I've decided to make videos to help my athletes understand WHY we do what we do. Here's one on developing vVO2 max and how that applies to a workout I might assign.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dWDZ8eQhqiuxogRtT6eEdmyELmkyiNT_/view?usp=sharing
I've decided to make videos to help my athletes understand WHY we do what we do. Here's one on developing vVO2 max and how that applies to a workout I might assign.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dWDZ8eQhqiuxogRtT6eEdmyELmkyiNT_/view?usp=sharing
I have a couple of questions? Why did you choose 90% for your pace in the example? Wouldn't it be more effective right now to slow it down and do 4-5 reps of 5 minutes at 85 percent? Also, shouldn't you have your athletes running faster than 100% vVO2 to develop speed?
What speed of running did you come up with for vVO2max? and how do you determine that speed?
We worked off of the assumption that athletes can hold vVO2 max pace for 6 minutes.
I have them run a 6 minute test at the beginning of the summer to determine initial fitness. I used to do a 2 mile TT to determine pace, but my newbies and slower runners really under perform on a 2 mile.
The thing about normalizing the time of the test is that you'll get a much better gauge of where the kid is at. If I said, "1 mile TT". Then I'm going to get kids who run 4:45 and I'm going to get kids that run 10 min. The 10 minute kid will be running at a way lower percentage of vVO2 than the 4:45 kid and the 4:45 kid will probably be running supra-maximally.
So, going 5 min at 85% of 6 minute pace should feel as difficult for the 4:45 kid as it should for the 10 min kid. AND, the volume of the workout will be self regulating as well, since the 4:45 kid will end up covering twice the distance as the 10 min kid, assuming they run for the same amount of time.
When vVO2max was originated it was determined that speed at vVO2max could be held for 11min and 3 seconds. Unfortunately various scientists around the world have adjusted the definition of vVO2max as orignally explained.
OK, that does't really matter. I'm not hung up on semantics.
I've been using those pace charts for a year now and have had some pretty good results AND it's a lot easier to organize 70 kids into groups this way.
Maybe you should just quit calling it vVO2max since it isn't that. Make up your own term.
Our sport needs more coaches like you.
I'm not big on VO2max, but you're using it the right way here regardless of specifics on this many minutes or that many minutes. A lot of well intentioned coaches try really hard to fit their athletes into the mold that VDOT or training tables spit out and are usually led astray when they can't figure out why their kid races like a 62 VDOT but has to train at a 55 VDOT with their tempos or longer efforts.
How do you like applying your time trial and percentages into workouts? Do you use your time trial and apply percentages to everything or just specific workouts that are near vVO2max efforts? How did you land on 6 minutes for your testing?
V wrote:
How do you like applying your time trial and percentages into workouts? Do you use your time trial and apply percentages to everything or just specific workouts that are near vVO2max efforts? How did you land on 6 minutes for your testing?
I've seen the 6 minute test referenced a number of times. Here's one
https://training4endurance.co.uk/physiology-of-endurance/vvo2max/#:~:text=The%20vVO2max%20can%20be%20determined%20through%20an%20incremental%20treadmill%20test,provides%20an%20estimate%20of%20vVO2max.
To answer the question about using time trial percentages for workouts, the answer is yes.
I tell my kids that they should be able to run sub threshold, easy tempo, tempo, whatever you want to call it at 80% of vVO2. The thing is that almost NONE of them can do that initially. A combination of lack of aerobic power, lack of overall training volume, and lack of mental concentration will kibosh a tempo run if I just tell them, "go out and run at 80%" I tried that when I first developed the pace charts and it didn't go well.
A pace that my kids seem to have a really EASY time with, however, is intervals at 90% vVO2, kind of what Tinman types have been calling CV. I kind of stumbled upon that pace really early on in my coaching career. I read about Daniels's cruise intervals really early on and found that was way easier to use than a continuous tempo run for my kids. It's usually 95+ degrees when we begin practice in august so a straight tempo run is a non starter, especially with large numbers of new kids. Early on, I used the vdot tables to determine pace for cruise intervals, but found that my kids usually just kind of settled in at a pace that was slightly faster that what the vdot tables predicted. Once I created my own tables and started using them, I noticed that the paces that they had been doing cruise intervals at for 20 years correlated really well to 90% on the charts.
So, we do a lot of efforts of 3-6 minutes at 90% vVO2. What I started a year and a half ago, is to put kids on the track and give them a target distance (like I showed in the video) based on vVO2. To make things simpler, I'll put kids in groups based on the TT result, then give each group a starting point on the track. I try to make groups of 4-6 kids who are withing 50-70m of one another. So, if I have kids who achieved, 1630m, 1580m, 1600m, 1610m, and 1590m, I'll put them all in a group and have them all use the 1600 line on the pace chart.
Then we jump on the track. I space cones every 50 meters. Our group that TT'ed 1600m would know that they are supposed to run between 16-17 cones for a 3 minute interval. As the summer goes on, we might lengthen those segments out to 4 minutes and the kids would then try to get however many cones were predicted on the chart. Record keeping becomes very easy for me, because after each 3 minute segment, the group leader just yells to me how many meters or how many cones his group got as they are jogging their 1 minute recovery.
As we are doing that, we're also doing long runs of 20-25 % weekly volume. We meet at 7:00 AM during the summer so we can make that work. At this point of the summer, we're just trying to cover the distance. Eventually, I start talking to them about running the last couple of miles faster and after that, if things are going well, get them to try to run the last 2-3 miles at 80% range. This is kind of tough. A kid that went 1600 for his TT, might do a long run of 8 miles in 64 minutes. When I ask them to pick it up for the last few miles, he might drop to 7:55 pace for most of that, then run the last mile in 6:30. After a while, we talk about just gradually rolling into whatever 80% pace would be for him. We usually can't get too good at this over the summer with first or second year kids, because it just takes a while to master. By the time kids are in their 3rd or 4th year, they get better at this type of tempo run
Since as the kids get fitter, the weather also cools off, we start to bring in longer tempo type efforts later in the season. We have a 1200m section of our cross country course that makes a perfect loop, so I can have the kids to a 4800m or 6k tempo pretty easily and take splits to monitor their progress. At first, I tell them to start easy and try to accelerate a little bit on every 1200m lap. The kid who is a 1600m time trialer might run 1200m splits of 5:45, 5:30, 5:15, 5:10. I'd call that a great workout for the kid because the 5:15 would represent 80% vVO2 and the 5:10 would represent 85%. Then we talk about being able to start out a bit faster and be able to hold 5:20-5:10 per 1200 for the entire workout. If we can accomplish this a couple of time before our league finals, I'm feeling really good.
Of course, kids improve through the year. The kid that ran 1600m in Mid June would be more like a 1700-1750m guy later on and would be trying to hit whatever times are predicted for his ability.
Sorry, should have written 14-15 cones in 3 minutes for a 1600m time trial kid.
In the french training community, the 6 minute TT is frequently used to determine VMA - vitesse maximale aerobic, or maximum aerobic pace. training paces are then determined from that VMA pace.
Thanks for the posts, will take a look at them later.
Hi guys. I made a follow on video to describe some of the adaptations my athletes can expect to see after today's Critical Velocity workout.
The workout was pretty low key today, don't bash :)
http://hughsoncc.blogspot.com/2020/07/critical-velocity-workout-today-and.html