Transcript
0:00 It's time for a masterclass on workout design. That's right. We're going to talk about how do you create and design workouts? And I'm going to go through the four methods that I like to call top-down, bottom-up, alternation, and then blends or combos. And there's a million different ways to look at workouts. And I think one of the mistakes that we often make is we think, "Oh, if I can just find the perfect workout. It's the Norwegian 4 by 4 minutes to maximize VO2 max. It's the double threshold or the cruise intervals or the 20-minute tempo or the 8 by K, whatever it is." We just think, "Oh, just do this workout and get it done."
0:42 But I like to think of workouts in a different way. We're applying a stimulus and we're trying to get a adaptation. And then eventually we adapt and we have to shift and change that stimulus. And what that means is it's not about finding the perfect workout, the 4 by mile, the 4 by 4 minutes, the 10 by 400s. It's how are you adapting and changing it over time? And this transforms us from looking and searching for the fool's gold into a kind of artist. An artist informed by science.
1:20 Meaning we have to understand how manipulating the the variables shifts the workout dynamics. So we can look at things like recovery. If we lengthen the recovery, guess what? We're more recovered before everyone. So we have more of our creatine phosphate system and our anaerobic system recovered before we get going. But if we have too long of a recovery, our aerobic system comes down and we have to rev it up to go again. So the first part of our workout is not as close to VO2 max, our aerobic capacity as we might like to think. We can increase the speed. We can put things in sets and reps. We can lengthen the workout either by enduring it with more reps, going from 10 reps to 12 reps, or within the interval, going from 400-m right repeats to 500-m repeats.
2:16 There are a million different ways to do this. And each comes with some benefits and some drawbacks. And I'm going to kind of simplify the progressions into these four combos and kind of walk you through what it looks like and how in the world it works and what it means. I'm going to start with what I call bottom-up. And today you're going to get a wonderful demonstration of my awful handwriting. So, bear with me here. So, bottom-up.
2:48 Okay. Here we go. We're going to struggle through this. Okay, what does bottom-up mean? It means you're starting from the simplest, shortest workout that you could do and building it up to your capacity. So, what do I mean by that? Here's an example. If I say, "Hey, I'm going to do a four a 5K specific workout." And yeah, I really think that I need to get to mile repeats to be able to get these athletes to get going.
3:17 Well, when we look at the bottom-up, we can come at it or we can when we look at that, we can get there in not multiple different directions. One of the ways is from the bottom-up. So, instead of starting with mile repeats, maybe we start with sets of 400-m repeats. 3 by 4 by 400. Okay. You're going to struggle with 60 seconds rest.
3:47 Okay, between each. So, what we've got here is we've got three sets. That's 3 mi worth in total, but it's split up. So, the next time we do this workout, maybe instead we say, "Okay, we're going to do four sets or maybe two sets of let's see, 6 by 400. Okay? And what we've now got is 3 mi, but there's less rest because there's less sets. And then maybe after a while we say, "Okay, forget the 400s. What we're going to do instead is go three sets of five by 500.
4:35 Now, what we've done is we put it back into sets, but each set is a little bit longer, right? Or much longer. You've increased it. This might be should be 4 by 500, but you get the idea. We're lengthening it out because it's 2,500 m, so this is probably a little bit long. So, let's just make that four. So, 4 by 500. Now, we've got 2,000 with it in each set. Next time we might go three sets of 4 by 600.
5:05 And then we might go a couple sets of let's say three sets of 3 by 800. Okay? And then we get maybe we get two sets of a breakdown. 12 eight four Okay? >> >> And then eventually maybe we get to the point where we're going, "Okay, 12 eight four. Let's do you know five to six five to six by K and then eventually 4 by mile.
5:54 Now, what we've done here is we put the emphasis on enduring itself. So, we're saying, "Okay, how do we endure our ability? How do we increase where In In throughout here, I didn't put paces here, but what you're looking at here is essentially trying to say, "Okay, if we start these at Let's say where our goal is to run, you know, 5-minute pace." We'll keep the math simple. When we use the bottom-up method, generally what we do is we start around goal pace, maybe slightly slower. Maybe we say 77 to 75, but the advantage of the bottom-up method is we get to start on specific pace and then lengthen it out. Now, this is with off the top of my head. So, is it going to be perfect? No, I probably made some mistakes in there, but you get the idea of what you're trying to do here is endure the capacity. We're saying, "This is the goal pace here, roughly in this time.
