Ive had my team running reps @ 95% vVO2 every other week. The first 2 weeks, distnces were set to keep rep duration below 90 seconds. Workouts ranged from 10x300 to 12x400 sith equal duration standing rest, depending on the kid.
Thinking wed gotten as much out of that session as we were going to get, I decided to extend the reps by 100m yesterday. So the kids were doing either 500s or 400s. Total volume was the same, work:rest ratio was the same, but most of my athletes found this session SIGNIFICANTLY harder.
The original plan was to extend the reps out to 600/800 over the next month or so, but now I’m thinking the process could take significantly longer and they might ne better served keeping the reps shorter but adding either speed, volume of reps, or decreasing rest instead.
Just some early morning musing
Extending reps by 100m
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CoachB wrote:
Ive had my team running reps @ 95% vVO2 every other week. The first 2 weeks, distnces were set to keep rep duration below 90 seconds. Workouts ranged from 10x300 to 12x400 sith equal duration standing rest, depending on the kid.
Thinking wed gotten as much out of that session as we were going to get, I decided to extend the reps by 100m yesterday. So the kids were doing either 500s or 400s. Total volume was the same, work:rest ratio was the same, but most of my athletes found this session SIGNIFICANTLY harder.
The original plan was to extend the reps out to 600/800 over the next month or so, but now I’m thinking the process could take significantly longer and they might ne better served keeping the reps shorter but adding either speed, volume of reps, or decreasing rest instead.
Just some early morning musing
I always enjoy reading what you're doing with your team. The thought you put into it coupled with your transparency has been helpful to me and no doubt most who read them.
For the reasons you mention I used to start anaerobic training earlier than I thought I should (practical vs theoretical) -
Thanks, Coach.
I was surprised they were so much more tired yesterday. My only guess as to why is that as their reps got closer to 2:00, their HR had a chance to climb closer to max.
I’d have thought the longer recovery would have ameliorated that though, maybe I’ll force more walking stretching, etc next time. -
I enjoy these "musings" and have learned from them.
One factor in the students' response may have been the shock of the unfamiliar, and I'd be interested in how they'd a repeat of the same session. In my experience athletes find moving from 400s to 500s, in particular, curiously daunting. -
What made you confident that you could extend the length of the rep by 100m? Perhaps you should have adjusted the recovery before extending the reps. For example, kids who stand around could jog 100m in a minute (assuming that was the prescribed recovery) and those who jogged the recovery could perhaps jog 200m? In my experience, adjusting the quality of the recovery before increasing the rep length resulted in better outcomes. I was able to transition to longer reps at the same speed with a lot more confidence.
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Seems similar to the Marcus O'Sullivan theory of vo2 max implementation. 15x300 to 12x400 to 10x500 to 8x600 always keeping the rest at 2:00.
Later on they'll do something like 600+300+300 with 1:00 rest and 2:00 rest between to extend the length. Or maybe 800+200.
You may try this same approach and see if it helps your runners be able to extend time at vO2. -
CoachB wrote:
Ive had my team running reps @ 95% vVO2 every other week. The first 2 weeks, distnces were set to keep rep duration below 90 seconds. Workouts ranged from 10x300 to 12x400 sith equal duration standing rest, depending on the kid.
Thinking wed gotten as much out of that session as we were going to get, I decided to extend the reps by 100m yesterday. So the kids were doing either 500s or 400s. Total volume was the same, work:rest ratio was the same, but most of my athletes found this session SIGNIFICANTLY harder.
The original plan was to extend the reps out to 600/800 over the next month or so, but now I’m thinking the process could take significantly longer and they might ne better served keeping the reps shorter but adding either speed, volume of reps, or decreasing rest instead.
Just some early morning musing
We've noticed the same thing. 500's were noticeably different than 400's. 1200's were notably harder than 1k's. I did see that this happened almost exclusively with the first time we moved up, after that 500's and 1200's were both handled a lot better and looked closer to what we expected.
I've really liked breaking things into sets and making the long rep be the first 1-2 reps in a set before moving back to the easier reps.
