How important are strides during base training?

get real with it wrote:

Uhh wrote:

To me, strides have two purposes.

1) is to maintain leg speed during an aerobic base period. That presumes you're taking a Lydiard approach to periodisation as opposed to modern coaches who like to fit in a bit of everything.

However legspeed is important to people who have the capability to run 4min miles or similar. If you're a beginner running around at 9min/miles then legspeed is still a dream to be realised.

2) if you do drills and glute activation work to improve your efficiency, then strides are a good way to ingrain what you've done.

Laughing my ass off at the idea of leg speed. What about foot speed?!

This place is hilarious.

What do you get out of being like this? Are you actually having fun or?

If one tones down the rhetoric, 'get real with it' is actually making valid points here. Some of the points are made a little bluntly, e.g. a child has to learn/practise to walk, so although it is innate in the sense that everyone can do it, it cannot simply be done immediately that one wishes to; similarly, one does to need to practise running fast if one has never done it, or not for a long time.

But the point that the gains from this are very limited once one has 'remembered' how to do it is valid, as is the point that if one can hit a pace at the start of a race for say 2 minutes but cannot hold it thereafter, then this is almost entirely a matter of aerobic fitness; though aerobic fitness here does not just mean an aerobic base, one can improve a fair bit (though again the gains are limited) on top of the base from working hard at faster paces too ('running economy'). Ultimately it is true that it is aerobic fitness that determines most of the performance, and even if one only runs slowly but has very good aerobic fitness, one will do fine.

Smoove Jamin wrote:

get real with it wrote:

Laughing my ass off at the idea of leg speed. What about foot speed?!

This place is hilarious.

What do you get out of being like this? Are you actually having fun or?

What do you get out of propagating nonsense that you believe in simply because some else told you to? Where's your critical thinking? Your sense of investigation?

Have you ever once stopped and asked the most pertinent question of all, "why"? Do it. It might change both your training and your life.

So what is more important then, hill sprints or strides? I'm leading towards hill sprints. this really was not a troll post, I haven't actually trained since college and am ramping back up again, no workouts just easy running right now.

LeBronFAM wrote:

So what is more important then, hill sprints or strides? I'm leading towards hill sprints. this really was not a troll post, I haven't actually trained since college and am ramping back up again, no workouts just easy running right now.

In your case, I'd say strides for now. Strides don't need to be fast, just faster than you usually run. 5 x 20 seconds usually feels right to me when I do them. Think of them as a bit of practice running faster. Do them a few times a week for a few weeks, and you should feel the effects in your runs in general.

I feel like they are very important.

10x100m at 16 seconds.

Try to stay as relaxed as possible whilst keeping good form. Doing high mileage with some tempo’s here and there is not really good for my leg turnover:(

Feels like i have a “marathon shuffle” without 100m reps/200m reps. During base training 200m reps is as far as I would go. 200m reps@mile race pace ish or 3k if you really haven’t done a lot of speedwork recently.

get real with it wrote:

Absolutely zero importance.

Sprinting at the end of a race is all about energy systems, which you're not in any way training with "strides".

Utterly pointless, unless just done for fun.

It depends on the intensity of the "stride." Phosphocreatine (PCr), the substrate for our bodies' most powerful movements, is depleted after as few as 10-12 seconds for most runners. During and especially after this time period, glycolysis is ongoing. If you do 20-second strides at mile pace, you are modestly stressing your body anaerobically. Although it's a very short rep, if you're a distance runner whose training is centrally focused on long, slow efforts, it is indeed a stimulus that will yield adaptations.

Now, if you tell an 800 guy who's prepping for cross country to do this, it likely won't do much. A stimulus is only as effective as the runner is untrained in a given area, and as the runner becomes more trained in said area, there are diminishing returns. So it could be said that the effectiveness of "strides" is completely relative to the individual. However, I'd say for most distance runners, they're helpful.

Should also be noted that PCr is only depleted in that short of a time frame in a maximal effort sprint. For many, it'd be even less time than that.

cbenson4 wrote:

Should also be noted that PCr is only depleted in that short of a time frame in a maximal effort sprint. For many, it'd be even less time than that.

Exactly. You're not describing strides. You're describing a sprint workout.

Totally separate thing.

Darby wrote:

Ugh... Your neuromuscular efficiency does change a lot during a long race, as your motor neurons become tired you are having trouble firing them with the same effort. But this is totally irrelevant.

What Strava Police meant is you need to do those strides and sprints to arrive at the starting line of the race you mentioned with your best efficiency. Many sports physiologists and coaches agree with that.

Of course your neuromuscular efficiency changes throughout a race. It has to. That is part of fatigue.

Nothing like a few strides the day after a hard workout to get back into the swing.

Of course they are not a workout in itself, but enabler for good training.

get real with it wrote:

cbenson4 wrote:

Should also be noted that PCr is only depleted in that short of a time frame in a maximal effort sprint. For many, it'd be even less time than that.

Exactly. You're not describing strides. You're describing a sprint workout.

Totally separate thing.

But anaerobic metabolism is still the dominant energy system during strides. They can also be interpreted as much shorter versions of Daniels’ reps. Instead of running 400s at mile pace, you’re running 100s at mile pace. Not much of a workout, but in a runner who does minimal anaerobic work, it’s certainly a stimulus that will yield modest glycolytic and economy adaptations and will cost next to nothing in terms of recovery time.