To Hadd: malmo disagrees with you. Can you explain the disconnect?

Talking of Matt Fitzgerald, I read an article of his some time ago on Running Times ...

He states that the very latest knowledge about the several roles of brain-muscle communications in running performance and the nature of neuromuscular adaptations to training suggest that every runner’s top five training priorities should be as follows:

(all definitions and the advice that follows each aspect of training are Fitzgerald's own words)

1) Repetition:

"So the single most effective way to improve as a runner is to consistently run a lot."

2) Variation:

"The most fundamental form of variation is pace, as different running speeds entail different stride rates, lengths, and power output levels. Each week of training should include efforts at a variety of intensity levels ranging from a slow jog to maximal effort."

3) Exposure to fatigue:

"Your training program should optimize your exposure to fatigue in order to maximize [the] neuromuscular adaptations. There are three main ways to achieve this objective. First, your training program should include three workouts per week that result in a high level of fatigue — typically a tempo run, a session of high-intensity intervals, and a long endurance run."

4) Conscious control:

"Let me focus on the most widespread and costly stride error among non-elite runners: overstriding, or striking the ground heel first with the leg extended in front of the body instead of flat-footed with the foot underneath the hips."

5) Maximal effort:

"The safest and most efficient way to incorporate maximal power efforts into your training is to perform short (10-second), steep hill sprints once or twice a week. Start with a single sprint up a steep hill following an easy run. ... Continue doing hill sprints twice a week, increasing the number of sprints you do by one sprint per week. Build up to at least six sprints and as many as 10. Once you reach the maximum number of sprints you’re comfortable with, eliminate one weekly hill sprint session and continue doing one session per week until your goal race. "

wellnow, given that this is a topic about which you feel very strongly, is there anything you would like to add to Fitzgerald? Is there some aspect of what he calls "brain-muscle communications" that you feel he does not cover adequately? Is there some training aspect you feel is important that he misses entirely?

... because personally, I see nothing revelatory here (and I didn't when I first read it); nothing that is not already covered adequately within a well-designed training programme. If anything, Fitzgerald gives more reasons why we should be doing each type of workout, but I don't see him advising any form of training that is not already contained within most serious programmes.

Link to whole Running Times article here:

http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=11849&PageNum=1

running is my passion wrote:

Hadd, I would love if you could answer to my thread!

Appreciating your knowledge...

RIMP, I've saved a link to your thread and will check it out. I've said already that I don't want to spend too much time posting on LR, but rest assured I will read it over and post back some advice (on that thread) tomorrow.

Hadd:

As far as I can tell, wellnow rarely corrects an actual practical training suggestion. He is simply a nitpicker who believes the terminology is wrong, and thus puts on this piss-and-moan act every time someone uses a word he doesn't like.

Say you were coaching wellnow, and said "ok, wellnow, today your run is going to include a 4-mile uptempo section around your current 10-mi race pace." Wellnow goes "oh, sure- but how come?" and you say "Oh, this is a pretty run of the mill lactate threshold workout" or whatever, wellnow would have a tantrum and say "OMG COACH, this run isn't helpful because of a lactate threshold, this run is helpful because it's improving neuromuscular coordination at threshold pace! I can't believe you talk so much fizzyology! You're so ignorant! Albert Hill was a fool! Everyone is ignorant!"

It's never the workouts or the methods that irk him, only the fact that we don't conform to his ideas on proper vocabulary. I don't think he has once suggested a different way of TRAINING, only that he seems to believe that no training effect takes place if you explain it wrong.

I've asked him several times (and hey, I guess I'll do so again now, just to see if he answers the question this time) if the explanation is really as important as the effectiveness. Say wellnow is totally right and we're all 100% wrong with our vocabulary. However, from anecdotal evidence, we know the Hadd method is an effective training method for many runners. Does wellnow's being right change anything about the actual training? No, it just changes (again, assuming he's right) how we explain it. So basically. . .WHO CARES if we run a high volume program with strong, uptempo running and intelligent race-pace work mixed in to improve neuromuscular coordination or aerobic capacity? Point is, RACE PERFORMANCE goes up when you do the right training, and so the explanation behind it is secondary.

The sciency stuff is fascinating, but for a runner, what other reason to do a given workout do you need other than "the coach you trust told you to?" For self-coached runners, what explanation do you need other than "I tried it, and I liked it?"

"Fink, Costill and Pollock Annals of NYAS volume 301 pages 323-327, 1977 is peer reviewed and has Galloway at 96%. They have a group of elite distance runners with an average of 79% ST but that includes Kardong at 50% and Pre at 27%. Their untrained and average runners have about 60% ST."

The 27% figure in Table 1 is a typographical error. If you read the text they explicitly state that 50% ST was the lowest recorded value. Based on other stated measurements for Prefontaine, the correct number is likely 72% ST.

Thanks.

wellnow wrote:

Usain Bolt's training focusses greatly on the skill aspects. His coach Glen Mills constantly reinforces the fact that he can do better, he can do better, he can do better, with regard to his technique througout the race.

The gains can only be very tiny, hundreds of a second only. This is mostly cleaning up of mistakes, particuarly out of the blocks.

Bolt didn't get to this level by he or his coach deciding he was 'developed' enough and only need to work on technique. There was years of physical development and training to get into the arena in the first place, and this goes on as well.

Most runners have far more to gain in physical and physiological development than any other path.

There have been no new training methods that I am aware of in the last 40 -50 years. What matters is how many of them you employ, which ones you leave out, and how intelligently you put it all together.