6:52 We're going to start at it." Okay? The top-down method, the advantage here is you get to start at goal pace. The disadvantage here is you've got to slightly gradually lengthen it out, and sometimes you hit a roadblock doing that. Okay? So, if we get If If we say, "Okay, that's the top-down method, let's go into the bottom-up method. Let me delete this real quick. Bottom The top-down method is this. Okay?
7:24 You get the idea. Top-down method is this. Instead of starting at goal pace and saying, "Okay, here we are. 75-second quarters. How do we lengthen that out to 5-minute pace?" We start slower with the longer stuff. And often what we're doing is we're starting with a bridge. So, what do I mean by starting with bridge? We've often got something at this point where we're doing maybe a 20-minute threshold or long repeats at aerobic stuff. 5 by 6 minute at critical vault loss V. So, like, you know, just faster than half marathon pace, maybe 15k, almost 10k pace. And then with the the top-down >> >> method, what we're doing is we're bridging that.
8:18 So, we say, "Okay, here we are. What do we do here?" Well, we say, "All right, we've gone 20-minute threshold. Maybe instead we go 15 minutes LT plus two to three by 5 minutes at Let's say our goal is 5-minute pace, so we say 5:10 to 5:15.
8:49 Okay. We're introducing a little bit more specific work, but we're not quite there yet. And then the maybe the next one we go, "Okay, we've done two to three by 5 minutes at this at close to pace. So, now we're going to do a full-blown workout. So, we do 5 by 5 minutes working down from 5:15 to 5:00 or 5:10. We'll just say We'll just keep it there. Now, we've got a full-blown workout. It's not at 5k goal pace yet.
9:21 We're still slower, and maybe start even slower than this, but we're getting the total endurance part done, and now we're working on, "Okay, how do we get this faster?" So, the next time we might say it is, "Okay, let's take this and let's do instead of 5 by 5 minutes at 5:15, let's take it into 5 by 5 and we're going to start 5:15, but we're going to finish at 5:05.
9:54 Okay, simple adjustment. And then the next time what we might do is to say, "Okay, we're going to try something a little bit different. Keep the total volume here 6 5 4 Let's skip. Let's skip 4 3 See Okay, it's a little less volume, which is what we want. But here, we're going to shoot for 5 say 5:10 down to 5 minutes for the 3 minute sections. And then we're going to come back here and we say, "Okay, let's now do 4 by 5 minutes at 5:05 to 5 minutes.
10:38 And then finally for my mile 5 minute pace. Okay, and what you see here is you can see the volume is there, the endurance capacity is there. We're just trying to get a little bit faster. You can do this traditional method and say, "Hey, we're going to keep the workout the same the whole way around and just get a little faster, get a little faster." This is the Bannister we're going to run 400 meter repeats and go from 66 down to 59.
11:08 We're just going to keep cranking it down over the season as we get fitter and fitter. I like to add some variation in here A so we can connect. So here we're connecting it to our high-end aerobic ability. Right? And then I like to add some variation here so we're not just dropping the pace, but somewhere along the lines like here what we're doing is we're making a little bit easier to get that pace because they're doing it on maybe the 4-minute or 3-minute intervals instead of 5 or 6 minutes.
11:39 And that allows them to get a taste of it before we do the kind of full drop in the full workout, if that makes sense. Okay? This sort of method is really good when you're looking at someone who has that strong aerobic ability and we're connecting it to to the the specific capacity. And what we often do in these situations is they provide roadblock maps. So, that kink in the pipe I've talked about before, where you kind of get stuck.
12:14 Here, if the piece is not dropping as you'd like it to see, that often gives you an indication that your other work, often that kind of rhythm or faster, you know, work that is not quite anaerobic, but like you're starting to get some of that speed comfort in there. If you can't drop the pace more, often the result is this is or the impact is you need to do some of that rhythm work. So, some 800s, some 400s, some 300s, some 200s a little faster to get you used to that, and that connects back into the specificity.
12:51 Remember, we're talking about one of the workouts here. Often in these examples, the specific one. All right. Let's continue down this. The other way to progress that I like to use is borrowed from the maestro Renato Canova, which are these are alternations. So, here what we're looking at is saying, "Okay, we're going to keep the road the speed that we're trying to get in there, but at first it's going to be really small spices of work. Then we're going to lengthen it out and try and get them comfortable to this.
13:28 So again, this is specific work. We're going to say for our 5K athlete trying to run 5-minute pace again. At first, we might say, "You know what? In an easy run, we're going to have you do eight by 30 seconds at goal 5K pace, so 5-minute pace with 90 to 2 minutes between. So, nothing hard. This is this essentially pick-ups. It's like glorified strides.
