Transcript
0:00 What do you do when a workout is going poorly? When you can't hit the splits, when you feel like blah, do you press on and be David Goggins and never give up and just keep pushing? Do you call it and say, " whatever. We'll come back tomorrow." Or can you salvage it? Today we're going to cover all that and more. I'm going to give you expertise from the coaching side so you coach others and for making that decision yourself. And I think it starts with, number one, what is the point or the goal of the workout? And this seems obvious, but I think too often we don't delineate or designate it. And what I mean by this is, sometimes the goal of the workout is physiology. Meaning, it is to spend time with sub-lactate threshold or in this physiological zone or intensity level and say, "I'm just trying to spend time here, right?"
0:53 Accumulate time so that I get this internal load. And when it's the internal load measure, it doesn't matter too much whether you're running that threshold at 5:10 pace or because of fatigue and tiredness and other things, now that threshold is 5:20 or 5:25 or even 5:30 pace. Like, to a degree, if it's way too slow, then it tells you something. But, the point is the physiology. The same on intense workouts. If you're If the point is to flood your body with acidosis so that like gets ready to handle that thing, then it doesn't matter if, to a degree, if your 400s are 58 seconds or 61 seconds. As long as your body is feeling that burn, you're going to get some sort of adaptation out of it. Now, if you're running too slow or working too hard to get that adaptation, you might dig yourself a deeper fatigue hole, which we'll get to. But, in general, when physiology is the key, then the exact pace doesn't matter as much.
1:55 On the flip side, when the pace or the intensity matters more so, then if we're off on that, it might tell us it's worth bagging it. So, think of it like this. If I'm preparing for a 10K and I say, "Hey, I'm preparing to run 4:50 mile pace." Then, if I'm doing mile repeats at 4:50 mile pace or that's the goal, and I'm running them at 5 minutes or 5:05, and my physiology is still there. I'm still hitting that kind of zone I want for 10K pace effort, but the pace isn't there, that might be a indicator of like, let's bag it. Why? Because we're trying to get used to and connect the physiology to the rhythm of the workout, to the intensity, that exact pace, stride length, cadence, biomechanics, etc.
2:46 We're trying to ingrain that. Right? If you're doing 400-m repeats getting ready for a mile and you're saying, "I need these to click off 59, so I know that pace." Then, running 63-second 400s doesn't help that much. Or if the workout is specific endurance, why are you trying to extend your ability at that specific pace from going from 400s to maybe 600s at that same pace, then even if you're in the right physiology zone, you might not be getting the desired output from the workout. The way I often like to look at this is early in the season, we're more physiology based. Later in the season, we're more especially on specific work, speed based because we want to start bringing those two together. So, step one, if a workout is not going well, if it doesn't feel right, if the speed is really important, you're not able to hit it, then that tells you, mhm probably better to scrap it and come back another day.
3:46 If the physiology dominates, if you're a little bit slow, if if a little bit off, maybe you can keep going. All right. So, that's step one is that identifying what is the purpose. The second step here is will this put me in a hole I can't get out of. Meaning, if I keep going in this workout, is it going to set me back not only for a couple days, but maybe weeks or longer potentially because I've dug myself into from overreaching or stress point into overtraining mode. This is really hard to classify because we only know retrospectively, but the way I look at it is the more signals that tell me that, "Hey, I'm digging myself a hole that is really going to be hard to get out of." Meaning, my paces are way slower. The The relatively effort feels way harder than it should. My brain just isn't in it, right? I'm feeling that fatigue. I'm not bouncing back and recovering even if I extend my recovery in the intervals or the workout. If all of those signs start pointing towards like, "Hey, you're digging a big big hole." That's another indicator, okay?
5:02 If you're like, "Hey, I'm a little bit slower and like it's a little bit harder, but I'm coming in relatively fresh. This isn't that taxing of a workout. It's not high volume or a lot of intensity." Then sometimes you can kind of just say, "Okay, I'm going to be good enough and get through it." Okay? So, how big of a hole are you digging is number two. The third thing that I look at is once you've identified those things, is say, "Can I either disrupt or salvage it?"
