In some parts of his yearly cycle, he advocates as many as 5 tempos runs a week. Why? And how is one expected to perform so many?
In some parts of his yearly cycle, he advocates as many as 5 tempos runs a week. Why? And how is one expected to perform so many?
My take on this is that although it states 5 units of LT work a typical 2 x 15 mins LT session would constitute 2 units of training. On p212 Coe/Martin advise that 'any given training period may contain more than one unit.' As an example a fartlek which incorporated efforts based on Jack Daniels equivalent T, I and R paces would equal 3 units, namely 1 unit each for LT/ventilatory threshold, aerobic capacity and anaerobic capacity respectively. That's how I read it.
2x15 min is one unit, not two (otherwise a session of 6x800m would be 6 units), but if you did 15 min LT followed by 3x800 it would be two units.
Obviously 6 x 800m is one unit, but the original question referred to 5 units of LT work. I'd love to see a training programme which includes 5 separate LT weekly sessions along with the 3 aerobic capacity and 3 anaerobic capacity sessions. I never include more than 2 LT sessions weekly with my athletes, very similar to Steve Cram's training below (p11 fig 6) with shorter reps as summer progresses and athlete nears peak race.
Great article which I've read before. One quote really stood out there:
"But, it is the vital chemistry of natural talent the desire to train and progress and the development of a superior competitive nature which makes the champion."
Couldn't have said it better!
It's 5 units.
Check out Marius Bakken's old training. He regularly did that many Lt type workouts per week and at one time was trained by Peter Coe.
wondering2 wrote:
It's 5 units.
Check out Marius Bakken's old training. He regularly did that many Lt type workouts per week and at one time was trained by Peter Coe.
Yes and no. Marius picked it up from the Morroccans...i.e., Said Aouita's school of thought. Coe clearly says do that many per microcylcle, not per week. Aouita deleberately states in Running with the Champions he used Coe's book that way. Marius' approach is not the manner in which it was intended...but it still worked.
Malmo has been saying for years that if you can't do tempo ruins 5 times a week you're doing them too hard. Clearly Coe, a low mileage advocate, and Malmo, a high mileage advocate, have come to the same conclusion independently.
jimmy jimmy wrote:
Malmo has been saying for years that if you can't do tempo ruins 5 times a week you're doing them too hard. Clearly Coe, a low mileage advocate, and Malmo, a high mileage advocate, have come to the same conclusion independently.
1) I think you are using the term tempo as if it is the same thing here. Reading the Coe/Martin book, tempo runs, as they describe them are not to be done 5 times a week. Simply a terminology difference, but still, tempo is not the same thing in Malmo and Coe terms.
2) Also, Coe was not a low-mileage advocate. Search the forums.
I hope you all realize that the term microcycle, mesocycle, macrocycle, and peridoization have been thrown out as abandoned by modern coaches, just read the Renato stuff in this forum ala Yuri Verkhoshansky.
Check out this website, particularly the forum and the article entitled "end of periodization."
The program you are talking about requires the organism (athlete) to adapt to too many stimuli at once.
Seriously look at ALL of the Renato stuff and look at this site it will change your life. Also get Verkhoshansky's book as well, it's worth the $52.
I would try to translate/simplify Renato's stuff but I intern 12 hour days and train 2-4hrs a day at a sport performance facility so I am a little cramped for time.
There are no concrete answers.
TO throw out COe's work b/c of Verkhoshansky's ideas/ theories would be stupid.
You don't throw out work that led to a man to an 800m time that only one man has surpassed and it's been 20 years...
We don't know as much about the human body as we think we do.
Anyways, Will, you are wrong.
If you read the book, it is clearly detailing the number of units per week not per cycle. It says so in the pages describing the diagram. Like someone else pointed out, a unit doesn't equal an entire run. Coe gives the example of doing a run alternating hard and easy as being 2 units, one aerobic capacity and one anaerobic threshold or whatever.
So, yes he is saying do 5 units of Threshold work per week.
Also, if you read Marius postings on his old webpage, you can come to the same conclusion. When asked about periodization he states to use Coe's chart except eliminate the Anaerobic Capacity work early in the year. He states that the chart is reffering to doing 4-5 LT units per week.