Your personal "bro science" take on training?

I subconsciously have taken note of this and I think it’s pretty accurate.

On easy days I find myself doing a “nose test” where if I close my mouth and can breath with my nose for a while i’m probably in a good place.

With threshold, I notice that’s when breathing becomes audible, as in you can hear your own breathing. On easy days my mouth is usually open but I can’t hear it.

As much as I love looking over studies and discussions of these topics, I think this is very right. While the manufactured categories and labels may be a helpful frame for thinking about these concepts, they are not so highly refined to truly describe what it going on in the body.

However I do think this kind of approach can be helpful for some because it provides them with the justification for their training and a belief that it is the correct approach. I have heard in just about every coaching talk I've ever attended or watched that a good coach needs to be able to answer "why are we doing this workout today" to his athletes. I think these concepts allow for satisfactory justification, even if the coach himself doesn't fully understand the finer details.

It is incredibly important in distance running training to define limits as well, because the looming threat of injury is always hanging over your head, especially as you attempt to run more. Using these data points can be a good way to get an athlete to stop a workout without feeling like they're giving up or not getting the most out. Even if an athlete is not feeling it or struggling, there is still something personal about dropping a workout or cutting it off but it is much less personal to point to your watch and say "I need to cut this workout because I'm not in the right zone after my recovery interval" or that their lactate reading is going up too much.

I'm kind of torn on this because it is easy to get lost in the weeds when delving into these topics and I think a lot of runners find their obsessive personality traits really come out once they get into it. But I also think most of the widely spread anecdotal training advice has been borne out in the research, even if the studies are not particularly comprehensive.

Just being happy is WAY underappreciated.
When I'm in a happy and relaxed place in my life in general, my training and racing are significantly better. Huge difference. When I'm stressed, bored, sad, whatever, there is a very real impact on my racing and training. Even if someone could measure everything in my body and find zero difference during my two different mental states, I will attest that there is a measurable difference in output.

You were doing great until you brought up drugs. Doping is broscience bro.

I feel very similarly, I run three days a week and cross train on the elliptical every other day and my warmup jogs are no more than a kilometer. There is a such thing as having too long of a warm up and the last thing I need before a workout or race is to waste all my energy in the warmup. My warmup is still on the longer side (20-25 minutes), but 80% of it is doing drills and dynamic stretching.

8x400 at mile race pace with 2 minutes of collapsing on the ground from exhaustion between reps is the perfect "one size fits all" workout for any race distance.

So many runners train to get “fit” and forget about the objective of running fast over a given distance on a given day.

Eyes on the prize. The prize isn’t doing 2 miles more on a tempo.

Prepare to race, don’t train to get fit.

To that I’d add that being happy and having full confidence in your training programme is more important than contents of said programme.

No joke this is my favorite workout, it gets even better when it’s close to competition season and you get to do 10 of them. Having the 2 minutes rest is a perfect amount of rest to build up lactate without feeling like you’re gonna die.

Train hungover, then quit drinking a few weeks before the big race. The dehydration during training is like altitude training.

drills and stretching are definitely broscience…

My bro science is that the word 'niggles' feels inherently wrong to say.

Automatic chills of hearing SJD say it into a camera over a cup of coffee and a BOBO at 3am

this 1000%

for most college athletes a lot of the mileage is pretty pointless. they would get the same results on much lower mileage

truly truly elite and talented people will benefit, but theres like handful of them in the usa at any given moment.

People need to focus on seasonal mileage rather than weekly. Who cares if you ran 120 miles one week, but then ran 0 for the next 5 weeks because you got a stress fracture?

this by far the dumbest f#$%king thread i've seen in some time on letsrun

If you are really slow, it is better to frequently run "fast" but short efforts rather than slowly build your mileage "running" 15 minute miles your heart rate under 140bpm.

No sh*t dude. There's a reason everyone likes to see consistent strava graphs rather than a shaky one. I don't know anyone who would value a weekly mileage of 120mpw once over 100mpw for 2 months.

Bro, if workouts could have letter grades, train at "B" level almost all the time, but show up totally consistently and put in that B-level work week after week and month after month and just get it done. It will keep your body fit and mind fresh/motivated and the "A+" level work will show up for you Saturdays at the meets when it matters. Nobody remembers who won the workout, everyone remembers who won the race.

Also bro, getting specific, as a 400m sprinter whatever pace you can rip an all-out 300 in during practice is about the pace you can expect to run a 400 in in a meet. If you can kill yourself to run 36 for 300 in practice, plan on about a 48 in a race. If you can kill yourself to run 34.5 in practice plan on about a 46 in a race. The formula makes no sense (since a 400 is never evenly-paced and the final 100 of a 400 is ALWAYS the slowest) but bro it somehow works like magic to predict 400 times!

Mine is simply this:

In order of increasing from least to most importance in your training (running, cycling, swimming, etc):

1. Quantity - how much you're doing

2. Quality - how you're doing the quantity

3. Intensity - how fast you're doing the quality

4. Recovery - most important - if you're not recovering you will stay in a kind of adaptation failure state constantly and the first three won't do for you what they're supposed to do. This is sort of built into the quantity, the quality, and the intensity. Recovery involves learning what to do in the hour following a hard workout, race, long run, etc. It involves understanding things like icing sore areas, using compression gear, physical therapy based stuff to keep the body recovering. It also involves learning to eat for repair, not just fuel, and also how important 8-10hours of unbroken sleep a day is.

I lived by those principles and also the following three rules, using them the few times I coached (mainly high school, one year of volunteer college coaching for a small D2, now a D3, school). All the athletes I helped progressed and remained less injured/fatigued.

1 in 10: during base work take one complete day off every ten days (from running, can still x-train)

1 in 7: during peak workout/racing part of season, take one complete day of every 7 days (from running, can still x-train on that day)

1 in 3: no more than one out of every three workouts shall be 'hard' - this includes long runs because a long run is more time biomechanically stress loading the body (more steps)

These 'rules' were to get runners to recognize that it is in recovery the body adapts - and that often increasing too fast or not taking days off leads to repetitive stress based injuries, the most common among endurance athletes - body just needs a break from time to time and will thank you later. I think that a lot of high school and college runners 'race' poorly even though their training shows they should be racing faster...because they aren't recovering properly...just my 'bro' two cents.