The progress in sports science and sports medicine happens mainly in real life and not in the lab. It is when therapists like yourself and coaches find new results or patterns that science picks up those threads to explain the mechanisms.
As always, thanks for sharing your insights.
/rich
rich.b
Forum Replies Created
-
ParticipantParticipant
Pete, in some cases there are good arguments for eccentric training – obviously depending on pathology. Håkan Alfredsson did a number of clinical studies involving both mid-tendon and insertional achilles tendonopathy (tendonosis rather than tendonitis), where in the majority of cases the issue was resolved following a specific 12-week protocol of eccentric loading (the first study was Alfredson et al. 1998. Am J Sports Med). His protocol is 3 sets of 15 reps of slow heel drops done 3 times per day, progressing from body weight to increasingly weighted heel drops done every day over 12 weeks. The weight is dictated by pain tolerance (I worked up to 60-70 kg added weight, beyond that was harder to do them slow). I went through his clinic a decade ago; it took at least 4 weeks to get a slight sense of improvement, but progress was steady – I did not skip even 1 rep – and it was resolved by 12 weeks and back to 100% running (100 km/week then) by that point. Compliance with the full protocol is critical.
Pete, as you emphasise, patience and persistence in following whatever rehab protocols are chosen with a therapist are essential to success.
Thomas, in your case what is ‘heavy eccentric drops’ and how consistently were you doing them?
cheers/rich
ParticipantBingo!
Was literally floored one day during summer 2019 with that. There were likely three contributing factors, of which the biggest culprit was probably hydration – or lack thereof. The other two factors are always there, age (57 now, 56 then) and lots of all of the vegetables that are considered usual culprits as you list: spinach, red beets, carrots (usually all of these every day). But it hit me during a hotter period coinciding with longer runs, for which up to maybe 3 hours I just don’t like carrying anything. Which points at hydration as being the main factor. So far a one-time deal.Participantrich.b on October 25, 2020 at 2:42 am · in reply to: Can I sub XC skiing for running? (Sometimes) #46238Another solution is to go for your ski – get the fun and training time in – and tack on a short run directly afterwards.
ParticipantNot to hijack Dada’s thread, but … Scott, I knew someone would chime in about the treadmill! As for monitoring HR, I understand its value, but for me too much data tracking turns training into ‘training’ and too much focus on numbers; however, I do sparingly use an HR monitor to verify RPE and keep effort honest, as well as to help establish what pace(s) I want to hit for tempo runs. And there are volume blocks when indeed I want to hit certain numbers.
Briguy, running has been my mainstay daily outdoor-fix since the early-80’s, so cannot do it any other way. Gym and even the occasional spinning are ok, because they keep me healthy for running.
Dada, to your previous question on 2 versus 3 harder session during the week (to which Scott and I answered), you might be interested in the recent Norwegian study specifically on 2 versus 4 harder sessions (but same amount of intensity time), which Koop/CTS recently cited. But go the actual article because the details are interesting (it is open access: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/9/3190/htm).
ParticipantScott, I recognize that is the preferance – I just cannot mentally handle being on a treadmill, also the caveat that I have not found uphills to be my weakness, so I gain more benefit personally from maintaining (or nowadays re-gaining) some speed. This may also stem from having mainly a running background. Hill repeats, absolutely!
ParticipantHi Dada,
I can sympathise with your terrain dilemma – at least the lack of vertical part, with one local ski hill with 48 m vertical (<2 min). A similar thread came up under Mountain running: https://uphillathlete.com/forums/topic/z3-training-in-a-city/Most will likely recommend treadmill workouts, which Scott J did in that thread. I just can’t manage mentally doing treadmill running or any running indoors, so I have always done tempo runs/longer intervals outdoors. For me I find the ability to maintain speed and rapid leg turnover valuable; consequently I often have done harder sessions on a nearby rolling 3.2 km x-c ski trail, which at least also gives some slight uphill/downhill benefits. Maybe because uphills have been my stronger side, but I find speedwork transfers for me (always a caveat) both for mountain/trail running and now also coming back into skiing (skimo (not racing) and skijoring).
Participantrich.b on October 1, 2020 at 6:14 am · in reply to: How to distribute 3 intensity WO in your base weeks? #45587Dada,
One option is to not think of a training week as 7 days. You could rotate between the three intensity workouts on your current two intensity days per week, which would mean in a 3-week period you have done each of those sessions 2 times.
ParticipantJust a small addition: I hit something over 600 hours/year, so not quite your 800, Christian, but built within that has been my own semi-structured periodization usually aimed toward one real focus race. I can train plenty (and hard) without race goals, so a race pretty much has to be something inspiring. There might be one earlier race as preparation and 1-2 later ones as bonuses from the residual fitness. Because I am only interested in a few races – and only 1 real focus event – it is easier to have that in mind to do the indoor sessions. Likewise, as you write, the point is to be outdoors, but as UA advocates, the gym time pays off hugely, both in performance but also durability.