14:02 What we're doing there is kind of setting the stage. And then once we've set the stage, we're going to say, "Okay, we're going to do some alternations here." What could that look like? We could do 200 at 37.5 I think it is. With 1,200 steady. What's steady? This is going to be varied by level, but what I like to say is somewhere between marathon pace and tempo. Or your threshold, use technical terms.
14:34 Basically, I I don't love, for especially for lower athletes, giving them a prescription on the pace of this, but it needs to be faster than your recovery jog, faster than your easy run, but not so fast where you can't sustain the thing. And then after a while, we might say, "Okay, we're going to go 300 at same pace and 1,100 steady. And then maybe 400 at 75."
15:08 with I realized I went 12 and 2, that's 1,400 m. Maybe I should have gone 1,400, but we're going to keep it with this. Don't have to have all the math work out. So, 400 with 1,000 steady. Now, once I get to 400, I might say, "Okay, I got it. They're doing this well. They might not be recovering quick enough to do that much volume. So, in general, we'd have a volume cap at this. Maybe like, you know, 4 miles worth of work at this.
15:39 4 miles total at this or something like that. And we mess around with this. For this example, I'm going to keep going. So, instead of saying, "Okay, now we're going to do, you know, 600 800." For example, we might say, "Okay, we're going to do We're going to split it into sets. We're going to do two sets of 600 800. So, six on pace, 800 steady. We're going to do that for 2 and 1/2 miles.
16:11 And then we're going to take a 3 to 4 minutes standing break or jogging break. No steady. And then do it again between sets. And then we might say, "Okay, great. We've done that. Now we're going to do the same thing only we're going to do We're just going to cut the steady a little bit. 200 600 600 instead of 800. Okay, this is getting to be a really freaking hard workout now because you're essentially dead even on the hard and the steady. And we might come around and say, "Okay, great. This is where we say, 'All right, we've pushed the alternation to its max. Now we're going to do a traditional like 4 by mile or whatever it is, 6 by K or 8 by K, whatever it is at 5K pace. Okay? To kind of bring it home.
17:05 The reason for the alternation, the reason I liked this to work, is it forces us to stay engaged and not settle in a performance in a practice standpoint. Because generally when we look at specific workouts, what often happens is we get really good at judging the recovery in between. We run our 4 by mile or 8 by K and we say, "Okay, I've got 2 minutes recovery, 3 minutes recovery. I I can judge how to recover off this, turn my brain off, and get through it." But in a race, you don't get to turn your brain off. You still have to stay engaged and on it.
17:42 These increasing alternations allow us to mimic that to degree. And it also keeps that junk in our legs to a you know, higher degree because we're not recovering for the couple minutes in between reps. Now that being said, alternations are an advanced workout. They're really hard if you don't have the aerobic ability to handle it because a lot of this depends on you running relatively steady and still recovering just enough to be able to do that next surge.
18:13 This workout requires a coach to be able to observe and say, "Okay, did I get this wrong or did they get this wrong on the pacing?" And coach them up. Did I get this wrong on the workout design and not give them something that they can handle? I got to coach them up. So this is an advanced model, but it works really well. I love using it for 10K and for cross country because it forces athletes to engage with the thing, okay? And not kind of like turn their brain off and disengage.
18:44 You can do smaller models of this as well. All right, I want to go through the last model real quick so that we understand it. This is what I'd call a blend or a combo. Okay? Two different words, slightly different workouts, but we'll get at that. What we're doing here is instead of doing the traditional I'm going to target this at specificity and go, you know, 4 by mile, 5 by mile all at the same pace roughly.
19:12 What we're saying is we're going to blend things together or combine them. So, a blend workout is literally when we blend it together. Let's say we're coming at this from a specific speed and a our specific that 5-minute pace and then a speed orientation. Why would we use this? When we have someone who has a roadblock of like I can't handle just a little bit faster. So, we're going to break that up. So, an example of this might be where we take slightly slower and slightly faster and mix them together. What we're going to do is four sets of 1K at 5:15 pace and 400 in 73.
20:03 So, what we're doing here and we're going to go back and forth often shorter rest between here, maybe 90 seconds and longer rest between sets, maybe 3 minutes. What we're doing here is we're going to run a little slower than 5K pace, right? And a more aerobic pace on a longer rep and then change gears into something faster. Okay? We're blending these two together. Okay? And then the next time we do it, we might say, "Hey, we're going to do four sets of 1K at five let's say 5:10 pace and then 400 73.
