I'm trying the dutch Verheul method. And my form starts to improve a lot. It just feels a lot better, stronger, lighter, smoother. The method is just easy intervals everyday like 5 times 1km at 1/2 marathon pace and 10 times 400 meter at 10k pace. No long runs or easy runs. The only easy running is the warm up and cooling down.
What are the potential drawbacks of this method ?
New stimulus, the faster pace, possibly less volume can feel good at first once you get more efficent at 10k-HM paces. But feeling better overall doesn´t necessarily help you in the long run. The base work should make you feel fatigued at some points, when you create the stimulus by higher volume. How you progress after couple of months? Problems that comes in mind from that approach is that it´s not good for base training, it doesn´t have much room for long term progression, and is quite monotonous.
If you translate this link you'll find a pretty long discussion:
U.N.O. wrote:
New stimulus, the faster pace, possibly less volume can feel good at first once you get more efficent at 10k-HM paces. But feeling better overall doesn´t necessarily help you in the long run. The base work should make you feel fatigued at some points, when you create the stimulus by higher volume. How you progress after couple of months? Problems that comes in mind from that approach is that it´s not good for base training, it doesn´t have much room for long term progression, and is quite monotonous.
Is it based on a model of improving your form and biomechanics through intervals that are relatively light in intensity?The problem I had with running intervals very intensely was that after a about 6 weeks max, I stopped improving and then even worse I would start degrading in performance. Do the top Dutch runners still use this method?
solution seeker wrote:
Is it based on a model of improving your form and biomechanics through intervals that are relatively light in intensity?The problem I had with running intervals very intensely was that after a about 6 weeks max, I stopped improving and then even worse I would start degrading in performance. Do the top Dutch runners still use this method?
I´m not familiar with his system, but somewhere was mentioned that Bram Som did Verheul-style training. Intense training creates mainly short-term adaptations that are reached in few weeks depending from the type etc, and if the base is weak and the amount/intensity of the workouts is excessive, you plateau quickly and the peak will be short.
From what I can make of this system though, you're not doing intense interval training. The paces are quite relaxed.
Very relaxed, i'm doing this only 2 weeks now. So it's hard to tell if I will improve. But my legs already feel much stronger, i feel more energetic. And its a lot more fun then running a normal 10 mile run at an easy pace.
HRE wrote:
From what I can make of this system though, you're not doing intense interval training. The paces are quite relaxed.
Yup, my answer was to another poster, who had problems with very intensive repetitions:
"The problem I had with running intervals very intensely was that after a about 6 weeks max, I stopped improving and then even worse I would start degrading in performance".
Some questions first:
So what's your total mileage under this plan?
What events are you trying to specialize in?
50 Miles a week. 5k - 15k races. But i'm looking forward to every run now. Running intervals everyday and still feel recovered and fresh everyday. Its better then my normal training when running hard one day and feel crap and sluggish on runs 2/3 days afterwards. But yeah i dont know if i will improve on this. According to this method you do have to run a lot of short races for the method to really work. Or 1 time a week a progression run where you easy into very hard running.
It's all about running form and running relaxed and relatively hard. Long runs at a slow clip creates a bad running form. I think they are right. Long runs are good for running but not biomechanical wise. Sorry for my bad English i'm from Holland
Johnfrog11 wrote:
50 Miles a week. 5k - 15k races. But i'm looking forward to every run now. Running intervals everyday and still feel recovered and fresh everyday. Its better then my normal training when running hard one day and feel crap and sluggish on runs 2/3 days afterwards. But yeah i dont know if i will improve on this. According to this method you do have to run a lot of short races for the method to really work. Or 1 time a week a progression run where you easy into very hard running.
And in classic Verheul you do a long fartlek in the woods every week. So the weekend block of fartlek on saturday and a race on sunday gives you the intense stuff that isnt done the rest of the week.
Here is a nice english article by Herman Lenferink on the method that can be found on the website of AV Phoenix, the athletics club that was founded by Herman Verheul.
