Rules of the road

Every great training program has it’s maxims - it’s simple rules and we often end up making these phrases move from maxims to true/false statement. To be honest any and all of these so called “rules” can be followed up with the classic coaching phrase “it depends”. This is generally good and safe advice to follow but shouldn’t be your guiding light through all portions of your preparation month to month or year to year. I’ll explain why at the end of this post.

1. Easy Days Easy

This maxim goes back to the most simple mistake runners make: Running too hard too often. This often goes back to the need and desire to “feel” like they completed something on the day and they understand progress to only be the result of achieving a certain feeling of fatigue or completeness. Learning how to harness and control that energy output day to day, week to week is important. We go in-depth into this in a recent blog post why you can’t run fast every day

2. Nothing New on Race Day

I’ve certainly worn 1 week old shoes on race day, I’ve taken gels I’ve never consumed in training on race day, I’ve worn brand new singlets, and I’ve got the blisters, stomach pain, and chafing to prove it. Some athletes even extend the nothing new on race week and include things like extensive body work, dry needling, or other therapies that might cause breakdown. Nothing new on race day means that you should really be thinking ahead and making sure you’re comfortable with everything form how your pack fits you fully loaded, rotating your shoes, and building your race day nutrition plan. What do all of these things have in common? Plan ahead and avoid the pain and discomfort of poor planning on race day.

3. Weight Training makes you bulky

Can we squash this once and for all? Simply put, if you want to add “bulk” you have to eat to maintain that growth. Weight training alone won’t simply add a massive amount of muscle. To run up a mountain you don’t have to look like one you just have to strength train to go up and down it without breaking. What most people don’t understand is that to get huge you have to move a massive amount of weight, eat a comically large amount of food, and focus on adding that kind of mass. Comically large body builders

4. Warm Up isn’t necessary

Let me tell you a secret, I really hate warming up on my easy days. If I’m tight on time - it’s the first thing I skip out on. To be honest I really think it’s a foam roller phobia or maybe it’s the fear that I’ll break my own rule: if you don’t feel good through the warm up, you shouldn’t do the run. Warming up is the right thing to do and honestly when I take the time to warm up - I feel good after I do it every time. Still, like many of you I struggle. Wha tI can tell you from experience is this: listen to your body. If you’re stiff and immobile you need to loosen up and take the time to get your body ready to perform - even if it’s just an easy run. My basic Dynamic warm up routine

5. 10% Rule for increasing training load

As a kid my dad would always joke with me when it came to playing it safe - he’d always say “safety third” and more completely “fun first, safety third”. To that end, I only managed a handful of ER visits in that time. What that taught me was how to manage risk and understand what I could get away with. Training is not like shooting a slingshot, staying out late, or driving fast. The consequences for increasing your training load do not follow my favorite life maxim “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission”. Unfortunately, when you overload your body and you do it too often - something is going to give out - that can be an overwhelming amount of fatigue, a stress fracture, or you might leave the sport completely. What I do know is that when you’re building up your training - 10% per week for a maximum of 3 weeks in a row is playing it safe. You can play with your slingshot after your run, I’m not responsible for any broken windows.

6. Down weeks aren’t necessary

This builds on that last maxim. If you play it safe you can just build and build…right? WRONG. It’s the trap of progressive training. When we stop following a few of these rules, things tend to unravel pretty quickly. Frankly, keeping people aligned to a schedule and holding them back from launching into rocket ship level training is why I have a job. I train athletes, not astronauts and I’ve had to pull back more than a few people form outer space. Your body does a great job of rebuilding when you’re training and if we do it right you can recover really well in your build weeks but to truly set the foundation and continue to create a body that can build up for months and months - you have to give it a larger proportion of rest as compared to the stress. You do the majority of your recovery when you’re sleeping so why not take 1 week out of every 4 to sleep a little more, stress your body a little less, and adapt a whole lot more. You can only apply your fitness when you have it.

7. Intensity is only 20% of your week

This is the other side of the 80/20 rule and certainly falls into the “it depends” category. I’m certainly not giving someone running 100 miles a week 20 miles worth of speed work. So what we see is that certain rules fall apart when we get closer to outliers. Most of you reading this aren’t running 100 miles a week - you might run 40-50 and 8-10 miles of speed work makes sense for you. That’s an 8x800m session and a 4 mile tempo which is much more reasonable. When it comes down to brass tacks what’s most important is finding a plan and program that works for you. If you only want to run 4 days a week that will limit how much speed work you do and limit how quickly you build up - the big thing to remember is that you need not compare your progress to others. You may be running 4 days a week because 6 months ago you could only do 3 and in another 6 months you’ll be doing 5. Instead of listening to maxims - find a plan, program, or coach that fits how you want running to fit in your world.

Your guiding light

It’s not hard to understand that rules are made to be broken and what you really need to do is gain a better understanding of how your body reacts to the training you’re doing. What worked at one point may not work in a later phase. You may have to swallow a hard pill that you have regressed to a point where you have to start with basic training and workouts again. You may also be further ahead and you need to make small changes to see big improvements. Hiring a coach is the single easiest way to remove the complexity of answer the big 2 questions” “where am I?”, “what do I need to progress?”

If you’re looking for more resources and insights on training take a look through our podcast episodes. We try to put out solo episodes that dive deep as well as bringing on experts to dig deep into some of your biggest training questions. Use the link below to find out more.

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