Tinman Training

I´ve done some research on Tinman (googling, reading his website, letsrun, etc.) & even seen him speak once. Here´s a breakdown of his schedule (that you could find if you googled him):

ONCE A WEEK: Tinman Tempo Run (about 1:00 slower than 5K pace)

ONCE A WEEK: CV workout of 5 X 1000 w/ :90 rest (about :16 slower than 5K or about 10K pace) + 4 X 200

ONCE A WEEK: Long Run

Personally, I enjoy doing his CV workout & feel great doing them. For me, it feels ¨all lungs with light spinning legs.¨ I mean, I feel it breathing, but no build-up of acid in the legs.

I should mention there´s a CV workout progression. Once a week, CV workout w/ :90 rest. Next week, CV w/ :75 rest. Next week, CV w/ :60 rest.

I´ve never done the Tinman Tempo Runs though.

And, of course, I do a long run.

Meanwhile, I am a high school coach & my kids struggle with his CV workouts. These are based on their races (5K) & using Tinman´s calculator. I wonder if they´re too young & lack the base (even though they run 60 minutes a day + a long run). I´m still not sure WHY though?

As for a comparison, Daniels has T, R, I workouts. Tinman seems simplified in comparison. Though, I can´t tell you which one works better. Tinman is currently producing some pretty impressive results.

Basically what you describe is what my athletes do early season. It takes time to learn how to pace these workouts. Tempo runs are the hardest for high school kids. I have kids that can perfect pace a tempo run day one and others that wont ever in four years.

How long are those "Tinman tempos"? if 5k pace is 5:40 ..6:40 seems a little slow for a 20-30min tempo

Runrincerepeat wrote:

How long are those "Tinman tempos"? if 5k pace is 5:40 ..6:40 seems a little slow for a 20-30min tempo

Straight from Tinman´s website:

*1 mile warm up

*3 mile tempo

*4 X 100 @ 3200 pace progessing to 1600 pace

*1 mile cool down

¨Gradually increase the amount of warm up & warm down, as well as number of hill reps. Don´t be in a rush. If I were your personal coach, I´d add 1 hill rep per week.¨ --Tinman

I use his training with my HS team and we have been quite successful with it. In the 4 years we have had the program, we have gone from 1 kid making the state meet to 2x state champs (boys) and 3x state runners-up (girls).

We do a long run each week until the week of the state meet (veteran kids do 90 minutes, our first year kids are doing 60-70 mins), we do a CV workout once a week (4-7x 800-1000 meters depending on the kid, 75-90 second jog recovery between, followed by hill reps of varying lengths and speeds, and flat quick work after the hills), a race, and a lot of easy to steady running and strides or short fartlek on the other days. On race days, we usually do a long cooldown, up to 30 minutes or so for the top kids, and sometimes some hill reps or strides thrown in as well.

If we don't have a meet, we do either a tempo run or threshold mile reps plus some hill work for our second up-tempo workout of the week. Threshold pace is more like Daniels tempo pace. A straight tempo run would vary in length depending on the kid, and I really don't use a lot of tempo work with the newbies because they can't do it right. I really prefer CV work for most of the kids, it is a manageable pace and easy to recover from, and if they screw the first rep up by running too fast, it is easy to fix and not ruin the whole workout, whereas if they run the entire tempo run too fast, it is not going to be the correct stimulus and is going to take too long to recover from. For a tempo run, my veteran boys would go 4-5 miles, with another 4 miles or so counting warm up and cooldown.

We emphasize NOT running super hard in practice. Recovery days are pretty slow, with our 15:XX to low 16 minute 5K boys running 7:00-7:15 pace or slower quite often. My 19:XX min girls run 8:30-9:00 pace on recovery days. CV pace is dictated by race performance and kids do not get positive feedback for running faster in practice than they are supposed to. There are many ways to progress a CV workout thru the season- paces get faster as you race faster, you can do slightly longer reps, decrease the rest, jog the rest at a faster pace, do more reps, etc.

I have never used Daniels but many of our local coaches do. Some of them have been pretty successful, but my general opinion is that they run just a little bit too hard, a little too often. Some of their kids do quite well, but some of them are pretty tired by the end of the season. I think by keeping the paces a little more conservative, and keeping the training consistent thru the season, with a very short peaking cycle at the end of the season, we get fewer negative surprises at the state meet. It is possible that our kids could run faster if we took more risks and tried some fancier peaking stuff, but I'd rather have the kids healthy, fit, and perhaps a little undertrained at state. It usually works out pretty well for them.

HS Coach here,

It´s my first year using the Tinman system & I´m patiently waiting to see the big break-through (but I´m getting nervous). My kids are struggling with the CV workouts (using his website & based on their races). Did you see a sorta ¨lightswitch¨ where everything started clicking? I know Tinman (when I saw him speak) said to be patient & things would come together later in the season. He said, too, to use all the races as 5K specific work.

Oh, and, yes, we did Summer Running (so they have a base).

Thanks,

Hayseed Coach

The tempo run seems too slow to be at threshold. Is that a correct description of what Tinman advises?

Here's what Tinman wrote: "Long Tempo (a.k.a. Tinman Tempo) - 15 minutes EZ, 30-40 minutes at about 3K to 5K plus 1 minute per mile, 10 minutes cool down."

Two Tinman links:

1.)

http://www.runfastcoach.com/blog.html

. Go to the BOTTOM of the page for PowerPoint links!

2.)

