Antonio Cabral Training System

wolde wrote:

And what happens if he didn´t tell the truth about his 1.500m time? Are you telling the truth here all the time with different nicknames? I don´t think so...

What happens when someone, who probably never even ran a 5 min mile, claims that they held a national record over an Olympic distance in a country that was a major distance running power in the 70s and 80s? They look completely ridiculous and lose all of their credibility with respect to distance running.

I have only posted under one name on this thread. You started the thread hoping to find some cheerleaders for Antonio’s training system and instead you have several posters who are revealing facts that show this is a training system to avoid. Your posts are not exactly helping your case either.

Hanzo wrote:

otter wrote:

Not true. Slow twitch runners recover faster and build less H+ than fast twitch because their mitochondria mass is more and type 1 atheletes are generally not capable of producing and accumulating as much H+ as type 2 athletes.

That's a good explanation. I'm doing lactate threshold tests every year, and some participants struggle to get up to 4 mmol. Lactate doesn't cause fatigue itself, but highly correlates with fatigue by-products like H+ ions. I (heavily FT) usually get to 10 mmol in the mile-reps, and then finish with a 400 where I reach around 16.

This is all about muscle fibers - slowtwitch athletes simply don't have a strong anaerobic system to rely on and can't produce much lactate/H+ etc. That's also why they often get outkicked in races, they simply don't have the 400m speed and anaerobic capacity that's necessary to finish races strong.

Kipchoge and Bekele are/were slow twitch runners and they finished strongly. Yes they had poor top speed compared to sprinters, 8 meters per second compared to 12 m/s, but they can hold that speed or very close to it for most of the last lap.

wolde wrote:

Here Mo Farah´s training:

Mo Farah - Training - 120mpw - 192km

Mon - 20km mod - 78min

15 km easy - 64min

Tue - Track 15km - 2km warm-up+cool-down at 5:00/km +

6x1km in 2:26,2:27,2:28,2:28,2:31,2:41, 5' easy jogging between reps

10km easy - 43min

Wed - 20km easy - 86min

15km easy - 64min

Thu - Track 25km - 2km warm-up+cool-down at 5:00/km +

15x1km in 2:45/km, 2' easy jogging between reps

Fri - 20km easy - 86min

15km easy - 64min

Sat - 40km long progression run at 3:26/km

(first 10k at 3:40/km,10-20k 3:29/km,20-30k 3:21/km,30-40k 3:14/km)

Sun - REST

That 6 x 1k would have been 2.41, 2.31, 2.28, 2.28, 2.27, 2.26 getting faster with each effort not slower.

That's correct, BUT Magness has done research and found a study that showed that many top-level Kenyan's are able to reach a lactate steady state (MASS) during the middle of a 5k or 10k. That means they are cruising around at 28 minute 10k speed, and have their full anaerobic tank left for the kick.

That's why ST athletes often outkick FT athletes in longer races, because the FT guys need to use their anaerobic system already just to keep up with the freaking cruising speed of the ST athletes. Then the FT has nothing left at the end for a kick, despite faster 400m and 800m times.

One good example of this is when Drew Hunter managed to beat Grant Fisher - Fisher has 48 sec 400m speed compared to Drew's 51 sec. Yet Drew won some races, because he started his kick early and caused many problems for Grant to keep up with him and then Grant didn't have enough left in his tank at the end to use his superior anaerobic abilities.

Yes, the more fast twitch guys will use more energy at any given pace, so they have less reserve at the end of a 5k or 10k.

I notice that the amazing finishing speed of runners like Kipchoge and Bekele leads most posters here to believe that they could run sub 50 in a 400m race. They find it impossible to believe that they can actually run the last lap close to their all out 400m pace. So they attribute much greater top speed/100m speed to these guys than they actually have. It's like they don't understand that the top guys have a much higher level of fitness. Weird!

yes, but wrote:

Yes, the more fast twitch guys will use more energy at any given pace, so they have less reserve at the end of a 5k or 10k.

I notice that the amazing finishing speed of runners like Kipchoge and Bekele leads most posters here to believe that they could run sub 50 in a 400m race. They find it impossible to believe that they can actually run the last lap close to their all out 400m pace. So they attribute much greater top speed/100m speed to these guys than they actually have. It's like they don't understand that the top guys have a much higher level of fitness. Weird!

Exactly, FT runners also produce way more lactate at any pace. Even at my recovery pace, I already have 2 mmol, whereas slow-twitch runners can run even faster paces at 1 mmol.

