Renato Canova: Warm Ups And Cool Downs?

bump.

I remember a while back he liked really light ones I think. maybe 20 easy a couple hours before and then 10 easy after? Would be interested to hear from him though.

Usually when he's scheduling a special or specific block he will put something like 10k in 33:00 before both of the workouts for someone who's a world class cross country or distance runner (got that from his schedules for his world-class male athletes). In his "6 Weeks Training for Kenyan Juniors" schedules he usually had 20 or 25 minutes easy for warmup, but never mentioned a cooldown. In his training schedule for Florence Kiplagat he usually had warmup as 30 minutes easy, and it could be 6km or 7km depending on what kind of workout was to follow.

For cooldowns, he prefers them to do a very easy run of around 30:00 a couple of hours before the workout.

Here is a quotation:

"My athletes do normally a short cooldown after very hard workouts on track, but very easy (no longer than 10 minutes for about 2 km). In any case, I let them free to do what they think better, because I don't believe that it is really important. If I can chose, I prefer a pre-warm up (running for example 30:00 very easy 2-3 hours before a tough training) that a cooldown. What I see is that many athletes give a lot of importance to something that is not significative, losing a correct focus related with what is really important in training for improving."

Thanks man. Fed my curiousity.

No problem. I found it really interesting when I first saw it, so I had it saved and it was easy to find it again.

Any idea how it changes for long fast runs?

Here's what I gather from the training schedules I have saved. I can maybe look through the other stuff I have later (I have a 30 page MSWord document of Canova quotes that I reworded into understandable English to see if I could decipher his system).

Mostly, I assume for the purposes of this that long fast runs can be anything from progressive runs to moderate runs when the athletes feel good and go faster to actually scheduled long fast runs.

For the most part, it appears he does anything from 25 to 35 minutes of "easy" running before the harder sessions no matter what. He doesn't always list this, but I found certain examples where he does break down a progression run or a longer moderate run. He always breaks down the harder runs into an easy and a hard portion, and almost always notes that.

Below are some examples I grabbed in about five minutes of looking through my files. All paces are per km.

6 Weeks Training for Kenyan Juniors (December training for cross country - Augustine Choge, Justus Kiprono, Ronald Kipchumba, Samson Kiplangat):

- 80 minutes progressive (30min easy, 50min progressing from 3:40 to 3:00 pace)

- 20:00 warmup, 10k @ "medium" pace = 3:15 -> 3:05

- 20:00 warmup, 40:00 fast with short variations of speed (~40 seconds pace change out of every 3:00) on cross country surface

- 30:00 easy, 6km fast uphill (typically something like the Rift Valley)

Florence Kiplagat (leading up to her victory at the Kenyan XC championships, etc.):

- 25:00 moderate (6km total), then medium fartlek (10 x 2:00 fast with 2:00 easy = 9km total)

- 70:00 progression run (17km)

- 70:00 progression run (18km)

- 60:00 progression run (16km, 4:10 down to 3:30 pace) [December versus January versus February]

- 70:00 with short variations of speed (17km)

- 25:00 easy (5.5km total), 10 x 1:00 fast with 2:00 moderate recovery, 10 x 2:00 fast with 1:00 easy recovery, 8 x 1:00 fast with 1:00 easy recovery (24.5km total)

Lydia Cheromei (last 10 weeks before marathon):

Week 1:

- 10km in 35:03, 15 x 80m uphill sprint, 6km progression run in 16:44

- 8km in 29:52, then 10km in 34:03 // Same day - 8km in 29:32, then 10 x 1000m (track) in 3:15 ranging down to 3:06 on the last one with 200m recovery in 78s

Week 2:

- 35km with variations in 2:12:40 (15k at 4:00, 5k alternating 1:00 fast/slow, 10k marathon pace in 35:20, 2k easy, 3k max intensity uphill)

Week 3:

- 10k in 35:32, 10k in 33:08 // Same day - 10k in 36:05, 10 x 1000m in 3:11 down to 3:03 with 200m in 1:45 recovery

- 20:00 warmup, 23k hilly progression run in 82:23

Moses Mosop: (2008-2009 cross country training)

- December 21: 35km hilly climbing (Iten to Chebara) in 1:58:39 (splits: 20:20, 16:46, 15:59, 16:51, 15:58, 16:53, 16:52)

[As you can see, he did a 5km warmup section at 4:05 pace, then went 3:25 to 3:10 pace for the rest]

- December 28: 15:00 easy (3km), then 15km in 43:45

- February 5: 19:00 easy (4km), 20km (Kiplombe, climbing) in 62:34 (splits - 16:25, 14:58, 15:57, 15:14)

- February 26: 30:00 easy (7km), 60:00 moderate (16km)

- February 28: 30:00 easy (7km), 53:00 moderate (14km)

So I assume he never assigns a cooldown for these and expect it will be at most the 2km in 10 minutes thing. And obviously the warmup tends to be pretty relaxed running for the runners in question. For Mosop, 7km in 30 minutes is probably close to a shuffle (6:53-4 mile pace) based on his 11th place finish at World Cross the next week. And Florence Kiplagat run her "easy pace" warmups anywhere from 3:50 to 5:00 km pace in the schedule.