20:42 Okay? We're building up to that thing. And then we might go 1K and 600 at that same pace. So, now we've got the total if we were going to do 4 by mile, we've got it total, but we've got part of it at 5:10, part of it at faster and a little break in between. Now, here for the blend, we might say, "Okay, this is good. I might stick a traditional 4 by mile in there. You know?
21:09 Don't have to stay all one direction here. But this is to see how it goes. To see how they kind of handle it. And then after this, I might say, "Okay, great. We've done four We've done 4 by mile. We're going to change it up. We're going to go 1,200 at 75. Now we're back on pace. We're going to short rest. And then we're going to do a 400 cranking it down 71. We're kind of mixing those together.
21:34 Kind of blending it together where we get a little bit of speed to kind of force into the system a little bit of junk because you have to remember they have to go back and forth. Cuz they're 1,275 then 471 then the next one they go back to longer a little bit slower. It's a big enough pace change where it impacts things physiologically as well. we could even go a step forward here and make them handle it within the thing. So here I might say, "We're going to go 1 mile at 5:05.
22:06 Then we're going to do 400 73. Then we're going to do 1,200 at 5-minute pace. And a 300 at a little bit faster than 73 pace. And then 1K 200 800 150, let's say. And what we're doing is we're getting a little faster. So maybe that's 5:05, that's 73, that's 5-minute pace. It's a little faster than 73 pace. This is maybe just under a 4:58 pace.
22:40 This one's a little faster, maybe 35 34. This one's maybe 2:26. And then this one's like go. Give it. And you're ble blending that specific in that speed endurance there. Okay, we can see that blending there. Combo is just another name for this instead of the back and forth. What we might try and do is combine them in different directions. So, for example, we could do as a workout 4 by mile at 5:10 pace plus you know, 6 by 200 at 36 or 35, something a little faster.
23:21 And then after that, we go 5 by K at 5 minutes or 5:05, somewhere in that. And then 5 by 300 at 72 second 400 pace. We're combining it in there. Okay? Instead of blending it together, we're having a different strategy where we don't have to go back and forth. Here, the point is more on handle the long stuff, right? But then be able to change gears here in a slightly fatigued state.
23:55 Different workout styles, but progressing in similar ways where we're combining things or blending things instead of saying we're going to keep this all of this workout targeted at the same thing. Like doing mile repeat repeats at VO2 max or 5K pace or all lactate threshold or all 400 repeats at mile right reps. We're getting a little of the endurance stuff here plus a little of the speed or specific endurance stuff here. So, what?
24:26 The point of these is to give you options, to make you think of an artist on how you're progressing things. Which way you go, we don't all use the same progression style the whole season. Often, I'll choose like two that I think why I want to mix together >> >> throughout the season and say, "Okay, these are the two I'm going to target." Rarely do I use all four on a same athlete, but you get the idea.
24:51 And the point is you use the things based on the adaptation you're after and athlete in front of you. So, where are their weak links? If their strength is speed, we need to lengthen that out. So, we might start with the bottom-up and a kind of blend where we're starting a little slower on the the short stuff and kind of come together in there. If they're really good at endurance, you know, we might do something where we blend that fast and slow stuff, plus have a top-down approach to give them something they're good at and something that makes us in that something that, you know, they get a little bit more fast stuff. If their problem is focusing and staying engaged and they tend to settle, I might include some alternation components in there. You're looking at the problem you're trying to solve, the puzzle you're trying to fix and saying, "Okay, what workout style or progression allows me to address these things?" And then checking along the way to say, "Hey, are we still on the right path here?"
25:52 That's what it's at. All right. So, this is my first attempt at a masterclass on workout design where we go deep and I use this pen thing on the camera or on the computer itself. Let me know what you think. Do you want more of these breakdowns? I'll get better at drawing and writing a little bit. Do you want more of these breakdowns? Less? Is it helpful? Let me know in the comments. Don't forget to subscribe. This is me, no notes, winging it, but winging it off of decades of experience to show you that I'm a human being doing this, not reading off a script, not AI, just real Steve giving you real advice. If that's something that you want, whether it comes from workouts, running, mental performance, stay tuned. This channel has got much more coming. So, like it, subscribe, share it.
26:46 Do all the things. I appreciate all of you. Till next time, good luck on your competing, running, coaching, whatever you're doing in this sport.