Transcript
0:00 Let's talk about a fascinating new study that looked at top elite Norwegian coaches and how they trained endurance athletes. Now, what's fascinating about this research is they took top coaches in Norway, one of the premier endurance training countries, especially per capita. And they essentially surveyed them and said, "Hey, let's look at the training." And it went across sports. So from cross-country skiing to running to triathlon to rowing to everything imaginable. And then they said what are the similarities? What are the differences? What do we see in the patterns? And this is really helpful I think because often in the research you see it coming from a science standpoint.
0:48 And what they said here is let's see what the coaches actually prescribe and do and how that might differ from the scientific consensus essentially. So what did they find? So interestingly is across the variety of sports the total hours of training differed but the key ingredients and the key principles were remarkably similar. So that means if you're training for a triathlon or a marathon or rowing, as long as the endurance event, as long as you're training for endurance event, the patterns were pretty straightforward.
1:27 Now, what did that include? A is that there was a high volume of training prescribed. Now again, this differed. Running was the least total hours per year, which makes sense, right? Because of the pounding. Other sports like triathlon and cycling and and cross-country skiing were much more in terms of hours. But again, that makes sense. But the volume was relatively high. And of that volume, 80 to 90% was what we would call easy.
2:03 Now, they classified it into zones. They used a slightly different zone model than people are used to a six zone model which where essentially zone six is what we call super maximal or quote unquote anorobic. Normally in a five zone model we just get to above V2 max and compress it all together. Well these this model goes to V2 max and then it has and a little and then it has a super maximal as well. The other thing, and you'll see this in the graph, you're gonna see a lot of zone one in this, and people are gonna go like, "Zone one?
2:39 What? I thought it was all about zone two." Well, I think what this study does is show us that it's not necessarily all about zone 2, but at the same point, this model defined zone one a little and zone 2 a little bit differently. In this model, zone one is defined as less than 1.5 millm of lactate. And zone two a little over two or two and a half mill mole of lactate maybe up to three depending on the classification system. But what happens is zone one in this study is essentially in the traditional five zone model is it's zone one plus a little bit of zone 2. Maybe not the high end of zone 2 in the traditional study but a little bit of it or part of it. And I think the key here is don't get lost on zone one or two, but realize that most elite endurance athletes spend a hell of a lot of time running easy. And there's a good reason for that because we know it's the consistent volume of easy stuff that gives us long-term adaptations. We know from other research that shows that when we look at easy training, it's often discounted in the scientific literature because it takes not just 6 weeks or 8 weeks or 10 weeks to get most of the training adaptations, but months and months and months and if not years. It's a long-term adaptation.
4:06 So, we miss some of those in the traditional scientific literature. And what we know based on this study and more so looking at training history since probably the 1960s onwards is that a high volume of training loan matters. Okay. Now high volume is going to differ based on the event and the individual. Some people 40 miles a week is going to be high volume. Other people 90 miles a week is not going to be that high volume. It's going to be decent but not crazy.
4:38 The individual matters where you're at. We'll come back to that. The other things this study found is that generally these elite athletes had two to three hard days a week. In running and pounding more two days in other sports more 3 days. Now sometimes during these days it included double sessions especially in other sports like triathlons and running somewhat with double thresholds. So some sometimes there were more than two to three hard sessions, but think of it as two to three hard days a week. Now this is important because I think in the world of highintensity interval training and people telling you go hard 5 days a week, it's just not reality. Even the best of the best are doing two to three hard days a week. We've known that.
5:24 Again, going back to Frank Sharter who said two hard workouts in a long run, which could classify depending on how hard the long run is, is three relatively quality sessions. a week or quality days a week and do that for months. Now, the key here is in the study hard is relative. Sometimes that includes moderate threshold running as or moderate tempo running as quote unquote hard. Okay, which gets me to the other point is the study found that there are no gray area zones. zone 1 2 3 4 5 all included some degree of training in it and they varied it up. Okay. So unlike the internet world that tells you know avoid this zone or avoid this intensity if you want to maximize things maximize V2 max go at 4x4 minutes at this exact intensity. You need it all. Okay? It's all stimulus. There is no magic stimulus because it accumulates and they support one another. You need support from both the speed and endurance side depending on what you're developing. And that gets to the other part of the study. What they found they all periodized training.
