Charlie Pendejo said:David Geesaman said:Quoted message said:It seems like Periodic training would work great if I was already
near my goal times and I was training for a specific race.
In my experience, peaking is the only way to acheive your truly
finest performances. The downside is you only have that peak period
for 2-4 weeks.
Interesting discussion so far. Would anyone argue for some shades of
gray here, i.e. that one can train toward a peak while maintaining
sorta-balanced training throughout the season, by shifting the emphasis
for each phase but not as completely as "pure periodization"?
FWIW, that's my thinking. Based on the assortment of periodization
schemes I've read about, comparing "persistent" and "periodic" training
is like comparing brands of shoes. It's not the brand, but the model or
at least biomechanical style within the brand / training style that matters.
Most programs that I've read or tried to use build volume from one phase
to another (until you add a substantial dose of intensity), so you're
not losing anything, and the end of one phase has elements of the next
phase in there. It's just a shift in emphasis.
Base is the foundation on which everything is built. If you live
someplace hilly, you're probably going to be doing hilly runs during
base, and that's a dose of strength in there. Some programs have base
then strength, some strength then base, some mix. (For me, strength
includes a 2-hr hard cross-training workout with form drills,
plyometrics, and circuits in Nov-early Jan, but rest of the year is
hills and snowshoe running. In summer, I walk through some of our xt
form drills in barefeet on lawn to maintain the fine muscles in
feet/ankles. The amount of hills and duration of runs increase steadily,
but not in same week. My races are hilly trail races or snowshoe races.)
FWIW, I had a hard time buying into some of the assumptions in the
article that the OP posted.
"Their training is pretty much the same year round. Only in runners who
have defined seasons, as in track races in the summer and cross country
in the fall, followed by some road races in the winter and spring, will
you find periodizing in their training."
Many (most?) people live places with seasons - whether it's snow and ice
or excessively hot weather (relatively speaking) or hurricanes - that
have some effect on their training and races that are available. Change
is good.
"The training itself is based on the hard-easy approach, which is
definitely modeled on weight lifting."
Periodization focuses on the main phases. Hard-easy or hard-medium or
whatever is within a phase. I would think continuous training does the
same thing - UNLESS the person is truly doing the same thing every day,
and I know there are some people that run that way, but fairly small, I
think. And since we are building strength in leg muscles as well as core
and upper body, it might make sense to look to lifting studies.
"The problem for runners is the main muscle involved is the cardiac
muscle and the real goal of training is to increase oxygen uptake."
Most of what I've read is that the most important adaptation to running
is the buildup of capillaries, mitochondria, etc., as well as
recruitment of various muscle fibers, which are usually done in base
phase at easy efforts. My understanding is that these things stay around
awhile, but things like tolerating lactate buildup (speedwork) are
developed and lost relatively quickly. Yea, the heart needs to
strengthen also, but unless you have the infrastructure of capillaries,
etc to carry the blood and oxygen, it doesn't help much. And you need
the muscles, tendons, ligaments, etc to support the body.
Look at the Hadd article that Dan posted.
3. "Runners who run themselves into the ground periodically in training
probably set back their over-all progress. Done right, a runner should
never be especially sore or dead-legged. He should feel the same almost
every day."
Proper periodization and buildup should avoid this. With any program, I
think there's the possibility of overdoing something briefly and needing
more recovery or being sore the next day. I mean, who hasn't done a run
that ended up being more than intended, either from a wrong turn or a
bigger hill than anticipated, etc. I would think persistent training
would be more likely to result in dead-legged feeling or staleness.
4. "What allows an athlete to sustain a greater bounce is an increased
oxygen uptake, some increase in muscle strength and coordination, and an
increase in running economy. Of these factors, the most important is
oxygen uptake, which is the goal of training. The other factors are more
by-products of training."
Sorta, but I think it makes more sense to view it as building
infrastructure to allow the greater oxygen processing, not that the
infrastructure is a by-product. A more efficient machine will use less
oxygen.
Just my $.01.
Dot
--
"Success is different things to different people"
-Bernd Heinrich in Racing the Antelope
