Tinman's "diminishing returns" philosophy about training is a great way to justify laziness

Hardloper wrote:

Tinman is saying you should do 5 x 800m + 6 x 200m rather than 8 x 800m. I don't know the scientific argument for why his workout is "better" than 8x800 but it's a bit different from just stopping at 5x800.

If you do 8, you can't keep the ball rolling like you can with 5.

jamin wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

Tinman is saying you should do 5 x 800m + 6 x 200m rather than 8 x 800m. I don't know the scientific argument for why his workout is "better" than 8x800 but it's a bit different from just stopping at 5x800.

If you do 8, you can't keep the ball rolling like you can with 5.

But then the ball starts to roll downhill, soon it's rolling so fast you can't catch up with it, then in trying to catch up with the ball you trip and tear your MCL and then it's season over. Better to hold onto the ball.

If you have to stop at 5 then you clearly went out too fast, either slow em down or get fitter to do 8. Rocket science tiz not.

jamin wrote:

In the below video he says maybe for a workout like 8 x 800m all the stimulus you need is accomplished by the 5th rep and the 6th-8th are don't add benefit.

I'm going to use this mindset next time I go to do a workout and intended on doing N reps and don't feel motivated enough to push through the last couple. "Diminishing returns. Time to call it a day." ?

https://youtu.be/Carxp28b9E4?t=181

My take is that didn't they have the workout f...cked up from the start if they have to bail at 5? Shouldn't it have been sorta planned out at least to a point the athlete could have been able to do 10 (max) but they plan to do 8 to stay in control?

jamin wrote:

In the below video he says maybe for a workout like 8 x 800m all the stimulus you need is accomplished by the 5th rep and the 6th-8th are don't add benefit.

I'm going to use this mindset next time I go to do a workout and intended on doing N reps and don't feel motivated enough to push through the last couple. "Diminishing returns. Time to call it a day." ?

https://youtu.be/Carxp28b9E4?t=181

Context: *I have been coached by Coach Schwartz for the last 8 months* I am of course biased towards his training philosophies, but would like to share what I have learned from my research over the years.

I will lay out the facts of what I percieve to be his reasoning behind law of diminishing returns and his arguments on the addition of quality after a workout. Before I hired him, I did well over 40+ hours of research regarding his training philosophies, on the website "RunZone," along with listening to various podcasts and watching his lectures over principles of training.

The Law of Diminishing Returns seems to be two concepts. The first being that an individual can only absorb 'x' amount of stress over the course of the workout. Once you get to the latter part of the workout, you are only absorbing roughly 10-15% of the benefits, compared to 100% on the first rep. The second part of this is the relationship between injury risk/excess fatigue and improvement in running. The further you progress in your workout, the more the risk of injury and the greater potential for excess fatigue that could hinder the ability for you to stay consistent with training, hence Coach Schwartz's "Keep the Ball Rolling."

Hardloper, you presented a workout that could be used by Coach Schwartz and questioned why doing less 800 intervals would make sense. The reasoning behind this is due to the addition of "quality" in the workout. Quality is a term used by Coach Schwartz for speed/power development and as a result improves neural firing capacity. His philosophy is, 'why only highlight one set of muscle fibers during a workout, when you can use multiple?' If the amount of stress points you are targeting for the workout is 120-140, which would be 8x800m at lets say CV pace (warmup/cooldown included), then instead you should be doing 6x800m with the addition of some quality at the end in the form of 800-2mile race effort striders, hills, or both. Doing about 80% of what you could do for a workout allows you to achieve a similar stress stimulus, but with the benefit of various paces being incorporated. This only works once the skill of running fast and the skill of running hills has been used. Skills can be learned by doing them while fresh.

I recommend anyone interested in learning more about this and other Tinman training concepts should check out The Tinman Teaching Academy videos Coach Schwartz has on Teachable.

