A ROUGH sketch of Canova Style Training

doc is private

Thank You, fixed

nate jenkins did try something similar

www.youtube.com/watch?v=naH5XDixNh4

http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2009/12/renato-canova-pre-xc-training-and-my.html

I've tried to figure out Canova before. I support projects like this. A couple thoughts.

1. Lifting twice a week? Do you mean no running on those days? Not sure about that.

2. I'm not sure about the density of workouts. My impression is that Canova's athletes aren't doing 2 workouts + hill sprints/circuits + a long run each week. That strikes me as more in a week than he'd have, but I could well be wrong and it's not an easy point to figure out. If nothing else his athletes vary tremendously in workout density.

3. This won't be as useful as it could be unless you try to interpret what you think Canova means by "race intensity," "race extension," "AeT," "AE" and all the rest. An example of what that might mean for 1 athlete preparing for 1 race distance might help.

4. Canova has his own particular usage of percentages when it comes to paces, so you might want to make extra clear that your own usage (based on RPE?) differs from his.

Thanks for the questions, to clarify:

1.The assumption is you would run on lifting days. Likely Regenerative (recovery) efforts. And by “Lifting” maybe I should’ve said “strength” it could be anything from barbell lifting to plyometric work and sprinting. I think this training is more flexible to personal preferences.

2 .The density is the biggest concern for me. BUT you could easily change the workouts to fit the level of the athlete. For a lower level athlete 4x 8 second hill sprints with long rest shouldn’t affect their ability to run their Tuesday workout (it would likely enhance it, if anything). I think the goal would be to make sure no single workout is so hard you can’t do the other work.

3. AeT from the link I sent "Fundamental training is comprised of long, continuous runs at roughly the aerobic threshold (AeT) or a bit slower. Canova illustrates this pace with a 15:00 5k runner (presumably female). Her pace for “fundamental” workouts would be in the range of 5:33 to 6:00 per mile."

AE or Aerobic Endurance form the link: “In addition to long tempo runs, the middle-distance runners do some “aerobic endurance” interval workouts like 8x400m in 62 seconds with 2min recovery (for a 1:44 runner—so very slow!) As the fundamental period continues, these intervals are either extended (e.g. 600m at the same pace) or the recovery is shortened. The pace, however, is not increased. Again, the goal for the middle distance runners is extension of what Canova calls “aerobic power” and “strength endurance.”

Intensive: Working on paces faster than race paces. “building race-relevant speed with short repeats.”

Extensive: Working on your ability to extend your speed over a longer distance. “race-relevant endurance with long intervals”

Intensive vs Race Intensive: “Intensive” would be 3k pace work or faster for a 5k runner where as “race intensive” would be just slightly faster than 5k pace down to 3k pace. Similar idea for extensive. Canova very much believes in the idea of funneling. Early in the season is a lot of slower running and all out sprints funneling towards your goal race where most work will be done around race pace.

4. The percentages are intentionally vague, the main idea is to progress slightly in either volume, or pace, or frequency (reduced rest), but likely not more than one at a time.

Thanks so much for putting this together--- I feel like I have stumbled upon a treasure trove of training info. I have read all of Canova's posts just about, and he is truly a genius when it comes to coaching, but I also struggle to piece together exactly what he advocates. That excel sheet is a wonder!

A few quick questions for you: what do you think should be done on those lifting days? Does Canova have athletes run at a moderate pace to even AeT or would you just run those days at what he considers a regenerative pace?

As for the AE training, is that essentially the same thing as Daniels' vo2 Max pace? If he is implementing that so early into the training cycle, I am assuming that these workouts are to be run well within control with shorter reps and plenty of rest versus busting out 5 x 1 mile at 3-5k effort for example.

AS for the density of training, my understanding is that Canova advocates for "internal load" training during the fundamental period (training based on effort of the athlete versus objective paces). Because all these workout are run within your control, you can do several more workouts in a week. This is the time you are building your base fitness.

Then, when it comes time to prep for the race in the final stage of training, you are actually training based on the "external load", and you should only do workouts fairly fresh when you can actually hit the objective paces and volumes that Canova would outline for his athletes to reach their racing goals, right?

Lastly, I have never seen this anywhere but do you have an outline or examples of the weight training that Canova advocates? I find that the weight training is overwhelming as there is so much conflicting information out there that I am unable to sift through as a running geek.

