This is how a real champion trains! Others spend 9 hours checking this forum, complaining about P.E.D., with messages full of hate and jealousy... Stop lazing around and start working, you losers!
Alot of people here seem to conflate distance running training intensity time to sprinter intensity which is nothing close when it comes to the grind. Sprinters only spend a fraction of their total time on the track actually running as their focus is way more slanted to neuromuscular training. A lot of the training is basically running for a few seconds. They are not trying to run themselves into the ground. Reps like 60m sprints are alactic. So a sprinter may run for 6-8 seconds, then have a 2 minute and then take 5-10 minutes between sets. Even short sprint workouts take a huge amount of time to complete as they tend to focus on full recovery between reps and sets. They want to start every rep and set fresh unlike distance runners who are trying to stimulate fatigue and are more focused on volume than pure speed
Your two-hour decath workout is not as hard as a two-hour run. 18-20 miles at 5:50-6:50/mile pace is more work than drills, stretching, checking insta, and doing some hard plyos/hurdles/anything...
Also, an emphasis on not getting injured probably allows him to progress incrementally, rather than yo-yoing between being injured and getting back to fitness.
Ex D1 800 guy here. I ran mostly 400/800/1500 in college and was pretty average (47/1:49:3:44).
I spent generally half the year doing base/XC with the cross country guys and half the year with our 400 group in indoor and outdoor.
sprint workoits are a lot harder than distance workouts. Distance workoits you hardly ever go anaerobic for very long because you’re so concerned with volume. 15-18 mile runs, tempos, cruise intervals etc are much easier to do (albeit more time consuming) then the sprint stuff we would do. For instance doing an all out 600 rest 3 minutes all out 150 rest 10 minutes all out 500 rest 3 minutes all out 100 rest 10 minutes all out 400 rest 3 mine all out 50 etc.
stuff like that hurts way worse than 10x400 with 1 min rest. I would say the spot where training hurts the most is 400-800 where you’re more of a speed 800 guy as opposed to distance.
true distance guys don’t do enough speed work year round to be able to really even do these type of sessions. Similar to how a 200/400 guy couldn’t hop in and just do a 10 mile progression run. You have to do the steps before or a base if you will to be able to even complete these workouts just like a distance base.
but let’s just say 400h training is similar to sprint based 800 training with a lot more drills for the hurdle specificity and literally none of the workouts are fun or easy.
neither of them are easy to do but if I had to choose I will pick 5k/10k training all day over hard 400/800 training. You just don’t go that hard in 5k/10k training except when you race and 80% of your volume is pretty easy running.
While the world was shocked at the sight of the WR and of him ripping his shirt, Leif has seen it many times before and thought it was commonplace after such an unbelievably hard run.
Jeez, wonder how many shirts this guy goes through. It's good to be sponsored
Tearing off shirts in practice after doing hours of intense repeats sounds a lot like a guy with very high testosterone levels. Must be natural though because he has not failed a test.
Y'know what's mind blowing? Rojo using a teen's dictionary of superlatives to write. Why did you even pull a Lori Loughlin to get into Yale or whatever if you're gonna write like a teen blogger.
Great article and very insightful. And I have beach front property in Nebraska to sell you!
Try to emulate this with another athlete and they will be injured. I guarantee you this will hurt any and every other human being. There is not enough recovery and the body is not handling this amount of intensity at these volumes. I will leave it all at that.
Furthermore, no one is achieving his stride pattern by running on a treadmill. Did the article say 10x9 hurdles???? TEN!!!!! LMAO
On a technical point, the author states early that unlike distance training his training does not have base training and launches straight into intensity. Or something like that. Simply not a true statement. In his following sentences he describes the variances in intensity and volume of the sessions, thus laying out the base training, and different phases of his training throughout the year.
Are you serious?? Nike spends over a million dollars a year in testing and doping of athletes. Yes to make sure they are not caught. Is that what you are referring to??
This post was edited 26 seconds after it was posted.
But it's the residual, accumulating, and mental fatigue over time that makes distance training so hard. Doing high mileage (75+ mpw) week after week after week isn't fun or easy either. Long runs are primarily run "easy", but if you go long enough (90+min), it'll start to take its toll as well.
With you being a 4/8/15 athlete focusing more on the 8, I'm not sure if you've done proper 5k/10k training which probably skews your perspective. Imagine doing 7-8 x 2k with a 2 min jog rest. No walking or standing the entire workout. That's a lot of continuous mechanical load, mental strain (especially with hills and bad weather), and then you have to deal with cardiac drift as well. Although the pace is easier, the resulting impact can take several days to truly recover from.
Because most pros steer clear of Let's Run. When a site allows angry old men and middle school kids to run amok with made up stories about you, your agent and your sponsors direct you to not speak to the Johnsons or Gault outside of the mixed zone at a meet. Give them a canned quote and then get as far away as possible.
I don't buy that. I just think they aren't trying. They even said on the most recent podcast that they've never even asked Jakob for an interview. Seems like intern Alex just had to ask and he got an interview with one of the most exciting athletes on the circuit.
Track and field is not a big sport. The athletes get very little coverage so they tend to do any podcasts they're asked to do. I remember Josh Kerr saying on a podcast earlier this year that he hasn't been asked to do many interviews since Tokyo. LRC aren't interested in an Olympic 1500m medallist?
The Coffee Club managed to get Devon Allen and that podcast is a mess of half-informed takes and idiotic bro-speak. I'm sure LRC could get decent guests if they tried
I’d say that this probably is closer to the truth than a conspiracy amongst athletes, agents, and coaches to avoid LRC.
You have to remember that an 8-hour workout for a sprinter or Decathlete/Heptathlete looks very different than a distance runner's workout. You should watch some of the training day videos that Kevin Mayer and Ashton Eaton have put out over the years.
For example - I am a masters decathlete, and on the days that I have a 3 hour pole vault workout, I probably run less than a half mile total. There is a lot of active downtime, sure it is moving around, not just sitting down, but the real serious work portion is maybe 5% of the total time.
I have another workout day comprised of only Uphill Sprints at about 92% effort, of 90m, 70m, and 50m. The rests are still about 2:00 between reps, and 3:00 or more between sets. (This is not my 98% effort Uphill Sprint workout, which are shorter reps of 40m and less total volume.) It takes 2 hours to complete this workout, total distance is less than 1100m.
My distance friends who run solid half marathons or 10ks are impressed that I did a 2-hour workout, but then disgusted when they learn my total distance was "only" between 300m and 1100m. But I guarandamntee that I put in way more effort than they did on their 2-hour run.
With sprinter workouts vs. distance workouts, it's not apples vs oranges; it's apples vs beef jerky. Not even close to the same thing.