Verheul Method: some dutch interval approach I found. Your thoughts?

An interesting approach, concentrating on how muscles react to different paces, but far too controversial for letsrun. I mean this guy is actually questioning conventional training dogma, how dare he?

van Aaken said precisely the same about the 150bpm stuff. Seems like elements of Igloi and Gerschler are incorporated too. This seems interesting to test. Speed everyday, but never above the lactate threshold. High aerobic running with long recoveries. Perhaps I will do this.

bump

Very interesting article. I like that he gives times associated with the repeats, unlike Igloi with his "swing, etc...". I am very curious as to what these gymnastic exercises are and to the distances and types of warmups and cooldowns he used. Thanks for discovering this, finding unique stuff like this is why I keep using this forum.

Was Verhuel born in 1932 or is that when he put this spproach together? I can't tell.

In a way there's nothing really new here. If you go back to the 1950s and thereabouts and look at how people trained you see that most did some form of interval work almost daily. What's different here is the easier pace and in some cases the longer recoveries.

Someone mentioned van Aaken and I see what they mean. It's not that different from samples I've seen of Harald Norpoth's training, even the fairly low volume, and though other of van Aaken's athletes seem to have done much more volume the approach, slower reps with full recoveries, is similar.

I'd love to see some more complete training samples. If it really tops out at not much more than 50 miles a week it's truly amazing that a woman ran a 2:24 marathon this way.

HRE: After some research I found out that 1932 is the year in which Verheul was born.

I found another chart of training times for 2000m, 1000m, 400m and 200m intervals here:

http://www.chatnrun.nl/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2028&sid=70f0b8906dc1f54dedd33e8faeccf478

This seems to refer to a "souplessemethode" which seems to be largely based on the Verheul method. It seems that this souplessemethod has more fartleks (in the woods, i read?) and focusses on racing like every week. All other interval runs are under the lactate threshold. There are 83 pages on that subject there. Perhaps someone can get google translate to work? It sure is interesting.

PS:

I just tried one of these workouts myself. The 15x200 workout is easy as hell. Don't know how if feels if I do it week in - week out tough.

Just tried the 10x400 after doing 15x200 earlier today. All I can say is 1) it feels easy, but according to this approach it should, and 2) (consequently) time really flies by.

she ran 2:34 pb - the 2:24 is a typo - google'd it.

1991 - rotterdam - joke kleyweg

Thanks. I've been meaning to dig around but haven't had the chance. I've thought for a long time that most modern runners don't race enough. If you look at the Brits who were always aming the world's best in the 60s you see that it was common for them to race pretty much every week. Ron Hill ran his first marathon simply because he couldn't find any other races to do that weekend. But they trained through most of them rather than taper and go all out.

There was a thread here not all that long ago about the 60 plus year old Japanese guy who runs a shade over 2:30 for the marathon. His training is similar in that he does 1,000 meter reps every day but not at a terribly hard pace, though with much more volume.

I found a dutch PDF about the gymnastic exercises involved. I managed to translate it with Google. The quality is poor, but most of it is understandable.

Link:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hardlooptrainers.nl%2Fartikelen%2FDe_gymnastiek_van_Herman_Verheul.pdf

Seems like these exercises are quite different than you'd think at first. I recommend the read, it's very interesting.

What do you think?

How can running faster than lectate threshold be detrimental? I call violation of the principle of specificity.

*** lactate

I believe it has something to do with higher blood lactate values (>4mmol/l?) being bad for mitochondria, or something like that. Also, according to what I've read about this method it's about relaxation of the muscle while going fast, essentially. Correct me if I'm mistaken.

suiiiiii wrote:

How can running faster than lactate threshold be detrimental? I call violation of the principle of specificity.

I agree. I want to learn what I can from anyone, but you have to be cautious, every idea must have a good explanation.

HRE wrote:

In a way there's nothing really new here. If you go back to the 1950s and thereabouts and look at how people trained you see that most did some form of interval work almost daily.

Wouldn't it be true to say that by the 1950's all the training that could be invented had been invented? What needs to be done for anyone to improve is to put the old ideas together in a better way to suit the individual, wouldn't you say?

Even the current World Records will be greatly surpassed in the next 50 years, by runners doing the same things, but in a different sequence.

Looks like what Zatopek did if you add some (a lot of) repetitions. van Aaken described Zatopeks training as "slow running with even slower running in between", or something like that.

I've thought for a long time that everything we do now was in place by the late 50s and that we've just been renaming and rearranging it since then.

Looks like double(s) dutch to me

I favour the Ethiopian Method myself

I do something similar to this with my athletes near the end of our racing seasons when I want them to be really fresh. However, we maintain aerobic fitness with easy to steady distance runs before hand and only will do around 1200-1600m worth of fast stuff (200s-400s) and we do them closer to what Daniels calls R pace. We take plenty of rest when we do them. We also do 1000s during this period, but the paces are relatively faster, closer to what Daniels would call I pace. We only do 3 x 1000 in our late season phase and we take 5-6 min of recovery between them.

One of our days during the late season might look like this for a 17:30 high schooler

4 mile progression run, reaching steady state pace by the last half of the run. Then 4 x 300 @ 60-57 with a very easy/slow 100 meter walk recovery, 1 mile cool down.

I have never seriously considered doing this through the whole season, however.