To be honest putting a emphasis on going hard on easy days is both idiotic and oximoronic. Don't get me wrong I'll push it too on easy days if I'm feeling good, but I don't go out of my way to do so.
He had us doing Double Threshold for past year. Now switching to “Gibby Training” starting tomorrow.
To answer your question directly: changing a program philosophy due to the massive success of one runner or short-term success of one program is not advisable.
plus changing your training to follow someone else - is
1) not a good idea...because what works for one person may not work for another
2) you may not even be following what that person is doing because you are not there with them to know if they are being 100% truthful or there to see the little things
He had us doing Double Threshold for past year. Now switching to “Gibby Training” starting tomorrow.
Yea, how did Harvard's #2 guy do this fall? He was hurt and the team suffered the consequences. The training is risky, one guy has thrived. Even Iverson faded each year after his big breakthrough.
He had us doing Double Threshold for past year. Now switching to “Gibby Training” starting tomorrow.
To answer your question directly: changing a program philosophy due to the massive success of one runner or short-term success of one program is not advisable.
Seconded. Maybe your coach had been pondering something like this for a while and Blanks' race was just the thing that got him to do it but coaches who jump to the "Sexy Method du Jour" don't usually get consistently good results. But we're I in your place I'd ask him what his reasoning is.
I would be very wary of a coach who switches up his entire philosophy on a dime. Maybe incorporate some of the things Blanks does but to copy and paste like that shows he might not be the right coach for you(or anyone)
Ah yes do the training of the team that can never even sniff a Heps Championship.
Gibby is just lucky his training works for Blanks. Unless you are a star in the making, I don't think you'll get the same results. You'll end up like the rest of the team
first off, if you did DT you never had easy days to begin with.
second, you're not getting a coach canned over picking a recognized coach strategy, even a dumb one.
third, nothing is stopping you from "creating" your own easy days carved from an excessive practice schedule. you pick particular days or workouts that are jacked up, you do them easier effort. example, my college soccer coach was nuts with practices, so i would ease up on the day before game day (focus on skill work), limit how much of his overlong gameday warmups i did (go get some water, or take my sweet time putting in shin guards and switching into my uniform shirt), and shut down a little when practices dragged past 2 hours.
you then have to make sure you are ready and perform on meet day. you can't miss practices. you can't blow it all off. but if it's really obnoxious you can pick a day or so and go easier.
and the coaches on here may not like me saying that but long-term athletes know when a coach has gone nuts and when practices have become whack. i then suggest do an honest week's work to be fit and ready -- then dial effort back to be healthy and lively for the meets.
Your coach is willing to sacrifice you and your teammates potential for the very rare chance he gets to coach someone who is talented enough to benefit from this type of training.
I am not sure if this is a real post but I know many coaches and athletes will be swayed by the latest training trends. Nothing new here. But I would hope there is more background than just knowing that it's "hard workouts and hard easy days."
On the LR podcast last year, Gibby actually explained the whole philosophy behind the training and had a good conversation with Wejo about their different approaches. Wejo famously wrote that one of the reasons he "sucked in college" was because he insisted on doing his easy runs around 6:30 pace because he felt that's what you had to do to be good. For him, this ran him into the ground when it combined with trying to smash workouts. I suspect many would find this the same, going relatively hard every day is usually a recipe for burnout.
But Gibby countered that it isn't just going hard for the sake of toughness. The idea behind it was to build an aerobically resilient athlete who also runs at paces that still encourage mechanically efficiency. He also stated that one way to mitigate the constant effort level is to make sure his athletes are eating and sleeping and also keep an eye on metrics like heartrate or visually assessing his runners. If anomalies start to pop up, they need to be addressed.
Finally, I would hope your coach is putting the paces Graham runs in perspective. Graham is an immensely aerobically strong runner who has also run 12:59 for 5k. While 6 minute pace mileage runs may seem fast for the average runners, this is a relatively manageable pace for a runner of Graham's caliber. The equivalent would be somewhere in the 9 minute pace range for a 20 minute 5k runner. I'm not sure if the other Harvard athletes paces would scale as reasonably but that may also be why Graham is the runner far ahead of his teammates. Ultimately, the training works for very well for him and in interviews Graham seems especially motivated by the idea that he is putting in harder work and getting the most out of himself under this system. It is not for everyone though, as he is well ahead of others doing the same training.
A 17:00 5k runner doing their easy days at 7:30 and a 13:00 guy doing their easy runs at 6:15 are not that different. In fact it might be harder for the 17:00 minute guy based on %.
I think where you could get into big trouble is the 17:00 guy FORCING sub 7:00 daily and never recovering. Blanks does his mileage hard, but this could be correspondingly harder.