Strong words, especially when you're probably wrong. Care to point out examples of "ALL current research" that says vvo2max is 8-12 minutes? As far as I know, that's the old data. Tinman is following Billat's work, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't been debunked. If nothing else, "all current" research is patently false because it's at best an open question. Please enlighten us though.

DirtyT wrote:

I hate to bad mouth a coach, but this dude is an absolute idiot for spread misinformation about about exercise physiology. Starting out by correcting that ALL current research points to VO2 effort being between 8-12 minutes. ....

Be fair and add context wrote:

He also doesn't say to call it a day after doing the 5 reps. He says that the system that is stressed by the 800s is almost as stressed as it could be on that day (at least the returns are diminishing) after 5 reps sou you might aswell add 200s to stress another system or a 2-3 mile tempo for the same reason. I don't quite see how that's lazy.

Does anyone have a link to that. He is saying ~12:30 of work is enough to 100% of the benefit. Pretty much all the research I have seen has the benefits increasing as the volume increases past 20 mins.

Heck I would pretty much go out on a limb and say for except for the 6-8 weeks when you are trying to peak, you should always be aiming for 20-30 mins of effort and should slow down if needed. Things like 20x400 at 5k pace (something like 90s rest) just seem to give more benefit than busting out 5x800 at 3k pace for most people. And my experience was doing those 400s was actually easier in terms of recovery.

Well said! :) Running maxVO2 workouts should be at around 20-30 min total to be perfectly most effective.Exceed that amount won`t give better effect and will instead give the opposite effect.There are tons of scientific research that supports this.Then we will see that even a 10 x 800m at 5 k race pace as Mo Farah sometimes execute is as close to perfection you can come when we talk about best effect of maxVO2 intervals .

Coach JS - Where is your proof for that claim? Just curious...

Why do Tinman disciples have such a verbosity problem? It's like they don't understand the philosophy enough to be concise.

fact checker 642572498 wrote:

Tinman is a MORON and he misapplies the legitimate principle of diminished returns.

In an interval workout, you actually get INCREASING returns. If you do 2x800 you will get almost zero benefit, but every rep added after that adds more fitness than the one before. There is no diminished return, it just eventually gets to a point where the risk of injury/burnout becomes higher and outweighs the benefit of another rep.

Where diminished return does come into play, however, is when tinman does CV training year round. If his athletes do CV workout once a week, that's 52 in a year. How much extra benefit do you think those athletes are getting from the 45th CV workout in a year? Essentially zero.

Wow, so if I do 400,000 reps, my returns will increase with each one? Yay! I finally discovered the secret! (Satire font)

Your injury comment is basically repeating Tinman philosophy-why do 8 reps today and risk injury when you can do 5 or 6, mix it up with a different stimulus and then come back with another workout in 1-3 days feeling fresh?

Also, he does prescribe workouts that are quite challenging (but attainable) and make sense for your fitness level and goal distance. He’s no moron.

One more thought:

We (Runners) often make the huge mistake of lasering in on workouts and critiquing them. Tinman is really good at crafting a plan with the whole big picture in mind (easy days, strides, hill work, taper, etc.). One (or two) extra reps in one workout is irrelevant to the big picture.

I want to respond two things you wrote here in your comment. "Once you get to the latter part of the workout,you are only absorbing roughly 10-15% of the benefits,compared to 100% on the first rep. " ....Well......if this was true we could stop the session after the first rep! ))) . What instead is true is that the first rep is the beginning of a long chain of reps where the benefit of the reps increase the more you run of them up to a given point where more of them has the opposite effect.

The other thing "Why only highlight one set of muscle fibers during a workout, when you can use multiple? " Well.......because you get the best and most efficiency out of a workout if you concentrate at one factor at a time. In the example of 5-6 x 800m at maxVO2 followed by hills,striders or other faster stuff the both different factors ( "muscle fibers" ) will counteract each other`s highest efficiency.

forcerunner wrote:

Jan Stensson , Coach JS wrote:

Well said! :) Running maxVO2 workouts should be at around 20-30 min total to be perfectly most effective.Exceed that amount won`t give better effect and will instead give the opposite effect.There are tons of scientific research that supports this.Then we will see that even a 10 x 800m at 5 k race pace as Mo Farah sometimes execute is as close to perfection you can come when we talk about best effect of maxVO2 intervals .

