I saw a guy suggest walking or standing but explicitly said "not jogging," I'm wondering if there is anything to this or if this guy is just making crap up.
I usually have my runners jog. if the rest is long, I have them walk the first half then jog the second.
How do you do it?
Does the way you rest change depending on the length of the rest.
How you rest depends on the goal(s) of the workout. If you are working on anaerobic efficiency, standing around is best to maintain a high level of metabolic wastes in the blood and muscle. We do the same for aerobic capacity sessions since the rest period is so short. When doing an anaerobic capacity workout, however, active recovery (jogging and/or walking) is advisable to help clear those metabolic waste products. Good luck!
That probably depends just on temperature and the length of the reps. If it's cold and/or you are doing 100s or 200s jogging is probably the best bet, if it's hot and/or you are doing mile repeats walking or even standing should be fine. I think some people just like to keep jogging to include the recovery as "mileage" but it actually doesn't really matter or count.
wowzaa wrote:
I saw a guy suggest walking or standing but explicitly said "not jogging," I'm wondering if there is anything to this or if this guy is just making crap up.
I usually have my runners jog. if the rest is long, I have them walk the first half then jog the second.
How do you do it?
Does the way you rest change depending on the length of the rest.
He is making crap up. The most important aspect of the rest period is to rest, which can be accomplished by lying on the ground as well, but I wouldn't reccomend it. The second aspect is to be ready to run the next repeat, for which remaining loose, similar to race prep, is pretty important. I think an active recovery is best with a slow jog, but if you need to walk to recover that is not bad, you 50/50 approach makes sense; standing around does not.
I think it depends on the goal of the workout. If I am doing a medium-pace workout, like mile repeats at 10-20k pace, I will do a short jog rest that specifically isn't a full-on "rest" period, because I am trying to simulate a longer, more moderate effort.
If I am doing intervals at 3k-5k pace (be it 400s or miles, or anything in between), I will often walk the first half of the rest and jog the second half; the walking allows for more recovery, but the jog keeps me warm and loose.
Acting like jog rests between intervals are worthless (like a previous poster did) is absurd; it depends on the rate of the jog and the length of the jog. Sure, "jogging" at a walking pace might not be much different than walking, but jogging 200 or 400 meters at easy run pace between tempo reps sure as hell counts just as much as a regular easy run would.
Generally, you want to jog as slow as possible during recovery. I had an "old school" coach in high school who insisted we NEVER walk on recovery because jogging made you tougher! I don't really agree with that, but jogging is generally better because it keeps the skeletal-muscle pump moving your blood along in your veins back towards your heart. Problem is, if you jog too fast ("pushing" recovery is a common "tough guy" thing to do), you are consuming oxygen that you would otherwise be using to mop up all of the junk in your muscles. Once you've mopped that up by jogging around for a few minutes, you can walk if you have a long recovery (6+ min), or if the upcoming repeats will be very fast (like 600s or 800s with full recovery). But you should ALWAYS do some jogging during your recovery period. You're just making it tougher if you don't.