For example, if we did 16x400m then instead of jumping to 12x500m we would do 3 sets (500m, 4x400m) or 2 sets (2x500m + 5x400m). Definitely a friendlier transition for us to test the waters on a longer rep, but always be able to go back to home base where we feel comfortable. -
lease wrote:
I enjoy these "musings" and have learned from them.
One factor in the students' response may have been the shock of the unfamiliar, and I'd be interested in how they'd a repeat of the same session. In my experience athletes find moving from 400s to 500s, in particular, curiously daunting.
I’m curious as well.
Most of them were running only slightly faster than their 2 mile TT pace from yesterday. Usually 2 mile pace doesn’t start to get difficult for kids until at least 600m when the rest is as long as it was yesterday
Another thing I considered is that with reps of less than 90seconds, they were stopping before any serious lactate accumulation occurred. Adding just 20 second to each rep, though was 20 more seconds for lactate levels to climb above what they’re accustomed to, whereas doing the same total volume in shorter bouts kept the levels pretty low. I’m guessing that their tolerance is pretty poor right now since we’ve been doing mostly tempo and short sprints with full recovery. We’d only actually done the 400s at 95% twice so far.
Either way, they LOOKED fast and smooth so I’m hoping that as we build a little more tolerance/specific endurance, they’ll pop some great races. -
A good HS coach wrote:
Seems similar to the Marcus O'Sullivan theory of vo2 max implementation. 15x300 to 12x400 to 10x500 to 8x600 always keeping the rest at 2:00.
Later on they'll do something like 600+300+300 with 1:00 rest and 2:00 rest between to extend the length. Or maybe 800+200.
You may try this same approach and see if it helps your runners be able to extend time at vO2.
This is more or less the progression I had in mind. -
Threads like this and the contributions are the best of letsrun. It's like being at a clinic with other coaches.
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I would either have them complete the work out in sets such as 2x(5x500) 3 min recovery btw sets 2 mins between reps or give more recovery at first for the reps. Then the next time I would reduced the recovery as it takes a lot more out off a runner to run a 500 vs 400 mentally and physically. Once they are able adapt to the rep length it will be a lot easier to transition to the full workout. I have had the same issue when coaching athletes and that's the fastest way to transition to longer workouts.
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CoachB wrote:
I’m curious as well.
Most of them were running only slightly faster than their 2 mile TT pace from yesterday. Usually 2 mile pace doesn’t start to get difficult for kids until at least 600m when the rest is as long as it was yesterday
Another thing I considered is that with reps of less than 90seconds, they were stopping before any serious lactate accumulation occurred. Adding just 20 second to each rep, though was 20 more seconds for lactate levels to climb above what they’re accustomed to, whereas doing the same total volume in shorter bouts kept the levels pretty low. I’m guessing that their tolerance is pretty poor right now since we’ve been doing mostly tempo and short sprints with full recovery. We’d only actually done the 400s at 95% twice so far.
Either way, they LOOKED fast and smooth so I’m hoping that as we build a little more tolerance/specific endurance, they’ll pop some great races.
My impression is that the first 20-30s of just about any interval is easy as it takes a while for the heart to get going and to start generating lactic acid. So you are going from say a 40s of hard effort (300m in a 60s) to like 60s (400m in 80s). Thats a 50% increase. Sounds like a lot bigger increase when expressed that way instead of just another 100ms:). My understanding also is that lactate is cleared much quicker in the first 45s of rest so those shorter sessions with more frequent rest are probably a lot more tolerable.
I know I used to really feel the difference when doing things like 8x400 versus 6*500 at 1500m pace. They were good workouts but you had to be careful not to over do them. Those extra 100ms were rough:)
Seems like working up to 600s or so is probably a worthwhile goal but you might need slightly longer rests or slightly less volume (12x400 might turn into 6x600 instead of 8x600) -
Maybe increase the rest ratio the first time you increase the rep length (i.e. to 1:1.25) then back down to 1:1 the next session. That way, when the athletes are moving up in rep distance the workout will be comparable to the shorter stuff.
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Lots of solid ideas
