Transcript
0:00 Today we're going to talk about my favorite workout that very few people do or even talk about. I'm not sure why because it's been done for decades and years and years and years, but here we go. It's called rhythm work. What in the world is rhythm work? Well, let's explain it. So, if you go down to the track and I say, "Hey, we're going to do 10 by 200 with 200 jog." And I want you to start out about 5k, 3k pace and then just get a little bit faster, a little bit faster, a little faster. What happens is you probably get down to about mile pace or a little faster and after those 10 you felt a little bit of fatigue, but you felt good and you feel energized. Why? Because the whole point of the workout isn't to create fatigue.
0:49 It's not to go into the well to push until you break down. It's to be able to connect the physiology and the neural and biomechanics together. So, we forget that running is a skill. And I challenge you if you're listening to this, go down to the track and go run a 200 and 400. Pick a pace. Don't look at your watch. And how close can you get to being locked in? If you say go run a 60-cond 400, do you run 65 or do you run 60 or 59 or get pretty close? Chances are is if you've done enough rhythm work, you're going to get closer because part of the point of doing rhythm work is to understand the nuance of speed, to understand what it feels like to lock into 30 second 200s or 35second 200s or 40 second 200s or what have you. The problem is when we do full-blown workouts, let's say you go down to the track and you got to do 8 to 10 by 400 at mile pace. Yeah, the first two or three feel relatively controlled, but after that you're surviving. You're how am I going to get the next interval? How am I going to withstand this fatigue?
2:02 How am I going to keep things going when my legs are burning and they're telling me to slow down and my brain is screaming at me to stop and I feel like I'm going to throw up? you're not ingraining that feeling of rhythm. And that workout to tolerate the fatigue is important. It's what helps us get through the last lap. But the rhythm is what gets us set up to handle that last 800 or that last lap or that final quarter of the race when we have to grit and push and dig down to be able to do the thing. So what does a rhythm workout look like? I told you one example. 200s are my favorite. Could be anywhere. I like to start people at 8 by 200. You can go up to 20 by 200. How fast?
2:53 Depends on the goal. What pace are you trying to lock into? Is it mile pace? If you're a mileer, 5k pace, 3k pace, what are you trying to ingrain? A lot of times you can kind of work through it. So start off at 5k pace, work your way down. You get to understand the nuance of working through speeds, which is like driving a car when you press, you know, the gas pedal. You don't New drivers just like press the gas pedal and it's like herkyjerky, right? It's like, oh my gosh. When you've been driving for a long time, you realize that I can just slightly press the pedal and this will be 60 m hour or 70 or 75 or 50 or whatever it is. It's the same with speed. We just have to understand that nuance. Rhythm work allows us to do that. So start with 800 8 by 200. The point isn't to create a ton of fatigue.
3:43 You'll feel some, but you don't ever want to feel like I'm overwhelmed. So what that means for you will differ. Sometimes that'll be eight, sometimes that'll be 20. Sometimes it'll be a 90 second standing rest. For me, I love doing a very slow 200 meter jog rest. So I got some mileage in. It was easier to lock into the rhythm as I run and then jog, whatever have you. I love 200s for this because it's long enough to get in a rhythm, but not too long where you start feeling fatigued, especially for the faster paces. You could do it longer. It's up to you. We can also do this fart style. Okay, Kenova, Ronaldo Kenova, the famed Italian coach, called these speed variations. And all he would do is say, "Hey, on your eight or 9 or 10 mile easy run, go do 10 by 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off, or 10 by 45 seconds on, 90 seconds off." What pace you're just picking it up to a decent rhythm where you're turning over a little bit to again get out of the kind of easy run to get into this kind of middle moderate workout that's not really that hard, but it's more than easy run. And it often makes you have what I'd call feel good fast. you feel good doing it and you feel better afterwards. We can also do all sorts of variations of fart licks. I love doing this for cross country where we'll go 10 by minute on off or more or a little bit less depending on the athlete but often doing it around 10k 8k or 5k pace depending on what you're training for. You lock in. Another variation that I've seen is when I train with Scott Rasco and Alan Webb is after easy runs they'd go to the track and they do a couple sets of 150, 120, 100 and all you do is get into that rhythm for the 150 and then get a little faster, a little faster as it gets shorter and you kind of locked into, okay, this isn't a workout but I'm running all right. The classic variation of this is strides or pickups. What are you doing? Yeah, we're turning over.