Coach JS - Where is your proof for that claim? Just curious...

Daniels did a lot of scientific work on this subject and came to that conclusion.A lot of other scientific studies confirm that conclusion .Also in practice by thousands of world class runners this holds up. It`s all in line with what proper perfect training is all about: enough effort + enough recovery = supercompensation and improvement. If you step over that line the risk of overdoing or injury increase.

tinmanApologist wrote:

One more thought:

We (Runners) often make the huge mistake of lasering in on workouts and critiquing them. Tinman is really good at crafting a plan with the whole big picture in mind (easy days, strides, hill work, taper, etc.). One (or two) extra reps in one workout is irrelevant to the big picture.

It`s not irrelevant ! It`s important to get out max effect of every session and workout, but only reach what`s necessary and enough for the goal of the exercise.

tinmanApologist wrote:

One more thought:

We (Runners) often make the huge mistake of lasering in on workouts and critiquing them. Tinman is really good at crafting a plan with the whole big picture in mind (easy days, strides, hill work, taper, etc.). One (or two) extra reps in one workout is irrelevant to the big picture.

Yes to this statement!

No! You didn`t understand what "fact checker" told , actually the same as I told . The benefit of every rep in an interval (level pace) will INCREASE after every new rep up to a given point where a new rep just would give opposite effect. At that point the effort is perfect and there is no problems to come back for a new interval session 2-3 days later well rested. That`s perfect training!

The idea of a workout (any workout) is to disturb homeostasis to a sufficient degree that genetic pathways are triggered to create new proteins that will get integrated into your tissues to make the body less likely to have its homeostasis disturbed by similar efforts in the future. That's it. Workouts should TYPICALLY apply the smallest possible stimulus that will still cause an adaptation.

Eventually, in the course of a training cycle, smaller stimuli cease to illicit an adaptive response, and larger stimuli have to be applied. If you are at a stage in your training where small stimuli are sufficient, then you will get diminishing returns from doing harder and longer workouts. Yes, they may stimulate a SLIGHTLY bigger adaptation, but only slightly. The reason not to do it is that you risk injury and overtraining. It's usually better to save the big workouts for late in the cycle when nothing but a big workout will push you to a higher level of fitness.

There is an additional wrinkle here that applies with particular force to short intervals. People here seem to be referring to the notion that VO2max workouts become more effective as they get longer because it takes a while to reach VO2max during each interval, and as you get deeper into the workout, you hit that point earlier in each interval. Setting aside questions about whether the entire VO2max model of training has any validity, there is something to the fact that short intervals like 20x400 @ 3k/5k pace can be VERY easy until in the early stages. What that means is that the difficulty of a workout (and the size of the stimulus) isn't linear. If you stop too early (say at 5), you may not disturb homeostasis at all. But once you've reached a point where you have disturbed it and you are getting an adaptation, going longer isn't going to help you get much more of an adaptation.

Every workout should have it`s purpose and enough efford + enough recovery.

There is no place for "bigger workouts" ,, only exact individual perfect enough effort for each purpose.

Can you point to any studies that back this up? Again the ones I have seen suggest the 20 mins is better than 10 and 30 mins is better than 20 when you look at the aerobic adaptations after 6-8 weeks of training. Now obviously there are recovery limits. It doesn't matter if running 60 mins would maximize adaptations if there is no way to do it. There are some rat studies where they can do crazy volumes per week of vo2max work and the adapations just keep increasing as the volume goes up. I have a feeling humans would get similar results but nobody has found a way. to do 2 hours of vo2max training per week and without breaking down.

To go back to the something that someone said earlier if 1x800 gave 100% of the training response and the second interval only did say 15%, we should all be training 2x day by doing 1x800. I don't think anyone recommends that:)