To Train “All Out” or Not

Audio Transcript

Coach Michael: Hey Runners Connect fans. Welcome to another episode of the Runners Connect podcast.

I am here to answer today’s training and racing questions. Today’s question has to do with training intensity.

Becky: Should I be pushing really hard all the time or is it best to hold back? I’m just not sure how close to toe the red line.

Michael: That’s a great question and I love talking about this subject.

I’m glad you mentioned the red lines as I like to talk about them very often.

First, let’s look at the way the effort in training intensity is portrayed in, let’s say, media. First off all, you have are commercials and movies, all that stuff.

What’s the general sentiment towards training? It’s all out. It’s give everything you’ve got, 100% all the time.

That’s what we’re told from a young age, and in many aspects of course, not just in running.

Steve Prefontaine , for those who are familiar, was an Olympic runner, back in the 70s. He popularized this whole mentality of “all out”, “you’ve got to train all out” which is interesting because his coach at Oregon [,] when he was a professional, made him hold back.

He was basically the one that was there to bring the reins in on Prefontaine.

We look at Olympians and we see people who just train so hard; so intense. They’re after their track sessions, they’re throwing up on the side of the track, they’re sprawled out, that’s what we see but is this the way?

I’ll begin with a very true and important quote – “it’s better to under train by ten percent than to over train by one percent”

That’s why we talk about the subject of the red line.

The red line is basically, if you cross it, then you’re over trained. If you’re on the other side of it, you’re not over trained.

The red line is the line of overtraining.

Now, if you cross that red line, it’s going to take some time. You’ve got to rest, you’ve got to take it easy, and take potentially a lot of time, once you cross it, especially if you keep training.

If you train yourself to the ground, it’s going to take a lot of time to get back.

It might take a few days or a few months. It depends on how serious the situation is, but either way, it’s not a situation that you want to be in.

Most have crossed this before.

We talk about injury, illness, fatigue, poor performance versus your training. I know we all probably know about that one where you feel like your race results just do not line up with how your training.

It’s very common and we’ve all felt that way sometime before. Another strategy is to straddle that red line.

This is what most elite runners do.

They have to train so incredibly hard, to run fast and try to win races but as you see, they often end up injured, over trained, sick, whatever and this is necessary for elites.

For elites who want to make the Olympics and win Olympic medals, this is a necessity they have to do because everybody else is training so hard and so they have to take that risk.

They straddle that red line and hope that they end up on the right side of it by the ever so slightest of margins.

But this is not good for regular runners.

It’s best to under train and I know it sounds silly as we think about the media, with their notion of ‘give 110% all out or nothing’

It’s just not the case. It’s best to under train and you always want to be well below the red line.

This is going to make it where you have no serious overtraining risk.

You’re not going to get super sick all the time, or have colds every now and then. Your legs are going to be fresh on race day, and keep you feeling good in your training.

Now how do we do this?

First big thing and this is something that we talk about all the time at Runners Connect is that your easy runs need to be easy.

I’m not talking about a pace. There’s no such thing as an exact pace for easy runs. We get that question a lot. What should my easy pace be?

It’s a hard question to answer and it shouldn’t be answered because the pace doesn’t really matter.

It’s all about the effort. As long as the effort is truly easy, then you’re doing it right.

Some days that’s going to be a little faster, and some days that’s going to be slow.

If you’ve been taking a long break and you’ve got to get back into training and you take it easy, you’re probably going to feel pretty good. You are going be fresh and maybe go on fast.

If you had a long hard work out or a long run and it’s the very next morning and you’re out on a hilly soft trail, your pace is not going to be very fast.

To say that there’s this direct easy pace is very difficult and that’s why we prescribe, in training schedules, we give a range and we say, or slower because you can always be slower.

We have like a cap; a pace or a ceiling where you don’t go any faster than that but if you’re a lot slower than that, that’s fine.

There’s no such thing as too slow an easy day. You want to make sure that the effort is truly easy.

Another thing is no “all-out workouts” where you are literally giving absolutely everything you have to finish the work out. We don’t want to do this.

I know this is going to come as such a shock to so many people but when you do that, you are sending your body into a recovery hole.

It’s going to take you a while to dig out of that. If you go all out on a long hard workout, it’s going to be tough to recover.

You are going to need a good amount of time, at least a few days, if not much more.

Whereas if you under a train a little bit, if you pull that back and don’t quite go all out, you can always do one more.

Do one more if you have a six by one-mile workout. You should finish that workout and at the end of it, if you took another one or two minutes, or whatever kind of rest period you’re taking, you’ll be able to do another one.

That’s what you want and that’s the way you want to feel.

This is incredibly difficult because it requires a substantial amount of patience and will, to beat your mind.

You will be tempted to go all out, run and give everything you’ve got, but if you hold yourself back, you’ll see some incredible results.

You need to take care of the things outside of training which is your sleep, nutrition, hydration on those specifically especially nutrition, make sure eating enough.

One thing we are seeing is that a whole lot of people are not eating enough carbohydrates and next thing you know, they’re barking and training, their runs and tempos are getting slower and we say what’s a carbohydrate intake like?

“I am trying a lower carb diet.” Hey that’s fine. That’s great try different diets see what works for you.

In our experience, we’ve found that low carb diets do not work. You’re going to feel like crap and you will not recover well.

Be sure to rest and keep your stress as low as possible.

Obviously, that’s very difficult with family and work and all that stuff, but nonetheless, do what you can to keep your stress as low as possible.

Don’t push the mileage too high. Even if it’s all easy, you can actually cross that red line on mileage alone.

A lot of people say, “Well, you can’t over train on mileage. It’s only on intensity” and to them, I would say take somebody who’s only ever done 30 miles in a week, and have them suddenly for a month, do 100 miles a week.

They’re going to over train even if they do it all super easy. They’re going to get hurt, or sick or fatigued, or probably all the above, in that extreme of a case.

But of course, you can over train on mileage. You want to keep the mileage somewhere you can maintain.

You want to find your sweet spot. Something you can maintain, not necessarily week in week out, year-round by any means, but at the same time, during the big parts of your training schedule, you can maintain that mileage.

Do all of that and I promise you will find good results. This is this is something that you really can’t understand until you go and do it.

When you take a month of your training, take easy runs easy, run your workouts at a very manageable level to where you can do an extra interval at the finish and get your rest outside of the side of your runs.

You should also eat well and don’t push the mileage too high. I fully guarantee that you will start to see better results.

You’ll feel better in training, your workouts will be of higher quality, you’ll ultimately be able to do more mileage, because you’re going to be doing all your runs a lot smarter.

You’ll also be training a lot smarter and it’s going to end up helping you set some big personal bests.

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See you next time.