Why do Millennials use "workout" to refer only to structured tempos/intervals?

ClonedDuck wrote:

Workout has the word work in it. Easy runs aren't really seen as "work"

runners these days are focused on results. If your easy runs don't have a purpose, even if that purpose is enjoyment, you are doing them wrong.

British people call structured tempos/intervals "sessions."

edward teach wrote:

If your easy runs don't have a purpose, even if that purpose is enjoyment, you are doing them wrong.

Says you. I could be a complete idiot and still be doing my easy runs right, just by accident.

I actually find it annoying when people use the word "workout" for easy runs/all their training. If everything is a workout, where's the distinction? Workouts are specific training sessions such as intervals and tempos. Then there are moderate runs, easy runs, recovery runs. Recovery runs shouldn't be a workout and really, neither should easy runs. Moderate runs are on the verge, but still shouldn't be what I'd consider a workout.

I'm not a millennial. Way to use that term to get people to respond, though. It worked.

Atomic Party Chair wrote:

I'm not a millennial. Way to use that term to get people to respond, though. It worked.

This. Plus knowing "hobby-jogger" would come into it.

I don't know any hobby-jogger who refers to going for a run as a "workout". It's going for a "run", and they say "I run x days a week". Before the new workout debate, which keeps popping up, those suffering from a similar insecurity used to debate when it was "jogging vs running" and demanded that hobby-joggers should use the phrase "going for a jog" instead of "going for a run".

I can't see how any of it matters as long as you and your coach know what you're talking about. However, when I ran in university, a workout was always used to refer to lifting weights or to structured track workouts and that's it. Everything else was a "run" with distance, speed/intensity or route used as discriptors. Referring to a long run as a workout is new.

I question your premise. I'm a millenial and I use the term "workout" to mean every time I go running, also any supplementary work like core and drills, also mowing the lawn, washing dishes, going to the bank, getting up off the couch, or anything else for which I feel I deserve a participation medal.

I suspect the idea of needing to draw a distinction between types of runs is where the new terminology came from. In the 70s and 80s we pretty much considered it to be training every time we ran, maybe with the exceptions of days before a race (tapering) or after one (recovering.) But if we did a 15-20 mile run on Sunday, a 8-12 mile run on Monday and a track session on Tuesday we thought of each run as training, i.e.,making ourselves fitter. We did not think of the 8-12 mile run as recovering, it was just easier training,

The only potential problem I see with the current terminology is that people using it frequently seem to think that it's only their workouts that make them fitter so if they have a long run on Sunday, a track session on Tuesday and a fast steady run on Thursday they don't pay much attention to the other four days and think that as long as they aren't running too fast or too far on those days they're fine doing whatever because it's just the three workout days that matter. I do believe that type of thinking was very common in the 90s but thankfully we seem to have moved past it to some extent.

Workout = Going to the track to feel pain.

Workout = Going to the gym to lift weights.

Country Grammar wrote:

British people call structured tempos/intervals "sessions."

So does my coach in college.

Because Strava

HRE wrote:

... if we did a 15-20 mile run on Sunday, a 8-12 mile run on Monday and a track session on Tuesday we thought of each run as training, i.e.,making ourselves fitter. We did not think of the 8-12 mile run as recovering, it was just easier training, ...

... if they have a long run on Sunday, a track session on Tuesday and a fast steady run on Thursday they don't pay much attention to the other four days and think that as long as they aren't running too fast or too far on those days they're fine doing whatever ...

This was my thinking. "8-12" that was done back in the day *was* a workout; "whatever" (4-8?) that is done today is *not* a workout. Which is why they stopped calling those in-between days workouts.