Depending on where you live, one thing that can be good winter training is snowshoe running (with a pair designed for running) – if you have accessible snowmobile trails, and better yet if they have some vertical.ParticipantFun definitely comes first, Christian. 40-50 km has been my sweet spot, and I have done best when I have done the best blocks of winter strength training (finish typically top 5%, even though in my 50s; age-group internationally competitive). As I wrote before, mainly I add the strength (and/or SkiErg) on the back of my morning run to work, but my racing has been best when I have also had one dedicated strength session per week.
A little different from UA ME routines, my favourite session has been a combination exercise that I found from (formerly only called ) Mountain Athletics, so-called Curtis P (https://youtu.be/_a13APdV_BI). 10-15 min spinning warm up and then 30 minutes of these, and I was cooked. The goal in their old video of this (link above) was to do 100 … It’s been a while now, but my son and I had a challenge to do this and we got to 90. Anyway, ran in the Alps thereafter and I showed up super prepared.
Participantrich.b on September 29, 2020 at 11:28 pm · in reply to: book-review & open questions – whats the authors perspective? #45559Scott, if you have not already seen this, then you would very much appreciate an editorial article from International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance:
Carl Foster (2019) Sport Science: Progress, Hubris, and Humility. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2019, 14, 141-143
https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2018-0982Foster emphasises precisely your point about short-term studies on select group, often aiming to isolate and understand one mechanisms, versus the long-term experience of serious coaches. He writes:
“Although it is becoming less common, many coaches are former elite athletes without formal academic training. So, it is easy to think of them as unschooled. But, as Stephen Seiler pointed out in a lecture some years ago, the scientific understanding of training is grounded on the 8- to 20-week randomized controlled trial, which is so much shorter than the yearly or often quadrennial- based training plans of coaches that the scientists do not really have an appreciation of the effects of long-term periodization and thus cannot really understand the important elements of the training response. The years of experience “in the field” have equipped most serious coaches with a breadth and depth of knowledge that simply is not attainable for those operating in the intentionally narrow world of experimental science.”“So, sport science is important. But, its importance is probably less in the domain of evaluating athletes, where coaches already have access to competitions and standard training sessions. When we have tried to tie our recommendations to specific laboratory parameters, we have more often demonstrated our ignorance, indeed our hubris, than been really helpful.”
I love being a student of the sport, but as you note, Scott, the research mainly focuses on small, very specific groups (typically young, typically male) with the aim of isolating and testing one mechanism under very controlled study designs (often cycling because it is easiest to control and monitor), alternatively, they are larger population-based studies that are not relevant for the individual athlete.
ParticipantBased on our climate, Christian – I live in Sweden – your plan makes sense. All my running is outdoors, so the seasons dictate training. Our fall weather, when the daylight hours are short (42 minutes of daylight less per week now), it’s wet and cold and the first black ice arrives, I have found the period until mid-December conducive for heavier strength training. Then shifting toward progressive volume increase, maintaining strength and adding ME – the precise mixture between these and how much emphasis I put on each then depends on what my aims are for late-spring to early summer. The Strength and ME workouts are done on the back of my morning run-commute, so not as long sessions as in TfUA. In mid-April when bike paths are finally snow/ice free then speedwork comes into the mix, and hopefully hill repeats by the start of May when those are snow/ice free.
Obviously a key question though is what are your aims/goals for training?ParticipantEven though this is about mountain running, as is your case Whiteroserunning, many of us do not have regular access for our training. The best I have is a small ski hill with 48 m vertical for 250 m distance, which takes a lot of repeats to be useful. That said, for high/higher intensity workouts I still prefer flat, higher paced intervals or tempo runs. Possibly a bit old school, but I find a couple of benefits: one is that with flat(-ish) intervals or tempo runs terrain does not influence effort; two is it helps me maintain more rapid leg-turnover and the ability to run fast. Whereas the ability to run fast and hard on the flats contributes to my ability to sustain uphill efforts, the reverse is not true – hard uphill efforts do not make me fast for the easier sections of a race.
It seems you have a good hill for the 4 min intervals, but there can be good reasons to not worry about vertical for longer intervals or tempo runs. Even Kilian seems to be working on road speed these days.Participantrich.b on September 15, 2020 at 8:15 am · in reply to: Maintaining strength after the ME at home plan #45066A variant acheiving the same thing is the Leg blaster (which is on my fall agenda to get back to) with 10 squats, 10 lunges, 10 jump squats and 10 jump squats. (Mountain athletics called this mini-Leg blaster, the full is 20 each.) But often when I do do these, I throw in a few sets and other bodyweight exercises while making dinner, chopping vegetables for recovery – sometimes you have to squeeze things in where they fit. Gym (weight) training (and Ski Erg as one of my new favorite additions) is paired with commute runs.
Definitely slow-twitch.ParticipantKeep in mind as well that MAF is generic, and that value may not be right for you, Michelle. As an example, an acquaintance with an equal level of training to me cannot go faster than about 6:30/km to stay under his MAF HR (which seems what most experience), whereas I cannot go slower than 4:15-ish/km to get up to my MAF HR. So it is not necessarily the case that the result of your own test is the wrong value – not that re-testing is ever wrong.