DUMBEST workout you’ve done

By the way, it seems that with maybe 2 exceptions (I could be forgetting 1) these were all the fault of a school-paid coach. I certainly have never given these clowns much respect and have always wondered why everyone else does. I never had the misfortune of crossing paths with my HS track coach but (just as was the case with plenty of you) I heard he was a footbal coach who needed a Spring gig and/or felt he should keep an eye on his football crowd off-season. I never did a colossally dumb workout. I feel like refusal to be coached by (or even talk to) school coaches solves a lot of problems!

robert678 wrote:

I had a friend that said his team literally ran an all-out 5k every day in training for cross country. The coach's logic was "to get better at 5ks, you need to do 5ks." Their only warm up and cool down was jogging to and from their 5k practice route, which was only 400m away. My friend had a long serious talk with the coach one day after practice about "adding more variety" to the training. The coach said he'd sleep on it. The next day at practice, the coach told the team they'd do the 5k but in the opposite direction and gave my friend a wink and a thumbs up.

Best one so far.

Honorable mentions to the weightlifting circuit of only heavy leg lifts and 10 workouts / meets in 2 weeks.

Did a HARD run at nighttime around my neighborhood (on the road) roughly 10 hours before a big 3k - was HS indoor. Race was a colossal bomb.

I have some great tales of dumb workouts from college. My coach would make us do 4 or 5 workouts in a row the week before winter break/spring break/etc. But the dumbest workout ever was a 800, 600, 700, 500, 300, 100, 900 @ mile goal pace. Later learned coaches motivation for the arbitrary distances was the 867-5309 song by Tommy Tutone. He said he thought it sounded like a fun workout in his head. I know this sounds like a troll post but it was literally too stupid to make up.

20x800m. Rest was 1:45 jog. Coach wanted them in sub 2:15.

shouldn't the penultimate rep been 0 meters in that case? just have everybody toe the line then go, oh wait never mind be back in a minute for a 900. that would have been truly epic.

Any of the CrossFit workouts I did.

steroids wrote:

robert678 wrote:

I had a friend that said his team literally ran an all-out 5k every day in training for cross country. The coach's logic was "to get better at 5ks, you need to do 5ks." Their only warm up and cool down was jogging to and from their 5k practice route, which was only 400m away. My friend had a long serious talk with the coach one day after practice about "adding more variety" to the training. The coach said he'd sleep on it. The next day at practice, the coach told the team they'd do the 5k but in the opposite direction and gave my friend a wink and a thumbs up.

Best one so far.

Honorable mentions to the weightlifting circuit of only heavy leg lifts and 10 workouts / meets in 2 weeks.

I have another one, but from a different friend. He spent the night at a friend's house. The next morning he woke up to find that it was 10 degrees, strong winds, and snowing outside. He still wanted to go for a run, and his friend decided to bet him $20 that he wouldn't do 10 miles in under 70 minutes outside shirtless in short shorts. My friend gets back from the run with the Garmin paused at 10.00 miles as proof. He's freezing so immediately heads to take a warm shower, but soon finds out his friend turned off the hot water. When he comes out of the shower he finds his clothes missing and his friend tells them he threw them outside. As he heads outside in nothing but a towel around his waist, his friend yanks the towel off and slams the door shut and locks it, then tells my friend he lied about throwing his clothes outside. After 30 minutes of freezing outside buck naked, he finally lets my friend back inside and greets him with a snowball to the face.

My friend never hung out with that kid again, He also never got his $20 for winning the bet.

3 x (Mile, 400, 1k, 800)

Mike @ 10k pace, 400 @ mile pace, 1k @ 5k pace, 800 @ 3k pace.

This is a standard workout for some, but for me it was right after Christmas break & I had just gotten home from a two-day drive across the country. Literally hopped out the car and onto the track. Never trying that again.

Another is 16 x 200 averaging 30s w/ 200m jog recovery. Again, not that crazy, but it wasn't the right time of year or anything :D

5x400 wrote:

Middle of April - coach assigned 5x400. I asked how fast and how much rest. Coach responded “fast and as much as you need”

53-52-53-52-52 with 8 minutes rest. I was a 3:53/1:54 guy and fried the rest of the season.

That is a CRAZY workout.

robert678 wrote:

I had a friend that said his team literally ran an all-out 5k every day in training for cross country. The coach's logic was "to get better at 5ks, you need to do 5ks." Their only warm up and cool down was jogging to and from their 5k practice route, which was only 400m away. My friend had a long serious talk with the coach one day after practice about "adding more variety" to the training. The coach said he'd sleep on it. The next day at practice, the coach told the team they'd do the 5k but in the opposite direction and gave my friend a wink and a thumbs up.

Hahahahaha, that is quite insane. It’s what happens when a school just shoved someone into the coaching slot.

Set my treadmill on incline, turned around and tried to run downhill to workout my downhill running muscles.

I was at a wedding up north in the winter, and there was about 8 inches of snow on the ground. I had 16x400 at 68s with a minute rest on schedule, but of course I couldn’t do it outside.

The holiday inn had a treadmill that only went up to 10mph, so I decided that adding weight for extra resistance was the way to go. I duct-taped 5lb free weights around each ankle and did the entire workout, 16x400, on the treadmill at 10mph.

Two weeks later, I ran a huge 1500m PB, so I decided to keep training with weights on my ankles. It started with normal 2lb ankle weights, but after a couple months I got up to 12lb on each leg.

One day I was out running on a country road and got chased by a pack of wild dogs. They weren’t running that fast, but my max speed was about 10mph, so of course they caught me. They tore my achilles to shreds and I haven’t run since. That was 12 years ago.

Stay fast kids.

5K PR Sunday. Two days later I joined a group of friends doing a 3 x 2 mile workout. It was the best workout of my life with the last mile of the last rep at faster than the 5K PR pace and it felt amazing! I was toast for a long time after that. Just a really bad idea.

Midwest. 1980’s. Freezing cold winter yet the cross country team still ran outside most days.

One of our courses had us cut through part of a country club golf course.

The most stupid workout was a fartlek that led us over a frozen pond on the course.

Fortunately nobody ever drowned but the ice did crack a few times.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Played baseball for nearly 10 years before high school. Played one season in high school. Had 4 weeks of practice before first games. Coach had entire team do a timed mile every Monday until games started. To this day I have no idea how being able to run a fast mile has anything to do with running 90 ft fast, throwing, catching or swinging a bat. It did help me decide to run track the following year and become a year round runner.

It was over 30 years ago and details are fuzzy for various reasons. There was a week-long music festival in a town about 2hrs from where I was living. It was a Wednesday or Thursday and mid-day a group of cyclist friends talked me into going to see Tracy Chapman, or it may have been Cowboy Junkies, that night. So I blow off the run that afternoon, load into the back of their team van and drink beers out of the cooler on the way to the show. We arrive, catch a few bands and of course drink beer. Tracy Chapman, or it could have been Cowboy Junkies, play. We head back to the van for more beers and the 2hr drive home (yes the driver was the trip DD). Because we crossed a time zone and regained an hour on the return, I made it back to my apartment at a reasonably good hour. In all likelihood it was late. Stupidly, I decided to makeup the missed run. Sometime between 1 and 3am I’m running down the middle of a 4-lane highway that was completely void of traffic. Needing to urinate, again, I headed home after only 3 or 4 miles. I went to sleep, maybe passed out, trying to decide what date to use for the log entry.

Geez man. Did you ever end up running faster in the 8/15? I’ve run 1:51 and I definitely don’t think I could do that.

400M X3

All out,walk 1lap rest. Took me 2weeks to get take lactate outta my system