De Verheul methode
Herman Lenferink
Dit artikel is in januari 2007 geschreven door Herman Lenferink naar aanleiding van terugkerende vragen uit het buitenland over de methode Verheul. Zo werd Klaas Lok nog niet zo lang geleden gevraagd de methode te komen uitleggen in Israël en op 30 januari 2007 ontving ik bijvoorbeeld het volgende bericht uit Colorado, USA:
"Hello Herman, I'm interested in finding out some more about the Verheul method... I am a Poser, but this has come up on another discussion forum. You don't seem to have written anything on it on the Pose forum; do you know if there is a review paper or something similar available in English? I am a Masters athlete specialising in one mile, 5k and the occasional 10k. I am wondering whether the Verheul experience is that by doing "aerobic intervals" (if that is correct), you do not lower the pH of the blood, so it is not as stressful as doing "normal" interval training. Thank you for your time, and I am sorry I do not speak Dutch.
Best wishes, Simon Martin"
The Verheul Method
In 1979 two Dutch runners, Klaas Lok and Joost Borm of the Utrecht athletics Club Phoenix took by surprise the first and second places at the National Cross Country Championships. The day after, it was recorded in the newspapers that their running style was much suppler and more relaxed than that of the defeated favourites, Gerard ter Broke and Tonnie Luttikhold.
In 2005 "The Misunderstanding of endurance runs" ("Het Duurloopmisverstand") was published by Klaas Lok. In this book the former Dutch champion on the middle and long distances explains that a supple and relaxed running technique can be obtained by running short intervals of 200m (15x) and 400m (10x), if necessary completed with even shorter intervals of 100m in a faster pace.[1] The pace should be fast enough to develop reactivity and running economy but also slow enough to gain a correct balance in training between load and relaxation.
Slow endurance runs at the contrary would develop a heavy stride and a slow push off, while hard repetition runs would undermine the necessary relaxation in running. This was the philosophy of Coach Herman Verheul (1932), who brought Lok and Borm to their successes. In his philosophy the very often ran races are the only repetition and endurance runs. Only in the most specific form of training - the race- athletes were thought to be able to reach an optimal performance of these two forms of training. In the Netherlands this philosophy of training is known as the "Verheul Method", and in the slightly different version of Klaas Lok labeled "Souplesse Method".
This method can be placed somewhere in the tradition of Zatopek and the coaches Woldemar Gerschler and Mihaly Iglói, the most important differences being that Verheul moderated the volume and pace of the workouts but increased the time spent on gymnastics. In his gymnastics he used exercises he had derived from the ballet of the Don Cossacks. These gymnastics were thought to be very important and done before every workout and there was a special gymnastics training every Monday evening in winter.
In the Verheul Method the emphasis is on supple, easy running in interval training. The real individual rules for training paces are based on the manner in which the athlete moves, his capacities of relaxation, his rhythm, his general condition, and his capacities to recover. As a guiding principle Verheul used the idea of the Hungarian coach Mihaly Iglói that you never should train harder than your capacity to be recovered the next day. So training velocities are highly individual and velocities mentioned below are just values that have proved to be effective for the average runner.
Verheul did not use tables to deduce paces for athletes, nor did he pay much attention to heart rates, but in stead he observed the individual athlete, asked, and drew his conclusions from the race results of this athlete. Nevertheless, to give an indication of the paces that were run you can say - as a rule of thumb - that the fastest pace of the 200m interval is 3k race pace or maximum 1500m race pace, that the fastest pace of the 400m interval is 5k race pace, and the fastest pace of the 1000m interval is 15k race pace. At the beginning of the winter (1 October) these paces were set back by Verheul from the fastest paces in the summer to paces that were 15 sec. slower for 1000m, 6 sec. slower for 400m and 3 sec. slower for 200m. From this level the system of periodization of the Verheul method (in winter increasing paces, in summer stable paces) meant that during the winter the paces increased every month with about 0,5 second on the 200m (6x0,5 sec. = 3 sec.), 1 second on the 400m (6x1 sec. = 6 sec.) and 3 seconds on the 1000m intervals (5x3 sec. = 15 sec.).
Besides the interval training and gymnastics there was a winter fartlek training every Saturday that consisted of a mix of an average of 16 tempo's of differing lengths and gymnastics and increased from 5 till 7 quarters of an hour.
A typical Verheul winter program (1 October - 1 April) for a runner capable of running 10k in 31 minutes (or 800m in 1.54, 1500m in 3.55, 3k in 8.30, or 5k in 14.40) is:
Monday: Gymnastics training (indoor)
Tuesday: 15x 200m 37 sec. -> 34 sec.
Wednesday: 6x1000m 3.20 -> 3.05 (temporarily out of the program at 1 April)
Thursday: 10x400m 76 sec. -> 70 sec
Friday: 15x200m 37 sec. -> 34 sec.