The number one thing I think you're missing is that I believe Canova does not hold to a weekly schedule. Long runs, workouts, etc. they are all dependent on how the athlete recovers, which is the key.

You can do the workouts and everyone thinks it's about the workouts. Its more about how the athlete adapts post-workout that really matters and your schedule, while nice, neat, and complete, does not take that into account. There's no perfect schedule that will take you from schlub to superstar.

I've heard Canova's coaching described as picasso painting. You can't take something that's abstract and reduce it to exact principles. I think it's more likely that you begin to learn to intuit how to apply scientific principles when necessary to get you to where you need to.

That said, John Davis' attempt is by far the best (and canova approved) outline of the training principles

Quick follow-up: I think it would be helpful if a lot more people started to think about training the way Scott Christensen advises - workouts have recovery periods and you just mash them all together as recoveries allow. (I'm generalizing his HS training programs)

For example:

-A 4 x 1600m workout at 3200m race pace with rest = effort (basically your standard vVO2max session) is a 48 hour recovery.

-An easy run of ~7 miles would have a 24 hour recovery.

-A tempo run of 5 miles at 80% of 3200m race pace has a recovery period of 24 hours.

-A special endurance 1 workout of 6 x 300 at a little slower than 400m race pace w/ 6-8min of recovery has a 48 hour recovery.

-A fly 30s workout of 10 x fly 30 with 3-4min recovery walk has a 24 hour recovery.

You could easily go Fly 30s, vVO2max, Recovery Run, Special Endurance 1, Tempo in a row, if you follow the intensity guidelines. Or, generally, follow any 48 hour recovery workout with a 24 hour recovery workout.

Why do a long run on sunday? If done correctly, its a 24 hour recovery, and could be sandwiched between vVO2max and Special Endurance.

There will, no doubt, be a lot of mud-slinging over the details of what I've just posted. But, the main point stands - why do you stick to a weekly, or even monthly schedule?

Yeah I agree with this. It’s hard to break from the weekly schedule just because we’ve used it for so long, but there’s no shame in not following the traditional Tuesday Friday workout with a Sunday long run.

I think it’s best to look at Canova’s theory as “the closer to the peak race, the more specific the work.”

It’s really easy getting wrapped up in workouts and whats important when and yaadayaada.

There’s no special workout for any athlete. Taking a singular workout out of any plan and adding it to your own might not harm you, but its important to note that the reason why that athlete performs so well is probably not because they did the workout you chose really well.

In my mind, every workout is building toward your race. There will be some works that are better than others and some worse. That doesn’t mean that they are more or less important. For a 5k runner, doing something like 5x mile at 5k pace with short rest is as important as a significantly less glamorous 16x200 on/off fartlek.

Workouts where you preform really well and indicative of good fitness and that you might need to change something in your training plan to support that new fitness, whether harder work or starting to taper.

I mostly agree with what you're saying. If the classic Tuesday/Friday/Sunday quality framework works for you keep doing what works.

I also agree on the General - - > specific training, but I don't know if anyone other than canova really knows how to do that. Obviously some coaches do but what I mean is that there's no general framework like how daniels' running formula provided a general framework for training.

The number one thing I'd emphasize about Canova, and something I'm learning from reading Jan Olbrecht's book, is the recovery component necessary to provide the theorized supercompensation. If you stick to a weekly schedule, you're more likely to not take an easy day if you need one, because you start to equate following the schedule (or the perfect plan) to achieving the success you desire. Do you really need to do a long run every week? I mean, lydiard developed the long run to balance out the 5-6 days of speedwork they did in the sharpening phase of training

Yeah I was more talking about the people who say stuff like “that’s not a workout Canova would prescribe” but really what does it matter in the grand scheme of things.

I would say one thing I realized about making workouts more specific is it has to focus on what you’re weakest in. If you want to run a 4 minute mile and are doing a workout of 10x400 in 60 seconds with 2 minutes recovery, you basically have 3 options.

A) increase the volume of reps to let’s say 12x400.

B) increase the speed to 10x400 in 58

C) Decrease the rest to 1 minute with same amount of reps.

D) increase the length of reps from 10x400 to 10x500 or something similar.

All of these progressions essentially accomplish the same thing, it’s just what you need to achieve your goal. If you think you need less rest, decrease the rest. If you feel confident enough, speed the pace up. That’s just how I think about it.