5:34 Okay? What I mean by this is you start your 400s or your 800s or your mile repeats and they don't feel that great. And you're a little bit off. And you say, "Okay, I'm going to do another one." And it still feels like, oh, this is going backwards. You say, "Okay, I'm going to shift something to try and disrupt and salvage." What do I mean by this? You take longer recoveries number one. You say, "Hey, maybe my I need just needed a little bit more recovery to get in this thing and get into a groove."
6:05 You go from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. Okay, that's the easiest one. It's often the one that doesn't work that often because often if you're not recovered and I'm a couple minutes you need a little bit more recovery isn't going to help, but sometimes it does. The more effective one is often to like increase recovery a little bit by buying yourself time by doing something that kind of gets your legs to have a little bit more pop in them. So, this is old trick I stole from Igloi and more so Joe Douglas who taught me this is if you do a set, let's say you're doing 400 meter repeats, they don't feel very good. You get through two, you get through three, you get through four, you say whatever.
6:46 Stop at this set. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to jog a lap, little bit longer recovery, and then I'm going to do some 150s or 100 that are like what I'd call feel good fast. Meaning you're running a little bit faster, but you take ample recovery between. It's not that fast. You're trying to like wake the legs up a little bit. This often occurs or is helpful if you didn't have a very good warm up or you're like really kind of tired or fatigued or a little bit sore coming into it and your your legs aren't quite awake. So, you wake them up. You do some hundreds or 150s.
7:22 Wake them up and then you get back and you try another set. And often what you see is that second set feels a little bit better and then you can continue on with that workout. So, you can disrupt it with some shorter stuff and it could be even shorter. It could be some excels. One of my weird tactics on this is to go do some two or three short hill sprints. When working with high school or college kids, sometimes we'd be doing mile repeats and kid wouldn't feel very well and then say, "Hey, we got through two.
7:53 Go sprint up a hill three times and jog back." It was a little bit, maybe 400 m jog back to the start line. Jog back over. They start another mile repeat. They start feeling good. Their legs have some pop in them. So, we can kind of disrupt and shift that physiology a little bit and that muscle tension, whatever you want to call it, in there to kind of liven things up and get us feeling good. Another one to do is if you know early on, meaning after the warm-up or after that first rep, is to shift, don't even wait to the set, shift right out of it and like prime your legs again.
8:32 So, let's say we're doing 800 repeats. First one feels kind of sluggish. You say, "Okay, whatever. That happened. I'm going to recover and then I'm going to do like a hard 200." Why? Again, to kind of wake your legs up and wake your aerobic system up to say, "Okay, we need you hard charged, like ready to go for this thing." Okay? You can't just ease your way into this. So, sometimes you can, you know, prime your body out of it in that way.
9:04 The other thing, the the I think this is the fourth thing to do, is if you really need that same stimulus, let's say you need that physiology or even that pace, the simplest one to do is to shorten it. Cut it into sets. Cut Cut the reps down. Think of it as an Igloi workout instead of a long workout. If you're struggling with mile repeats at 5-minute pace, instead of that, shorten it to where you're doing 400s with a short rest at the same pace or a little bit faster. You know, 74, 75, whatever it is.
9:40 So, you're still getting the same kind of intensity zone, the same kind of physiology, but you've shortened it to something that is manageable, so you can stack that volume over time. Could do this with 300s or 200s. The key on this is often like just keep the rest really short, right? Do 400s sets of 5 by 400 with a 100-m jog or float in between. Really short rest, 20, 30 seconds, something like that, depending on what you're doing, maybe a little bit longer, but not much.
10:14 But, what you've done is say, "Okay, this is manageable. I can do 400s at 75 if I can't do mile repeats at 75." Same thing with your tempos or thresholds. If you're staring at a 6-mile threshold in your base, and but you're just not feeling it, break it into miles or Ks or 800s, or go by feel, where you go 10 minutes, 7 minutes, 5 minutes, 8 minutes, whatever it is, till you get to the final total, we'll call it.
10:44 Split it up, shorten it. And often in these cases, you also want to like throw the watch away, because when things are going bad, that external feedback is often the thing that gets in your way and keeps your head like spiraling towards catastrophe, cuz you look down and you're like, "Oh, this 72nd 400 feels way too hard for what it's supposed to feel like." So, what do you do? You throw the watch away and you go by or you stop the GPS watch and you just go by time or effort.
