or even 2X2000m+1X800m. But this very long distances would be very hard or impossible to run at race pace.

This the logic of progressive specific workouts from early to late season.

Now teh Speecial workouts, be both type, faster or slower than race pace are done with different logic.[/quote]

REPOSTED THIS, AS ANTONIO'S QUOTE WASN'T CLEAR AND IN THE HOPE THAT HE REPLIES

Antonio,

Your explanation about specific intervals was very helpful, however you didn't explain the logic of special workouts at faster than race pace.

Is the purpose of these workouts purely mechanical?

If this is the case, could I take as much recovery as necessary to complete the set?

Or is there also a metabolic element?

If this is the case should the recovery time be limited?

If so, how much recovery would you suggest for the workouts you suggested at the beginning of this thread?

(10-12x400m @105-110%RP and 20x200m @110-115%RP)

I look forward to reading your response

Many thanks

Tom

God Damn, this is a great thread. Just sayin.