It'd be a lot easier if this was calculated in terms of various race paces. To go based on a percentage of a certain race pace is more difficult because you have to think for a minute and then see the easiest way as doing multiplying your pace/mile by 1/x of the percent. That's not something I find easy to do in my head. 10%, 20%, 30% slower is easier. What adds to the difficulty is that you're saying percentage of what you could do the workout as max. Since workouts aren't races, it's hard to figure that.

If we take max as 5:00/mile (let's say that is goal 5k pace or goal 1M pace for others), 70% would be 7:08/mile, 80% would be 6:15/mile, and 90% would be 5:33/mile.

zxcvzxcv wrote:

It'd be a lot easier if this was calculated in terms of various race paces. To go based on a percentage of a certain race pace is more difficult because you have to think for a minute and then see the easiest way as doing multiplying your pace/mile by 1/x of the percent. That's not something I find easy to do in my head. 10%, 20%, 30% slower is easier. What adds to the difficulty is that you're saying percentage of what you could do the workout as max. Since workouts aren't races, it's hard to figure that.

If we take max as 5:00/mile (let's say that is goal 5k pace or goal 1M pace for others), 70% would be 7:08/mile, 80% would be 6:15/mile, and 90% would be 5:33/mile.

This exercise was done poorly, and I didn't convey myself well. Ignore the percentages and just think about it as just increasing in difficulty. For example if you want to run a 5k at 5:00/mile. An easy workout might be 12 times 1' on at 5 minute pace , 1' off at 8 minute pace. From their you can either:

Increase the amount of reps (Extension)- 12 x 1'on 1'off -> 16 x 1'on, 1'off -> 20 x 1' on 1' off

Increase the Length of the On (Extension) - 1'on 1'off -> 2' on, 1' off -> 3'on, 1' off

Decrease the Length of the Off (Intensity) - 1'on 1' off, then 1'on 45" off, then 1 'on 30" off

Increase the speed of the on (Intensity) - "On" periods at 5:00 pace -> 4:55 pace -> 4:50

Increase the speed of the off (Intensity) - "Off" periods at 8:00 -> 7:30 -> 7:00

Thanks for clarifying. I know that Renato does use the %ages. One thing about doing time intervals (10x1' on, for instance) is that I've really seen very little improvement from doing them 2-3 times per week for many months, whereas I've seen obvious and rapid improvement from just under a month now of 2-3 track workouts per week. The ability to know exactly what my pace is has taken me far. I was struggling at 6:00 pace for mile repeats and could only eventually get under 40 for 200 repeats at first and in weeks I've taken it down to 5:50 for a 4M tempo (and hopefully another 5-10 seconds down on the next one this week) and 35-36 for 20x200 (200 jog). Another issue, as I saw from another thread, is that 200 repeats are really hard to recover from. I find myself so stiff the next day or in the evening that I can barely support the weight on my foot for a mile or so on the next run. From the tempos, the recovery has been very quick, and same for the mile repeats. Even for 150s, I don't recall much stiffness afterwards.

Next session was mile stride straightaways, jog curves, 2x200 (200 jog)-38,38; 5x1600 (400j) averaging 5:34, finishing at 5:28; then 200-34. So, the track sessions brought me down by 20 seconds a mile in about three weeks, where 7 months of high mileage (which I have continued) with 3 threshold sessions calculated by time (borrowed from the Ingebrigtsens: 3x10 minutes in the morning, 7x3 minutes in the evening or 5x6:00 in the morning and 7x3:00 in the evening) kept me slower than 6:00 per mile and indeed the few tempos in the neighborhood during this time were slower than 6:30/M. So, I am a big believer in doing track workouts and road tempos where there are mile markers and no cars and curbs to worry about.

I think those recovery periods are only valid for 17-year-old males.

I think you undoubtedly missed the part where I said, "There will be mud slinging over the details of what I've just posted [here]."

The main point was to highlight that a major part of Canova's training is workouts followed by as much regeneration (recovery) as needed. This doesn't fit neatly into a weekly schedule and to try and fit Canova's training into a nice, neat weekly schedule misses the whole point.

I put down an example of Christensen's training to highlight how people can start thinking about training in a Canova way - alternating stress with appropriate rest. The specifics don't matter and whether or not you think the regeneration periods are valid for anyone older than 17 years of age is completely besides the point.

The recovery days are spent getting critical letsrun threads deleted and claiming EPO doesn't work on Kenyans because they try hard.