On the Lydiard/base training thread, I suggested that we can trian hard four to six days per week during base and graduating to two to three days very hard during the pre-competition phase. But I also believe that you can incorportate both methods on and off all year round as and when it suits.

In answer to the question: how do we improve neuromuscular coordination in running I gave this reply:

Progressive pace runs. Start slow finish fast. Or start at a medium pace and gradually speed up. Tempo runs where you increase the pace slightly. Interval sessions where the pace is consistent but the last one is faster, ending with a sprint.

In fact as you get fitter, you should practice sprinting very fast at the end of your hard runs. Start with a short sprint very fast, and as you get fitter, lengthen the sprint until you can sprint flat out for 200m or more.

All of this training improves neuromuscular coordination. You need to ability to run as economically as possible at every pace without your pace dropping. If this happens in medium to long runs, then stop, jog or walk home. Ther is no point forcing your body to keep going when you have passed this point of fatigue.

apples and oranges wrote:

Most runners have far more to gain in physical and physiological development than any other path.

Not true. That's the common mythology. Most runners are already physiologically developed, but they can still make huge gains in neuromuscular coordination.

CraigMac4h, Laddie, stop yer whining and read my last post.

That's the essence. I practice what I preach.

EErraattaa wrote:

"Fink, Costill and Pollock Annals of NYAS volume 301 pages 323-327, 1977 is peer reviewed and has Galloway at 96%. They have a group of elite distance runners with an average of 79% ST but that includes Kardong at 50% and Pre at 27%. Their untrained and average runners have about 60% ST."

The 27% figure in Table 1 is a typographical error. If you read the text they explicitly state that 50% ST was the lowest recorded value. Based on other stated measurements for Prefontaine, the correct number is likely 72% ST.

Anybody have a scanned copy of this? I can't access it via the web but am interested in readin it. If not maybe I'll go try to dig it out of the University library.

wellnow wrote:

Not true. That's the common mythology. Most runners are already physiologically developed, but they can still make huge gains in neuromuscular coordination.

They can make gains in coordination, etc. and no one denies this, but it's speculative to claim they are huge. The vast majority can continue to develop physiological.

This isn't a one-or-the-other situation and I have no idea why you insist and making it so. You just seem bent on argument.

You might want to condider that maybe, just maybe, I actually know what I'm talking about.

wellnow wrote: You might want to condider that maybe, just maybe, I actually know what I'm talking about.

Yes, I'm sure you would like that.

Sorry, until I see some evidence supporting that hypothesis, I will refrain from leaping to that conclusion.

Start supporting your multitude of opinions with some factual information, we can reconsider.

wellnow wrote:

You might want to condider that maybe, just maybe, I actually know what I'm talking about.

Nothing that you have stated on this or any other thread has indicated that you know anymore than many of the people on this board - you just think that you do. You're the classic egostist, you simply like to see your name in print.

Do us all a favor and get a book or article published, as per Hadd and Daniels, put your real name to it, then we can all marvel at your brilliant analysis of all these training concepts. I'm sure that it would be a best-seller.

Wellnow;

I would really like to see some supporting evidence for your claims.

Dr Daniels' research shows that we maximize our aerobic capacity at a young age.

But we all know that runners can continue to improve their times well into their thirties and sometimes, like me even well into their forties.

Why is this? Why did Gebreselassie always say that he could break the World record for the Marathon? And then when he ran 2.04.25 what did he say? "I can run faster". And what did he do? He ran 2.03.59 and then said "I can run faster"

He was 35, now he's 36 and he still believes he can run 2.03.30 or quicker.

How do runners keep improving when their bodies are getting older and further and further past their physical peak?

The answer is that we can keep improving our running skill, you can maintain that stride length for longer and longer periods of time, if you do the right training and have the right mindset.

Citation please:

wellnow wrote: Dr Daniels' research shows that we maximize our aerobic capacity at a young age.

Where exctly does hi research how this? Also, give us the specific conclusion he's drawn that supports this interpretation please.

Also, it's interesting you've cited Dr. Jack. In another thread you told him directly you wouldn't cite his material until he admitted that he didn't understand his own VDOT calculation.

If you are looking for a link to help support your cause, look no further than last century's classic aerobic dogma:

http://home.hia.no/~stephens/timecors.htm

He says, based on lots of actual field data:

1) VO2max improvements plateau first, in about a year or so.

2) Lactate threshold improvements take longer to plateau, at around 3-4 years or so.

3) Afterwards, the main source of improvement comes from efficiency.

So when we speak of aerobic development, we speak of more than a few weeks, but also not more than 5 or so years.

wellnow -

I have a hypothetical scenario for you, and then a question.

Scenario:

Joshua has trained intelligently and progressively for 10 years. Last weekend he ran a half-marathon at 5:20 per mile. This Friday he goes out with the lads for a couple of pints, but he gets carried away and drinks about a dozen pints between 6pm and 2am.

At 2pm, Saturday, Joshua awakes; he eats a late lunch (healthy, though) and then gamboles a 2-mile "shake-out" run. From the time he awakes until he races Joashua drinks fluids steadily.

AT 6pm Joshua runs a 10,000m race. Normally his time is right at 32 minutes flat, but this time he records 33:30, a full 1.5 minutes slower than his norm.

The question:

Is Joshua's slower race-time caused by a loss of "skill," as you put it, or is there anothe reason for running 1.5 minutes slower than normal in a 10,000m race?