BBen wrote:
Earlier in this thread you mentioned that amateurs cannot be trained like CANOVA's elite runners. But something I've been wondering: could we nevertheless use the same training methodoly and principles with amateurs, adapting training intensities and load ?
To take some precise examples, I think in this video Renato CANOVA summarizes very well the main methodology changes he has brought in his elite marathon training these last decade or so:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WObrtaR9D3s:
No. Amateur athletes versus professional ones, or better said, faster performers versus slower performers. They just can´t train the same way.
They can train under the same training principles and the same methodology, however they got to have different training application and different stimulus.
The reason is simple. The faster/efficient runners (the best ones related to the others not so best, not so fast) can carry on higher percent of his maximum ability, that the slower ones can´t.
For example. One runner can do one workout that consists of interval training at his 95% best pace, while a weaker . less efficient runner (the slower ones) can´t run the same interval not faster than his 90% best pace.
Question of efficiency I the utilization. As Renato Canova says in the video, we realize that lactate can be used/utilized as energy, but the higher percent an higher efficiency of that utilization is done by the best runners.
Another example. Imagine that one 2:00 min 800m runner average runner the peak of his lactate production is 14mmol lactate concentration , but the peak of one 1:44 800m runner is 19mmol. Therefore if the 1:44 runner uses the same percent of lactate utilization from his stock of concentration, the fast runner can resist to hard workouts, fast intervals related to his 1:44/800m pb and train faster closer to his 1:44 pace that the 2:00 runner to his 2:00/800m pb.
The same thing with the marathon runner. If one 2:10 runner related to one (let´s say) 2:15 runner and a 3rd one of 2:20. Imagine that all got 28:50 10k pb. Now imagine that the reason among the discrimination of that 3 different marathon pbs lies in fact that the faster one got the best lactate clearance efficiency.
If you build one qualified long run workout, lets say 25k/easy + 10k/fast. It´s evident that the fast runner (the one of 2:10) probably he can run that 10k at his fast PACE PERCENT (95% of his 10k pb) and the slower one can run the last 10k just at 92% his own 10k pb, and the 2:20 can run just at his 89% 10k pb.
Now, in the same example imagine someone with 3:00 marathon pb ! he barely can run the same 25easy+10k/fast marathon specific long run workout faster than his 80% 10k pb.
For example. Someone ask me about Jack Daniels R-pace table or tempo. It´s evident that for the fast runners it´s easier to follow that R-pace workouts that for the slower runner. I would bet that for the average runner, the calculation of that Jack Daniels tempo pace is extremely hard to follow or simply impossible. Therefore the JD R- pace are quite wrong calculation for average runners, and instead might be an easy down/slower pace calculation, but a world top class runner can run at that J.Daniels R.tempo pace.
That take us once again about the need of TRAINING INDIVIDUALITY, and also that the kind of training which the package that is 100miles, 30k long runs, marathon training for different types of runners , so and so, without consider that the faster runners, because they are efficient they can resist to train at higher quality/pace percent and more quantity/mileage volume percent that the slower runner (the amateur can´t). Here we go again to refer as stupid training, that one.
You ask me to watch that Renato Canova video. I want to do one comment about it. This is the profile of the modern coach versus the old one. Renato Canova sees the training methodology as a dynamic think, and as fasr as we got more experience more skill, more physiologic data background, the training physiology goes on in time, to be modulated as far as that new and better training acquisition. Training methodology is a dynamic process of knowledge, even if Renato Canova is the world best top coach. Coach Leaning is one individual and collective process in continuum. But the old school of coaches are those that they think they know all, they see the training methodology as static process. That old fashion coaches and that old school of methodology after some point of his career they think they know everything, ther´s nothing more to learn, nothing more to investigate, the coach is just to repeat ion and on the same paradigm. Same coaches, they coach for so long understand the same method, and they got so many success that they are no humble to change when they face the evidence that in some points they aren´t quite right. The proposal of the old school fo coaches is the methodology of past decades.
The modern coach is the kind of pragmatic one, the coach of the present and the coach of the future, not the inflexible one. Te inflexible one is the coach of the old school, the coach of the past, ten outdate coach, the outdate method, the one deaf and blind to the facts and new coach evidences.
In the video, Let´forget if Renato Canova is wrong or right about what he says what´s the lactate does. But he gave us a lesson of humbleness. To confess that the book he wrote one decade ago, if he will write that once again, would be a different methodology in some points.
This take me once again to John Hadd. He was intelligent enough and got a scientific mind that the continues investigation, the eager for new training knowledge doesn´t stop.