6:41 And what they found is traditionally they periodize it towards a little bit more high volume or aerobic based in the beginning and periodized towards more competition and specific. So competition specific towards the end of training. I like to think of it as funneling. You funnel from the extremes to build the base. Lots of strides, easy sprints, smooth sprints and lots of easy and funnel towards specificity. You can look at periodization through a lot of models, but the basic thing is they periodize things. The other conclusion out of this study they found is they optimize key hard sessions. What does this mean? To quote one of the elite coaches, it is not sufficient to just perform training according to plan.
7:29 But the best athletes continuously strive to perform these sessions according to its purpose. The purpose matters. So that means you set it up for running well but you adjust for the individual which is the other key finding. There is adjustments for the individual and the demands. The other key findings they found is they balance stress and recovery. Again depending on the individual and demands that's the whole thing behind it. And then they prepare for the peak performance meaning they taper everything points towards it. Now, the key here is when people hear this study, they say, "Oh, great. We need to do 80 to 90% of our training at this easy zones and this much at this zones." No, no. It's about the principles behind it because your situation is different. If you're only running 3 to 4 days a week, you're probably not doing 90% easy running.
8:27 Why? Because you're only running four days a week. Now, if you're only running three days a week or four days a week, you're not optimizing anything or maximizing anything. You're probably going to adapt to most things because everything is a stimulus. But what we know is the percentages are going to shift because of the lower volume. But the principle still remains is even if you're running a lower quote unquote volume, we have to build the aerobic system first. When it comes to endurance athletes, we have to develop some sort of base. Now, that will differ. We might need more high-end aerobic stuff if we're not running that much volume, right? Like athletes did in the 40s and 50s when they didn't run much volume, okay? Or couldn't because they were working and full-time and blah blah blah. But we still got to figure out ways how to build the aerobic system before we add the intensity. The principle still applies. The principle of balancing stress and recovery applies too. For an elite athlete, they have more capacity. For a novice, they don't.
9:31 But you still, given the demands and the constraints and what you're doing and life stress, you have to balance the stress and recovery. The other thing I'd say here is don't get lost in the zones. What we see here is it's varied stimulus depending on the time of year in the periodization model they're using. The other thing that I'll say is when we see studies and they classify by by zones, we lose things. We lose the nuance of the individual workout and the progression.
10:08 And that many workouts hit mixed zones. So don't confuse this towards a prescription of I need to spend this much time in zone 1 and this much in zone 2 and this much in zone three and four and five or whatever have you. That's not the takeaway. The takeaway is the principles. Good aerobic stuff balance stress and recovery. Individualize the training. periodize it based on both the event demands that you have and your individual characteristics.
10:47 Individualize it and adjust and those key principles hold no matter what you are doing. So, just another study again on worldclass coaches that validates what we've seen since Lyard came around in the 1960s and said, "Hey, I get it, Emil Zatak, you're running 400s every day and you're still going hard and easy based on modifying the 400 meter repeats, but there's a better way.
11:26 We need to build the foundation. We need to periodize the training. We need to respond to the individual. Mostly easy, occasionally hard. When you go hard, vary it up. That's it. That's the key. Now, can we get more specific and look at workout progressions? Abso freakingutely. But if someone online is screaming at you to do something different or to go in a radically different phase or training or doing five days a week or hard workout or saying, "No, forget the hard workout. Everything has to be in the zone two and like forget zone one, forget zone 3 like zone two is the key."
12:09 It's all There's a reason that from cross-country skiing to triathlon to running to rowing that the same basic principles apply. They've applied since we figured it out again in the 1960s and have modified it and improved it a little bit, but we're dealing in the details. Stick with what works. Don't fall for the hype. Another research study to prove it. If you enjoyed this, thanks so much. This is what I do. Combine research, coaching, practice, subscribe, follow, and most importantly, I think share this with other people who you think it will help. other runners, other coaches, whoever it is that needs nononsense truth, not hype. Truth from someone who's been in the arena, myself, coached in the arena, and done this for a really long time. Thank you for watching. Let's keep it going.