11:17 That often can free you up. The next tactic I use, if it's a bad day, sometimes you're lining up in what I call there's a mismatch problem. Meaning, on paper, the workout is supposed to be something intense. 400 repeats or 600s or 800s or some sort of breakdown where you got to like really focus and bring the intensity. And for whatever reason, your body's just not ready for it or your mind's just not ready for it. Maybe you didn't get much sleep. Maybe you had a rough day at work.
11:49 Maybe it's whatever. You are arguing with your boyfriend and girlfriend and you're just not ready for that kind of intensity. Go the other direction. Okay? So, that you get something out of it and then later in the week or in a couple days, you can bring that intensity back into it. So, if you're trying to do 400 m repeats or 200s, say, "Hey, can I do a long run?" Or maybe aerobic tempo or threshold workout or whatever have you. Can I do that and handle it? Go the other direction.
12:22 Similarly, if you line up and you say, "Oh, I can't can't fathom my 8-mile threshold or tempo or whatever you want to call it. That's way too much riding the line and mental work right now." Go do hill sprints. Right? Go do some 200s that are like feel-good fast or rhythm work where you're just clicking it off and you get a little bit of fatigue, but it's 200s, so you can handle it. Often, what I find is if you go in the opposite direction, you'll fix that mismatch, okay?
12:53 You'll bring some excitement to the thing. And then the last part is bag it. Right? If it doesn't If it's not that day, if the thing isn't matching up, if you can't hit the speeds that you need to, at some point, call it. But, when you call it, what I like to say is like set yourself up good for the next day, okay? There's this concept in psychology called the peak end rule, which means we remember the peak emotional experience and what came at the end of it. That's what sticks in our mind and I think that works for our memory and to a degree like our body.
13:35 If we bag the workout and we go from, you know what, I stopped after two mile repeats or three 400s and today's a failure, that failure can kind of sit with us. So instead, end with something where you feel pretty good about it. Sometimes that's like, you know what, I'm going to go a longer cool down, but often what it is is like I'm going to okay, do some easy stuff and then I'm going to go end with some hard strides on the track. Or I'm going to end with a little bit of a pick up at the end that makes me feel like, okay, my legs are coming around and often sets you up for the next day or the day after where your legs start feeling good because you got a little pop in your step, little spring in that stride, or even a couple hill sprints at the end where you're like, okay, it's not a totally wasted day, I've now primed myself to feel good the next day or the next workout so that, you know, you keep that train route rolling along. The most important thing on all of this to me is you keep that consistency going.
14:44 You keep that momentum going. You don't frame it as like, this sucks, it's a failure. There goes all my fitness. You frame it as like information. If it really does go wrong and you bag it, you say, okay, why did this go wrong? Maybe I need more recovery and maybe even you switch that workout from you bag it and you say, okay, I'm going to go in the pool and get my legs feeling good or take it easy with some strides and get them legs feeling good.
15:09 You shift the point so it's recovery so that the next workout you can really get back on it and nail it. What you don't want is to spiral towards catastrophe where you see one bad day, and then it becomes two bad days, three bad days, you know, season's over, I'm not fit. You know how it goes in your head. You want to shift and adjust, and sometimes disrupt, so that you don't spiral out of control. We're all going to have bad days.
15:41 And I think the key is what I've seen with really good performers, and actually I have data on this. I tracked multiple seasons worth of college athletes, with them rating their days as bad, average, or good, essentially. And athletes who improve most were able to have not more good days, but more average days, where they essentially turned some days that might have been bad for someone else into like, "Eh, that was all right. Like, not a big deal." Okay? That's the difference-maker. So, when a day comes where it's like, "Hey, it's not not perfect." Figure out, "How can I turn this into a That was all right. Put some money in the bank. We'll keep this train moving as we go along." As always, thanks for watching and listening to these. Check out the rest of my channel, subscribe, like, share, all the things that help on the YouTube algorithm. I am just a coach trying to help you perform better, or help your teams do the same. So, until next time, everybody. Take care. Good luck running, coaching, or whatever you do.