On a more useful note, as the thread has been quite active lately and I'm guessing people are thinking more about muscle tone, has anyone found a really practical way to use it or measure it day to day? I've re-read Bakken's thoughts on it and I wonder how the information can be used, sourced or even applied. Maybe I'm an idiot but I feel I do need a real idiots guide to it.
For me, I think of it it as, "do my muscles feel more stressed during activities of daily living than usual". Going up/down stairs, getting up out of chair while at work, etc.
I also like to use the foam roller as a "gauge". If my muscles are less "pliable" or essentially "move around" more, or are more resistant to manipulation, then the muscle tone is higher. In other words, an internal question I ask is "how much of a brick do my quad muscles feel like today". It's all relative to what your norm as an individual is, of course. But I have found that the days I have less sleep, or my sleep has been poor over multiple days, my muscle are much tighter, or "toned".
Adding on, yes, I poke and prod at my muscles. But I'm equally a nerd about physiology, so it's interesting to me how my muscles feel different on a day-to-day basis and how those respective "tones" affect things down the chain LOL
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
For me, I think of it it as, "do my muscles feel more stressed during activities of daily living than usual". Going up/down stairs, getting up out of chair while at work, etc.
I also like to use the foam roller as a "gauge". If my muscles are less "pliable" or essentially "move around" more, or are more resistant to manipulation, then the muscle tone is higher. In other words, an internal question I ask is "how much of a brick do my quad muscles feel like today". It's all relative to what your norm as an individual is, of course. But I have found that the days I have less sleep, or my sleep has been poor over multiple days, my muscle are much tighter, or "toned".
Adding on, yes, I poke and prod at my muscles. But I'm equally a nerd about physiology, so it's interesting to me how my muscles feel different on a day-to-day basis and how those respective "tones" affect things down the chain LOL
How your muscles feel is not necessarily the interesting stuff.
The interesting question is, what do you do if they feel either more or less tense than expected?
Mechanical load .. This is the hobby jogger segment .. You know, middle aged guys with jobs and obligations outside of running.
He briefly touches on it in the recent appearance on FOD Runner's youtube/podcast.
Basically he doesn't believe his body can handle running doubles, so he "cheats" with replacing a run with a bike ride, which is significantly easier to recover from.
On a more useful note, as the thread has been quite active lately and I'm guessing people are thinking more about muscle tone, has anyone found a really practical way to use it or measure it day to day? I've re-read Bakken's thoughts on it and I wonder how the information can be used, sourced or even applied. Maybe I'm an idiot but I feel I do need a real idiots guide to it.
Since a few weeks back, I use a 10-step scale (it's overkill, but just so it matches the RPE scale) using the stair test basically. Always in the morning at about the same time after waking up, before breakfast. Barefoot. I feel how the legs feel when walking up the stairs, both 1 stair step at a time and 2 steps. I feel how "springy" the legs feel by skipping up the stairs. Then I make a score based on the feel and attach it to the training notes for that day. Takes about 30 seconds total.
I think Sirpoc used a similar score for how the legs feel. He mentioned it in his book or in this thread, IIRC?
The morning after the sub-T, the score can vary a lot and that now guides me if I should take it even more easy on the easy day, or if I can stay closer to 70% HRMax. The morning of a sub-T day, the score must be really low, otherwise I need to run a bit slower in the sub-T session.
I'm always curious if anyone found other approaches.
Yes, sorry. This is what I meant. Why not just double run? Why bother bike?
Mainly because my body can't handle it. When I talk about the impact of load being the primary driver of gains, that can come from the increased load itself generating progress, or from the load being too high or creating too much fatigue, making training unsustainable or risky. For me, running double workouts just adds too much risk.
I've tried a few times now to run somewhere around LT1 in the morning (slower than Marathon effort on the treadmill) with the intention of doing a more traditional (by my standards) sub-threshold run in the evening. This is where some of the muscle tone talk carries over but in my much simpler terms.
I have never made it to the second workout, as LFS (I'm trying my best to make this catch on, haha) is just too high by the evening—even after a very dialed-back running session in the morning, I then just end up having to cycle or call it good for the day. My legs just feel worse, more damaged still by the evening. Not up to the standard I would expect going into a running workout where the fatigue needs to be minimal (obviously much less risk cycling), leading to the risk being minimal, or at least greatly reduced, and being able to absorb the load properly.
It's frustrating, as I would love to give it a few months, but I'm highly doubtful I would survive it. This might be personal to me. It might be because I'm quite active for 8 hours a day in between, or it might be for other reasons. All in all, I think it would send me down a path of much higher risk. This certainly doesn't mean I don't think people should do it—in fact, for some people it's the most logical step. Maybe if I was younger and my body recovered better, like it did when I was playing football 20+ years ago, I'd have a chance. Maybe even at 40+ if I could rest, or even just sit on my a**e all day, that would help. This is also where coaches can work with athletes to figure out what they can handle and what they can't, within the framework of the whole idea being about controlling intensity and fitting in as much load as you can (however you approach looking at load) in the time you have available in a consistent manner.
That might be some stuff I've talked through with FOD, about little things he can do to fit it into the fact he can only run 5 days. Or Cheetodust, who like me, if he ran double workouts on foot twice a week, might crumble as he's old as f**k like me. So again, for him, cycling might provide that last bit he can gain. Possibly, for someone like Wigglewaffle who is a bit younger and has bigger goals, I could see how double running could fit in at some point further down the line. The one thing I will say—and the hill I'll still probably die on—is that you probably don't need to worry about this for a while if you've only started this even in the last 12 months. That 4x easy and 3x sub-threshold probably fits a large range of people pretty optimally and spreads the risk and fatigue out over a week if you have all 7 days available. Even then, after this is maxed out, the next move is going to need to be adaptive per individual.