Woops, that should be "anything from 15 minutes to 35 minutes". Notice that Mosop does 3km at 5:00km pace before his 15km hard run in 43:45. And 4km at 4:45km pace before his hard 20km. So I think the harder the run, the easier the warmup, but that's only based on these few examples and could be wrong.

Do you have the recent notes/comments of Canova for his training routine regarding James Kwalia C/Kurui leading into the world champs?

Nope. I've got pretty much nothing on Kwalia. I'm pretty sure I read the threads at one point, but I don't seem to have saved any information on it. I assume Canova trains him the same way he trains his other 3k-10k guys, though.

Darn... A few weeks ago there was a new thread started asking Canova to comment on his World Championship runners training. Canova commented on C'Kurui and how he had some trouble recovering. I only got a glimpse of the thread and went back to read it the next morning and it was deleted.

By the way, I forgot to mention this, but it might be important to your thinking about Canova's cooldown methodology. As I said, he doesn't tend to assign a cooldown, so it tends to be minimal; however, there is almost always a 30-40 minute easy run the next morning after a workout. If it was a progression run it might just be a moderate run of longer duration because progression runs aren't intense days, but anything hard has an easy day after it with a shorter easy run in the morning. The afternoon is usually easy as well, but it might be longer or the same length depending on the athlete, what part of the season it is, or whatever else he thinks is relevant.

Good stuff with the workouts. Some of those paces are really impressive when factoring in that they are run at 5-9000ft altitude.

Wonder what his reasoning behind such a minimal cooldown and waiting til the next scheduled run is?

Yeah, I'm not sure. I know sometimes I want to skip the cooldown myself, but I usually have to do it because that's how I get home. His reasoning might be that it's one of those things North Americans place a lot of emphasis on, but he just doesn't see any training benefit from. I've seen the videos of Kenyan athletes warming up, so maybe with their long, careful warmups they get the stretching their bodies need and if they get tight or sore they rest, and will warm up carefully before the next workout anyway.

One possibility is that when you've done an intense workout your technique can fall apart and it might be more beneficial to not bother instead of risking screwing something up. I'm not sure how realistic that is, but I know I've watched people go shuffling off with flailing arms and legs, landing differently, dizzy, etc right after a workout because they're exhausted. It might be better to not bother in a case like that.

He also seems to emphasize getting plenty of rest. Another quote:

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"In the MODULATION that I use, there are LONG PERIODS OF VERY HIGH LOAD WITHOUT COMPETING (or using competitions like training), and periods of competitions (may be 3-4 races in a very short time) during which training is pratically almost nothing. There are weeks of 40 km, due to travels, problems of accomodations, tiredness due to a lot of reasons. So, with Kenyan runners, I teached them NOT TO PAY ATTENTION TO THEIR TIREDNESS DURING TRAINING AT HOME, because in this way is possible to develop GENERAL and then SPECIFIC VOLUME, but i learnt from them that, during competition periods, YOU MUST RESEARCH THE FULL AVAILABILITY OF ENERGIES, because if your physical and nervous energies are not at the top, you cannot have a top performance. So, when a Kenyan is tired, his training is to sleep (may be also one day). When a European, or an American, is tired, the first thing is to go running, because training is not considered something in order to improve, but something like a drug, irremissible also in very bad general conditions.

At the end, this is the reason because is not correct to say TRAIN HARD, WIN EASY. You must TRAIN WELL. Train well is, of course, train hard. But in managing training, you must manage different situations having the final goal to improve in your ability in performance and during a big competition. THE REST is what allows a correct MODULATION, and MODULATION is what allows the SUPERCOMPENSATION. Without mixing these elements, is not possible to have a GOOD TRAINING, but only a hard training, not able to produce the best possible results."

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What I take from that is Americans and Europeans get tired and will still go for a run because they "have to" do it. Kenyans get tired and they go sleep for a day (though that doesn't quite make sense with the sentence about getting his runners to "not pay attention to their tiredness"). Maybe he means that if you're tired (like after a workout) you should just go rest instead of going for a 30 minute run to clear out your legs, because you can run tomorrow.

Who knows. I still haven't managed to take all the quotes I scooped and organize them coherently.

I think it's fairly obvious. When they are training at home he tells them not to pay attention to their tiredness because they should be tired since they are in a long period of very high loads. However, during the competitive season they need to pay attention to their tiredness and if they are tired and not feeling well then he wants them to rest instead of run.

Some workouts, yes, it is good for long warm up. But when my athletes go for run that is steady, I don't have them warm up more than 5 minutes. We also cool down and yes, we stretch. Fast workouts require more strtch and elasticity.

Great work, I Say. I've looked at some of Canova's work myself, and it seems that, particularly in the weeks with the most rigorous training at race pace, rest is emphasized. He uses "modulation" a lot, which I take to mean a great difference in volume and intensity day-to-day. In a word, "hard/easy" for the Africans. Canova likes his athletes to take TWO days of easy training before and after the hardest workouts--the "special block" and "specific block" sessions of two workouts in one day.

Thank you coach~

Renato, what do you prefer for track races.