5:49 We're getting a little feel good fast, but we're also connecting those biomechanics and neural recruitment to what we're doing. We're aligning it. And the key here is not in heavy fatigue. So, if you've ever watched sprinters train, okay, when I was at the University of Houston, I got to watch Carl Lewis and Leroy Burell coach athletes, coach some worldclass sprinters, some of the best of the best. And it's interesting, for most of the workouts, fatigue is the enemy. They're not like distance runners. They don't push push push when they get tired. No, Coach Burell would shut them down and say, "I know we're doing 200s or 150s, but you're starting to break down. Why?"
6:32 They didn't want to ingrain bad habits of breakdown. So they shut you down before you're swimming and fighting and leaning back like we often see in, you know, the last 100 of a 400 or 800 or the last four 100 of a 400 meter repeat session. You're not ingraining good habits. In fact, way back in the day, Coach Burrell asked me, "Why do distance runners ingrain bad habits and why don't we shut them down once we hit that point of like really fatigued and we're just going all to crap?" In distance running is a little bit different where we're just kind of have to deal with it sometimes. So, we have to get in that space. But there's also a point to this.
7:10 When we talk about rhythm work, we want to be more like sprinters in the sense we shut it down when we start flailing. Okay? Why? We're not connecting good biomechanics. We're losing that. We're now training physiology, which is important, but not the point of this workout. So, when do we do this stuff? I love doing it in a couple different cases. So, rhythm work. I love doing the week of races. So, on that Tuesday or Wednesday before a Saturday race, let's go run some 200s.
7:48 Let's lock in, feel good, fast, get in 10, 12, 16, depending on the athlete or a fart lick out there. The reason is it's this moderate workout that often bridges the gap between maybe the Monday actual hard workout and the Saturday race. It gives us something to do on that Wednesday or sometimes Thursday. And it makes athletes feel like they're doing something, but it also makes them feel a little bit better where they feel poppy and responsive afterwards.
8:19 and it locks them into the rhythm which they're often going to experience on race day. So, we're training, we're learning, we're understanding. The other time I like to do this is as a bridge. So when we're going kind from the base phase to a hey we're going to start introducing from faster intervals some rhythm work serves as the perfect connector between hey we've done easy in strides and maybe some hill sprints to we're doing 400 meter repeats at mile pace or 5k pace or 3k pace or whatever have you is let's do some 200s or some fart legs. And once we do that, it serves as that introduction to the workout to bridge that gap and it develops that skill. And the last time I like to do this is during recovery weeks. So if we have a down week mileage wise and intensity-wise or by either one of them, I like to insert some rhythm work so that a we're still recovering, but b we're getting something out of it and we're not draining. We're reminding our body and brain like, "Hey, here it is. We can still run fast. We can still remember what it feels like to go a little bit hard. Not a ton of fatigue, but a little bit hard." And that's what we do. So, there you go. The last one, I I lied. One more is when we're in that kind of peaking phase and we're extending our races, it's a great kind of maintenance workout as well. we might do a little bit more volume, but you know, if I'm going for a district regional, state championship weeks in a row or whatever have you or a NCAA conference regionals, nationals, I'll often insert rhythm work to kind of maintain that ability again without doing a full-blown workout so that we're not just taking time off or just going on easy runs or just easy runs and really hard runs which we sometimes can't recover for in time for the peaking races. So, we do these kind of moderate rhythm workouts to maintain everything and feel good and keep our physiology in a decent spot because like they are a workout, just not a super hard workout.
10:34 So, there you go. Rhythm work. One of my favorite workouts to do. You can just ask my college or high school kids or even professional athletes how many times they did between 10 and 20 by 200. I love them. Anyways, if you like this, please subscribe, like, do all the jazz that people say on YouTube, and also leave me some thoughts. Like, do you have any questions on this? Do you want any other topics covered when it comes to training, the mental side of performance, anything like that, I'm here to help you all. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks for making this channel something that is enjoyable to do that gives us both evidence-based insight and hopefully practical takeaways as well.
11:21 Thanks everyone. Take out.