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2016/02/drew-hunters-coach-tom-tinman-schwartz-explains-critical-velocity-type-iia-muscle-fibers/

How exactly are they struggling with CV pace? Do they want to run faster? Are they fast on the early reps, then really slow on the last ones? If so, you need to control their paces. Don't let them run too fast. tell them they have to earn the pace in practice by showing they can race at the corresponding pace first. One thing that works with the real beginners is to start with short CV reps, even 400's. If you do this, keep the jog recovery short, about 45 seconds. Put a cone out and tell them to jog over to and around the cone and back during their rest break, then go right into the next rep. Another thing that I notice kids trying to do is to walk the recovery. If they run too fast on the reps, they will want/need to walk. If you make them jog, they will slow down their reps.

It can be hard to monitor all this, believe me...we have 130 kids on the team and it is hard to be on top of every single kid, all the time. My veterans know how to run the workouts without needing a babysitter, but it takes time to learn this. Sometimes the workouts aren't as effective as they could be, with inexperienced kids milling around, walking, taking longer than they should between reps. Once they learn how to do it, the workouts are going to help them improve more.

As far as a breakthrough, I don't know how to answer that other than to tell you how our kids progress over a season and from year to year. We started training in late June, and our first year runners are now running 22-33 miles a week (depending on kid), consistently, and have dropped quite a bit of time off their 5K since our time trial in mid August. Many of the new runners have dropped 2-3 minutes on a comparable course. I have one girl who has cut 8 minutes off from her time trial time!! She went from REALLY slow to respectable for a slightly overweight, inexperienced, freshman girl. Do I think this is just the power of CV workouts? No. I think it's the consistent daily putting the work in, not getting hurt or sick, not training too hard, and learning how to pace your races correctly.

My veteran kids improve every year. From last year's time trial to this year's, most of my veteran girls, my varsity girls, improved an average of 1:30. Several of them opened their season this year racing faster than they ran all last season. One girl has improved by 7 minutes since last year and is now in my top 5 after a solid year of training. The boy returners show similar improvements, actually more like 2-3 minute improvement, especially the younger boys. My top 7 boys didn't run the time trial last year so I can't compare, but they just had their season opener and most (not all) of them ran very well.

No, the kids think they're really difficult! They struggle with the workout. We're still doing :90 rest! I have not been able to progress the workout to :75 rest (and haven't even given though to :60 rest).

I'm using their races as reference & plugging the times into Tinman's calculator. (I know, I know, just let the kids run them slower...but that's hard to do when you're in the middle of the workout.) But, if they're struggling, I don't even know what pace to give them!?!

I did shorten the length from 1000's to 900's & the kids seem to think that was better.

But, it's scary to do the CV workout (+ 200's) & let the races act as 5K workouts. So, in a lot of ways, there's no fast pace workouts according to Tinman...just faith that strengthening the high-end aerobic will allow for fast running.

Tinman tempos are slower than LT pace and will be around 40 minutes long.

Do you happen to keep track of the MPW? What do you get with this approach?

Best of luck to your team at NXN. And nice opener this weekend. Thank you for being so open about your team's training! It's really informative and helpful.

Great Grief wrote:

Best of luck to your team at NXN. And nice opener this weekend. Thank you for being so open about your team's training! It's really informative and helpful.

Good Grief,

You seem to know who HS Coach Here is. Fill us in!

From all the posts, I assume that's Loudon Valley's coach(es). I haven't actually checked the exact numbers, but the big team, stronger boys than girls, recent success, tinman training all check out.

Shorten the reps even more, then. And have them walk the recovery, or do jog-walk-jog till they get stronger. And don't worry about shortening the rest interval at this point- keep it at 90 seconds or even slightly longer, depending on how they are doing. Or mark off 200 meters and have them jog that for rest and don't worry too much about timing the rest.

Also, CV pace should be based off what they could run THAT DAY, not PR's or even last week's race performance if it is 95 degrees out today and they stayed up late studying for a test. So adapt it if you need to and slow it down.

I have some kids who never do 1000s- I keep them at 800's. I like the reps to be at least 3:00 long, so once a kid's CV pace is faster than 3:00 for 800 meters, we are definitely doing 1000's. Usually I move to 1000's when their CV pace is about 3:20-3:30 ish for 800 meters. For kids who are slower than that, 1000's are a long time to concentrate, and we just find that they handle the 800's better. More than half of my girls team are still doing 800's.

We do hardly any 5k paced work at all in practice. Can't think of anything more specific to 5k race pace work than a 5k race...I just don't see the need for it with most of the kids who race regularly. I think you can develop their stamina at slower paces that are easier to bounce back from.

As for the tempo distances, we really don't do a lot of long tempo runs. Best boys might work up to 5 mile tempos but that would still be under 30 minutes. The whole workout would be long, however, with warm up, cooldown, and something fast attached, either hills, or 200's or something else.

HS Coach Here,

This is EXCELLENT advice from someone with experience with the Tinman program. Thank you!

1.) Your decision to keep the CV length to 3:00 in length is good advice. I wondered what that "cut-off" time would or should be.

2.) Also, excellent advice about NOT worrying about cutting down the recovery...just yet.

Another question though: you wrote about doing the CV workout based on what they can run THAT DAY (not PR's or the latest race), how do you give them paces? Are they simply going by FEEL?

HS Coach Here, you're probably the first coach (that I know of) that is open about using Tinman's program. Like I said prior, this is my first time trying it. I know Tinman is the "latest trendy program", but a lot of what he said simply makes so much sense--one of which is to consider all of our races (and we sometimes race twice a week) as 5K specific workouts.

Thanks!

Hayseed Coach

Great Grief wrote:

From all the posts, I assume that's Loudon Valley's coach(es). I haven't actually checked the exact numbers, but the big team, stronger boys than girls, recent success, tinman training all check out.

I don't think so. The poster said he had 130+ kids on the team. Loudoun Valley doesn't quite have those numbers: