Get the inside scoop on Drew Hunter's training - LetsRun's feature on Tom "Tinman" Schwartz

Jonathan Gault has written a piece focused on the coaching philosophy of Tom Schwartz and the training philosophy powering Drew Hunter. It definitely is LetsRun approved as Hunter is running many of his easy days at 7 min per mile.

http://www.letsrun.com/?p=101889

Take a look at it and tell us what you think.

come on, trying to say there are a dozen+ boys out there as talented as Hunter is such a farce a screams of vanity.

I enjoyed the article a great deal. When I was reading it, it reminded me so much of John Kellogg and my relationship with him. Like Hunter, Weldon and I had total faith in JK. And John also had total faith in his system as does Schwartz.And the philosophy is similar. Short speedy stuff can happen after almost any day but the key is to realize that things can't be forced. And the pace of the easy days is one of the least important factors.Now, at Cornell, JK and I definitely did some goal pace stuff so they could become economical at that pace but you shouldn't hammer people.

LetsRun wrote:

"I’m not trying to rush people into top fitness by hammering them with VO2 max or so-called 'goal pace' training, which has really no physiological foundation," Schwartz said. "Our body's only where it is right now. But humans think, 'If I just run at goal pace, I'll automatically get there.' Um, that's not how your body develops. There's no physiological basis for that.

"They’re in the conventional mindset of America that you need to push, push, push, push all the time," Schwartz said. "They don’t know what they’re doing and they have coaches that don’t even control them. Their coaches don’t understand that they should run slower."

I think JK is definitely more into periodization for athletes - particularly for HSers. In your mid 20s, he thinks you could be 6 weeks away from a PR all year long if you want but very much is into periodization for HSers. The difference is when you are younger you are increasing both mileage and intensity which is risky so you need rest. When you are older, your mileage is pretty much set.

I can't argue with his success, but I am a bit puzzled. Does he know that the muscle fiber types are switching? Or is this just a theory? I would love to see muscle biopsy, or at least performance type testing. Is it possible that his training regiment is causing improvements in other ways that are more relevant to his runners success? So many theories on best way to train, I wish there were more definitive answers with empirical data. I do like his approach though and hope to learn more so that I may be able to implement that into my coaching. Thanks for the article.

Thanks for sharing, Tinman and rojo for the interview.

I have done some of this critical velocity training with my high school team and am a believer as we have seen our cross country team run some fast miles for them just off distance training.

Because the Hunters are such great people, they have shared their training with other local high school runners and coaches.

It doesn't make sense unless you know physiology and you see the first hand results.

I'm a hack but I've found success with this kind of training.

I'm not as fast as I once was but for me they key part of my training is listening to my body.

I call my interval style "race-pace" intervals but they aren't really based on a specific pace. It's about using a race based effort in your intervals so that your mind and body are ready to race at the efforts you'll be racing at. The side benefit is that this pacing is fun and easier to fit in real life schedules. I'm no longer hating doing intervals.

My body has never responded super well to interval efforts that are substantially harder than a race effort. It's funny how the CV pace is pretty much exactly what I've gravitated to doing. I'd imagine there are many elite athletes and coaches out there that use the CV concept by a different name.

If vo2 max is basically 5k pace, then he estimates Drew's 5k ability currently at about 13:38-40 (6.09756 m/s) to get a roughly 3:00 1k CV pace (5.487 m/s).

For myself, with a 16:04 5k pr, I would have a 3:34 1k pace for 5-7 intervals (200j), then and 5:34/M pace on longer intervals. I don't know how long he would have his athletes run at so-called critical velocity. These paces are considerably slower than I typically do 1k's (closer to 3:12) and mile repeats (maybe starting the season in the 5:30s but typically low 5:20s to high 5:10s and then getting down below 5:10). CV is closer to what I might do a 4M tempo in, though they start getting quite a bit faster if I am in good shape.

I realize that it is a virtue not to break your body down but I am still skeptical because I have had much more success with intervals at a considerably faster pace.

First, I really enjoyed the piece on Tinman. Great insight.

I have an issue with this paragraph though.

Copied from the piece:

Schwartz’s key postulation centers around Type IIa fibers. Type IIa fibers produce energy and sustained power — say the kind a runner would need during the final 400 meters of a mile — but because they rely on oxygen, not glucose, to produce energy, they are more resistant to fatigue. Furthermore, Schwartz discovered that, through training, Type IIb fibers can be converted to Type IIa fibers, allowing an athlete to fight off fatigue even longer.

My issue

Type IIa fibers are more oxidative than their IIb cousins, but oxygen does not supply energy (ATP). Glucose or glycogen provide ATP. These muscles use oxygen to create more ATP, but oxygen itself does not provide ATP.

luv2run wrote:

First, I really enjoyed the piece on Tinman. Great insight.

I have an issue with this paragraph though.

Copied from the piece:

Schwartz’s key postulation centers around Type IIa fibers. Type IIa fibers produce energy and sustained power — say the kind a runner would need during the final 400 meters of a mile — but because they rely on oxygen, not glucose, to produce energy, they are more resistant to fatigue. Furthermore, Schwartz discovered that, through training, Type IIb fibers can be converted to Type IIa fibers, allowing an athlete to fight off fatigue even longer.

My issue

Type IIa fibers are more oxidative than their IIb cousins, but oxygen does not supply energy (ATP). Glucose or glycogen provide ATP. These muscles use oxygen to create more ATP, but oxygen itself does not provide ATP.

That's on me. I'm not the most science-literate person, but what you said makes sense and I think that's what Tinman was trying to explain to me. I'll update the article to clarify this point.

This is so lame. Tinman changed the name of lactate threshold work to "Critical velocity" work and spouted a bunch of scientific muscle fiber terms and acts like he invented the next big thing.

Many coaches have know for decades that lactate threshold work (i.e. ~90% of VO2 Max pace) was a big key factor in the success of distance runners.

As far as mileage goes. Obviously 35-40 miles a week does a better job of developing your cardio-vascular fitness than 20-25 miles a week does.

So his recipe, which he "invented", of slightly higher mileage and more lactate threshold work has been advised by tons of great coach such as Lydiard, Vigil and Daniels for a long time before Tinman. His "contribution" was changing the name of lactate threshold to critical velocity and actually getting a high school kid to listen to what the experts have advised for years (something many youth coaches have resisted thanks to our sucky USATF coaching education system).

Actually if you go to Tinman's calculator at runningprs.com you will see that he says to run your CV 1k reps at 3:20-24, not 3:34. Still a little slower, but not as different.

VO2 max pace is closer to the pace you can run for 8 minutes. 3K pace. not 5k.

Also, you seem to be one of the people tinman is talking about here

"Humans think, 'If I just run at goal pace, I'll automatically get there.' Um, that's not how your body develops. There's no physiological basis for that."

I think of VO2 max pace more closely associated with 2 mile pace, but yes it would still be slower than I do my intervals in. However, I'm resting more than 200m jog between them. I might try this 7xk workout next week.

^This

To Blah Diddy Blah:

Jack Daniels threshold pace = pace you could hold for about an hour.

Tinman CV pace = pace you could hold for about 40 minutes.

Similar but not identical. My own experience is that CV pace rocks and CV intervals do not beat me up as bad as VO2 max pace intervals or straight tempo runs.

CV pace is closest to 10k pace for most, and has been the mainstay of my own coaching for runners 800-marathon, with great success. I also periodize so that in the final months of the season, the athletes transfer that "solid but relaxed" effort to their race specialty. I also run our easy pace at aerobiic threshhold or slower, so 7 minutes for a sub-4 guy would be normal.

Good article!

The stuff about critical velocity is interesting, although I would like to see some peer-reviewed articles that actually demonstrate that running at certain speeds can change type IIb fibers to type IIa ones. However, the linchpin of the success of this program seems to be the emphasize on recovery rather than the minutiae of the workouts; Hunter is able to recover quickly, and thereby is able to take less time off and get in more quality running over the course of a season.

Tinman did not invent CV pace/effort. He found the term in an article, either a theoretical article or one from some other sport (swimming?). Don't remember exactly. Then he applied this concept to running. First the estimated the CV-effort to the effort you can hold for 45 min, but has later adjusted it to a bit faster. IIRC he now uses the effort you can hold for 33 minutes. And that's not computed from your PB. It's the effort you could have held for 33 minutes on that day if you were racing instead of training. So you adjust for fatigue, heavy shoes, snow, etc.

In contrast to coaches like Jack Daniels, Tinman does not want you to take your mile time, find an "equivalent" 10k time and run intervals at that pace. If your 8k or 10k times suck, you should run your CV at those times even if you can run a decent mile.

The CV pace given by Tinman's calculator matches up almost exactly with the "cruise interval" paces given by the McMillan calculator, which matches pretty closely with 10K race pace given by both calculators. The only difference between the two calculators is that Tinman's gives a slower range for Easy/Recovery run paces.