Saturday: Fartlek
Sunday: Race (cross country mostly, road, sometimes indoor)[2]
A typical Verheul summer program (1 April - 1 October) for the same runner is:
Monday: 15x200m 34 sec.
Tuesday: 10x 400m 70 sec.
Wednesday: 15x200m (but after pb's again 6x 1000m build up again easily, starting 3.20)
Thursday: 10x400m 70 sec.
Friday: Race (800m, 1500m, 3k, 5k, 10k etc. on track)
Saturday: 15x200m 34 sec.
Sunday: 10x400m 70 sec.
In fact the number of repetitions are never increased above the numbers of 15x200m, 10x400m and 6x1000m (the load increasing mainly by growing to faster easy paces and running faster in races and by adding a second 6x1000 program in a winter week). Decreased numbers are used for young, beginning and older (master) runners and in come backs after injuries. A typical 'reduced program' is 12x200, 8x400 and 4x1000.
Verheul presumed that training (we are not talking here about the races of course!) with heart rates above 150 beats a minute might add nothing to the development of the human organism and might be useless and maybe even detrimental. Apart from this insight, the emphasis in the Verheul Method, however, is not on the effects of interval training on the heart, but much more on the qualities of movement, and what is naturally connected to it, that is: the frequency of muscle contraction, the elasticity and reactivity of muscles. In the opinion of Lok this is the undervalued suppositious child in the world of runners. Lok suggests: "In fact there should exist a 'muscle elasticity meter', an apparatus that would indicate the moment that an endurance run should be interrupted the moment the elasticity (reactivity) lessens."
The interval training of Verheul was designed consciously to give the muscles a chance to relax after the endurance load (that is the weekly ran race). A so called "recovery endurance run" the day after the race is nonsense in his philosophy, because doing the same could never be a recovery. After a long race, short intervals over 200m have the preference. After every interval run athletes walk 10 till 20 meters to take off the stress from the (tired) muscles and to shake their legs loose with a few hops. Thereupon they do a slow recovery run over the same distance as the interval run. The same procedure is pursued in the 400m-interval program (with 400m recovery runs) and in the 1000m-interval program (with 1000m recovery runs). The last program is only done by advanced runners (once, later maximum two times a week), who start their 1000m intervals in the beginning of the winter season at a pace that is generally a little slower than their race pace of the half marathon.
The recovery distances are thus purposefully made relatively long when we compare them to the quite common use to take only recovery runs over the same distance in the case of fast repetition running and a shorter recovery run than the interval run in the case of interval training. The advantages of this distinctive use of recovery distances in the Verheul interval training are not only a fast general recovery but also that the muscles can regain the elasticity that might be lost as a result of the race.
Herman Lenferink, Utrecht, The Netherlands, January 30, 2007
This article is based on interviews with Herman Verheul by Herman Lenferink, as a result of which Herman Lenferink published two articles in the Dutch periodical:
Pro Loop, Vakblad voor de Looptrainer (part 3 and 4, 2005) under the titles: "De methode Verheul" en "De methode Verheul deel 2". This article in English is a summary of these two articles that were written in Dutch.
[1] To be clear: Herman Verheul did not use intervals of 100m; it is something Klaas Lok uses nowadays sometimes after long intervals or after endurance runs with changing paces ("wisselduurlopen") with few repetitions (5-10) to develop reactivity, and Herman Lenferink in forms that resemble schemes of Gerschler and Iglói, like 30x100m, to develop confidence with the rhythm and paces of the shorter middle distances, to develop speed and (acceleration)power, but also in a slower pace as relaxation runs or development runs for beginning runners with a bad condition (of course with less repetitions than 30 in the last case).
[2] The text "37 sec. -> 34 sec" means that the 15x200m is run at 37 sec in October, 36.5 sec. in November, 36 sec. in December, 35.5 sec. in January, 35 sec. in February, 34.5 sec. in March and 34 sec. in April - October. The 400m is fastening with one second every month, the 1000m with 3 sec.
