Ben Thomas Warmup??

Mile easy, 800 or 1k sort of threshold effort, then 3-4 20 second strides and 2x200 around mile pace. Nothing crazy really.

On race day if it’s in the afternoon there’s a shakeout in the morning that follows a similar structure, slow jog short strides long strides around race pace.

Canova says he sometimes has athletes do hill sprints in the morning the day of a race. See Shaheen.

There is actually good evidence getting in a warmup like that is beneficial for middle distance runners. I believe they did the study in British runners and now something like that (don’t know the exact protocol) is standard for all British 800/1500 guys

it does sound scary or counterproductive, but if i think about it, i set many PRs during my career doubling and tripling at meets, there's no way this can be any worse than running another race an hour or two beforehand

Han Solo wrote:

Mile easy, 800 or 1k sort of threshold effort, then 3-4 20 second strides and 2x200 around mile pace. Nothing crazy really.

On race day if it’s in the afternoon there’s a shakeout in the morning that follows a similar structure, slow jog short strides long strides around race pace.

Canova says he sometimes has athletes do hill sprints in the morning the day of a race. See Shaheen.

I don't think this is as unique as a lot of people think. I remember reading Solinsky talk about his warmup before races and it always included like 2-3 minutes "hard" after like 10 minutes of easy running and before strides. So it seems like Shumacher does something similar.

Tinman also has prescribed what essentially amounts to a CV rep 30-45 minutes before a middle distance race. I think I saw a slideshow of his that had it all listed out.

How much rest between everything?

t_curtin71 wrote:

How much rest between everything?

60-90 seconds but if you do more than that it’s basically useless and you’re guaranteed to not run well. But cut it shorter than 60 and you may as well not even race you’ll be so tired.

Han, how do you know about the warm-up? Do you have any more information on their training?

Just do 2-4 minutes at threshold + some strides at 800 pace. This is not a new thing. Daniels suggests something similar in his book, which is discussing training athletes 20-30 years ago. If you wanna run fast, get all systems going before you start, not during the race. Jogging not gonna accomplish that.

When I was at Tech, Thomas would have us run 300 meters under 38 seconds about 30 minutes before our race,

This concept is very prevalent in the sprints and jumps world.

Many sprinters will do a couple 90-95% effort short sprints before their race.

Isometrically loading muscles has been proven to help explosiveness in jumps and sprints.

Ever wonder why in a workout you tend to feel better closer to the middle than in the beginning? This is why.

Can confirm the 800-1k fast warmup. We did that at VT.

I know a guy that observed Jakob Ingebrigtsen warming up once in Norway, he did the same only the treshold (most likely easy treshold pace) seemed to last 6min+. So about twice the distance as these guys.

Regarding how hard that is...1k or 2k easy treshold would never be considered hard or taxing. It's just the situation you're in. You're warming up, are nervous and more sensitive to how you feel. You often feel sh!t because of nerves. But would you do that warmup before a normal hard workout you would never think of the effort as hard.

I know a coach who was in Doha 2019 and he told me he observed Jakob do a 2mile easy jog then go straight into 1200m @ 5:30 pace then a 400 @ 1500m race pace then he would stretch and do drills etc.

I can’t remember which podcast but Kyle Langford talks about doing primer 200s before he races (Langford runs the 800 for anyone who doesn’t know) which was basically 2x200 at 400-800m race effort and he said he knew he was ready to medal at worlds in 2017 when he was doing his primer 200s in 23.X and it felt easy

Francoist wrote:

https://twitter.com/Gareth_Sandford/status/1374149361496559616?s=20

Saw this as well. I was coaching a HS kid about 10 years back who would get dropped immediately if a race went out too hard. Added to his warmup with a a few sets of progressively faster 60'' hard/60'' easy and a near all out 150 about 15 mins before race time. Ended up being a 2x state champ.

Once I made the jump to college coaching it was always a culture shock to freshman when you ask them to run hard reps (6' progression, or 800 hard, or, min on/off, etc.), until they don't feel like crap early in races.

If I had to guess I'd say close to 80% of college programs don't warm up hard enough. Better programs have been on top of this for a while but there's still so many athletes out there jogging 2-3 miles, doing some light drills and strides, and calling it a day.

This is gold.

The Tweet that you linked to says 20 minutes before a race. My understanding is that the Oregon guys, and many others, do a harder warm-up before workouts as well. I imagine the time between the up-tempo 800m or 1k, the harder strides and the workout would be much shorter. Probably only a few minutes.