Much like with faster work: if people can handle it and carry the usual minimal fatigue or low LFS, absolutely do it. LFS for me I think of on like an RPE scale. Where 10/10 is how you feel the next 48 hours after a marathon being the max and you barely can walk up and downstairs or even get up from taking a s**t. I'm looking for LFS of 1-2/10, 3 at the most going into the next workout, where there's at most a hint or trace of fatigue but that is about it.
I tried a few 400s, and even that left my LFS a bit higher than I'd like over the next few days. But again, that is probably particular to my situation. The caveat is that a lot of people are probably in a similar situation—older, more liable to pick up niggles, and where running can't be the main priority in life or the recovery from your running takes a back seat to getting on with life.
In the end, for my situation, a mixture of sometimes easy running day doubles and double workouts with one on the bike probably provides the best value with the lowest risk. The bike in particular I've called a "free hit" before. The legs, if anything, feel more primed and ready to go after doing that in the morning before the run workout in the evening. The bonus here is that you can even push it a little above LT1, although still quite a bit south of the kind of lactate you might shoot for in the evening session. Maybe this is the infamous LT1.5 or "balance point" that Tymewear tried to promote, haha. But my midday on these cycling morning sessions, fatigue is back to where it was when I woke up that morning. So that's about a 4-5 hour recovery window.
I think this might get me to sub-15. I don't know that for sure, but I'm doing it because I believe it probably gives me the best chance—if I can get the running volume regularly back up to 7-8 hours a week for the next couple of months with the added cycling on top.
Then maybe a 5k to ditch the rust, then a second one, and have one more proper crack at sub-15. Worst case is I seem to be about the same level at running and am half decent at cycling again, even off minimal riding.
Since a few weeks back, I use a 10-step scale (it's overkill, but just so it matches the RPE scale) using the stair test basically. Always in the morning at about the same time after waking up, before breakfast. Barefoot. I feel how the legs feel when walking up the stairs, both 1 stair step at a time and 2 steps. I feel how "springy" the legs feel by skipping up the stairs. Then I make a score based on the feel and attach it to the training notes for that day. Takes about 30 seconds total.
I think Sirpoc used a similar score for how the legs feel. He mentioned it in his book or in this thread, IIRC?
The morning after the sub-T, the score can vary a lot and that now guides me if I should take it even more easy on the easy day, or if I can stay closer to 70% HRMax. The morning of a sub-T day, the score must be really low, otherwise I need to run a bit slower in the sub-T session.
I'm always curious if anyone found other approaches.
Maybe I'm just stupid but I'm not sure I really notice much day to day variation in how my legs feel.
I'm not sure I'd be able to give anything more nuanced than 1) not at all, 2) a bit and 3) a lot...
Would that get you at least a 5-level scale? A lot of fatigue A bit of fatigue Neutral A bit of springy-ness A lot of springy-ness
I promise I'm not trying to troll but I genuinely don't think I've had a run before where I felt springy?
I don't mean that in a "woe is me" kind of way but I don't recognise a sensation like that, in my subjective feeling before a run.
I definitely recognise the feeling of "my legs are trashed" after a long hard race, but day to day outside of that they just feel neutral, like the absence of trashed, rather than any other quality!
Just curious but have you ever tried a Bakken 45/15 session? Somehow, they feel much better than the "original" 400/30 for me -- but it's also the only session I always run on a track, maybe that helps.
Maybe I'm just stupid but I'm not sure I really notice much day to day variation in how my legs feel.
I'm not sure I'd be able to give anything more nuanced than 1) not at all, 2) a bit and 3) a lot...
Maybe that's as much as any of us can really feel. I do feel the day to day difference most clearly doing lunges though. The feeling basically creates its own scale: really heavy/no bounce, bit heavier than normal, normal/neutral, bit fresher/bouncier than normal, really springy/bouncy/fresh/poppy. It also translates over: how the lunges feel is a strong predictor of how the ST session will feel, particularly at the start. For me it's just an observation, I don't change anything about a run based on it.
For stairs I just see if I can do 2 steps at a time vs one. From what I’ve found
-day after subt and leg weight lifting: one step at a time, slowly, notice increase respiration, wishing I toot the elevator
-day after subt only: one step at a time, not comfortably, not terrible
-day after easy: 2 steps at a time, not much change in breathing.
Like Bakken mentioned in the book, weight lifting (legs) increases tone more than anything. Sadly I’m at the age where lifting is pretty much mandatory if I want to keep running. I think once you hit about 40-45 you have to lift. Though I like his idea of building strength up and then cutting down to 1 day a week to maintain.
For stairs I just see if I can do 2 steps at a time vs one. From what I’ve found
-day after subt and leg weight lifting: one step at a time, slowly, notice increase respiration, wishing I toot the elevator
-day after subt only: one step at a time, not comfortably, not terrible
-day after easy: 2 steps at a time, not much change in breathing.
Like Bakken mentioned in the book, weight lifting (legs) increases tone more than anything. Sadly I’m at the age where lifting is pretty much mandatory if I want to keep running. I think once you hit about 40-45 you have to lift. Though I like his idea of building strength up and then cutting down to 1 day a week to maintain.
The problem for FOD is this. Obviously bringing sirpoc on makes great content, he will just say what needs to be said. Not sugar coat it and highly knowledgeable on a range of topics.
The downside for FOD and sadly the truth , is that getting the clowns on with all their followers will get more streams, but create way worse content. You kind of have to decide what way it'll go.
I knew it was going to be good when sirpoc basically said the Megablast is one of the worst shoes ever. Of course nobody else will admit this in influencer sphere as they don't want it upset ASICS and all their free stuff.
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