source:http://www.avphoenix.nl/72-trainen/topsport-main/trainingsmethoden/709-de-verheul-methode
I was wondering about the Dutch Distance Domination, thanks
wot wrote:
I was wondering about the Dutch Distance Domination, thanks
I think that you are trolling but I am not sure your remark is so fair. For their population size (just 17 million) the Dutch have produced some decent distance runners in the last 20 odd years. Kamil Masse, Simon Vroemen, and Gert Liefers all ran at the top level internationally and Ellen van Langen was Olympic champion at 800m. I don't know if they did Verheul training of course. But Klaas Lok did use Verheul training according to one post in this thread and he ran times ranging from 3 38 1500m up to 28 22 for 10000m so I am sure that many of us could learn something from the principles he followed.
verheul wrote:
Slow endurance runs at the contrary would develop a heavy stride and a slow push off, while hard repetition runs would undermine the necessary relaxation in running... In his philosophy the very often ran races are the only repetition and endurance runs. Only in the most specific form of training - the race- athletes were thought to be able to reach an optimal performance of these two forms of training.
...As a guiding principle Verheul used the idea of that you never should train harder than your capacity to be recovered the next day.
Verheul presumed that training (we are not talking here about the races of course!) with heart rates above 150 beats a minute might add nothing to the development of the human organism and might be useless and maybe even detrimental. Apart from this insight, the emphasis in the Verheul Method, however, is not on the effects of interval training on the heart, but much more on the qualities of movement, and what is naturally connected to it, that is: the frequency of muscle contraction, the elasticity and reactivity of muscles. In the opinion of Lok this is the undervalued suppositious child in the world of runners. Lok suggests: "In fact there should exist a 'muscle elasticity meter', an apparatus that would indicate the moment that an endurance run should be interrupted the moment the elasticity (reactivity) lessens."
Interesting, but I´m confused on this claim "training with heart rates above 150 beats a minute might add nothing to the development of the human organism and might be useless and maybe even detrimental". Obviously the heart rates back then was measured manually, but for most of us the HR at intensities between the ventilatory and lactate threshold would be clearly over 150. Or did he mean that HR´s BELOW 150 are useless?
This could be work well, but in my mind training isn´t that black and white; even at high mileage you can have a great variation of paces, from short sprints with full recovery to slow recovery runs. In this way you don´t lose your speed or reactivity even during higher mileage. Closer to competitions the training moves towards being more event spesific, so your running economy around race paces improves further as a byproduct. You never lose the skill to run fast, the ease of speed, as well as you maintain/improve the anaerobic (alactic and/or glycolytic) capacity. Fast running keeps you strong and healthy once done progressively and frequently. Monotonous training is what creates stagnation and heavy stride. Hilly training routes will help to avoid this too.
I don´t either believe that you NEVER should train harder than your capacity to be recovered the next day. Sometimes you could push ~2-3 days at higher mileage/intensity. Or you do a harder single day followed by an easy recovery day(s). In my philosophy you aim to brake the state of homeostasis, but not going too deep, recover your energy stores (not forgetting the CNS) in between until pushing again. Once you´ve done 2-3 weeks this way you´ve activated the adaptation processes and you must reduce the stress to avoid going too deep (catabolic state), and once recovered you repeat the same kind of stress to stabilize the adaptations. After ~6-8 weeks you change the training in order to keep the progression going. This is base training when you improve the capacity. I don´t think that it´s optimal to race weekly. But the Verheul method can work well, especially if you lack time or will to train more.
Van Aaken made similar comments about training at heart rates over 150 bpm. He didn't see that it was useful and thought that there was a danger of developing cardiac problems if you did it regularly. And Lydiard, who resisted using heart rate numbers, would, if pushed, say that he thought of 150 bpm as the dividing line between aerobic and anaerobic running.
BeatU wrote:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/time-efficient-running-run-less-to-run-faster-31404?#
The schedules and proposals in this article are not at all like the Verheul training proposals. One cannot argue with Bruce Tulloh's running achievements but the schedules look very intense - many race pace efforts each week and some people may well struggle after a few weeks of this. Verheul is interval training but at "moderate intensities". The better known coaches who I think also followed this sort of philosphy were Igloi (there is no official sort of book in English that I know of about his training sadly) who focused on form and not times for reps and Van Aaken who prescribed a few intervals at very moderate paces at the end of his easy runs.
Igloi never wrote anything and was very secretive. I don't know if Bob Schul ever wrote anything about what he does with people he coaches but he uses a lot of what he did with Igloi. Van Aaken actually used interval training much more frequently than people tend to believe but again, the reps were not hard.
Sure, your'e right. I just threw it up there as another low mileage guideline for comparison. Had to run off right away and didn't explain.
This stuff is really interesting.
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