Our strong anaerobic system in a sense makes up for our weak aerobic system, at any pace (except all out sprints).

Most 5-10k races are very tactical. The elite slow-twitch runners BARELY build up any acidosis before the last lap, that's why they can run very close to their maximum on their final lap.

wolde wrote:

Here Mo Farah´s training:

Thank you!

If I might ask, what is the date of this training, and the source that you got it from?

I don´t believe Kipchoge and Bekele are true slow twitch runners. I rather think they are like the majority of the population: have a mix of both. I read somewhere that world class ultra runner Jonas Buud (2nd in both Comrades and UTMB) never broke 30 in the 200.

well,, wrote:

I don´t believe Kipchoge and Bekele are true slow twitch runners. I rather think they are like the majority of the population: have a mix of both. I read somewhere that world class ultra runner Jonas Buud (2nd in both Comrades and UTMB) never broke 30 in the 200.

We don't know. Since we don't know

1) Their 60m fly, 200m, 400m or 800m times

2) Their exact % distribution due to a muscle biopsy (hurts a lot)

3) Their lactate levels at a given pace

anything we could do is guess. Average human is 50:50, top class sprints are 65-85% FT (MHC IIx and MHC IIa).

Top sprinters have up to 24% MHC IIx, the fastest fibers possible, whereas normal people only have 1-2%.

Cheetah's have 75% MHC IIx, and reach speeds of 125 km/h (80 mp/h).

Why is this important? Because I ALSO think that Kipchoge and Bekele are predominantly ST (60-80%), and that their 400m or even 200m all-out times wouldn't be much faster than the 51-52s they have already closed some 5/10k races with.

That was before chicago marathon, I don't know how many weeks before.

I'm also more slow twitch runner and I achieve great results without intervals. Here I wanted to say that we have to train runners taking into account their fiber type. Not everybody needs intervals to race fast. Slow twitch runners can run very fast with mileage, hilly runs, tempo runs (MP) and some races. They don't need fast intervals like 800m-1k-2k....sure they can do those, but they can race fast without them. RACES are SPEEDWORK for slow twitch runners. Good luck.

I found that if I ran about 10k before an interval training session it was better training because we are tying to run the same pace using less energy. That's what makes us fitter and stronger. Look at how the East Africans train at altitude. They are running faster than us with less oxygen uptake.

wolde wrote:

I'm also more slow twitch runner and I achieve great results without intervals. Here I wanted to say that we have to train runners taking into account their fiber type. Not everybody needs intervals to race fast. Slow twitch runners can run very fast with mileage, hilly runs, tempo runs (MP) and some races. They don't need fast intervals like 800m-1k-2k....sure they can do those, but they can race fast without them. RACES are SPEEDWORK for slow twitch runners. Good luck.

This has little to do with what Cabral proposed regarding training and it is very different from what you were claiming at the start of this thread saying that Europeans knew how to use intervals/repetitions with every type of runner. What you wrote here is much closer to what coaches such as Tinman (see his posts about a runner named "Mike") and Lydiard have proposed as a means of training runners. So no wonder you had good results following the principles of 2 solid coaches.

I agree to some extent. I don't know if he is the best coach but his discussion with HADD in the thread "2 kinds of runners" ABSOLUTELY blew my mind.

After that thread I really did think better of Antonio Cabral because he can sometimes be harsh. However, that's also the beauty - He does care not about your opinion. He kinds of rocks the boat and some (Americans?) does not like it one bit.

it's interesting

Geneser wrote:

. I don't know if he is the best coach but his discussion with HADD in the thread "2 kinds of runners" ABSOLUTELY blew my mind.

After that thread I really did think better of Antonio Cabral because he can sometimes be harsh. However, that's also the beauty - He does care not about your opinion. He kinds of rocks the boat and some (Americans?) does not like it one bit.

Antonio was almost the "perfect troll" on English-language running message boards in that he managed to get so many people to believe that he was an elite coach in Europe. He invented some sort of Internet personality of himself where he claimed to be a former elite athlete who held the Portuguese record over 1500m in the 1970s and that he later coached some Olympic athletes. Absolutely none of this was even remotely close to the truth and what is amazing is that so many message-board readers actually believed him without ever checking up on his claims for themselves (something that would take 5 minutes today using Google and Google Translate). I suppose that people who tell such huge outrageous lies are actually quite rare in the running community so this is something that many people will not automatically check.