5SPEED Running

I’m not the kind of guy who buys that fitness equipment off of t.v. infomercials. (ok, maybe I did get that Tony Little contraption when I was injured 15 years ago – but who didn’t?) My wife, Bec, on the other hand, was recently influenced by her favorite radio talk show host and broke down and bought P90X. Some of you may have heard of this home fitness program that started out in Santa Monica, California, next door neighbor to the original fitness mega, Venice Beach. I did get intrigued by the philosophy behind P90X. It’s called muscle confusion, basically changing up the exercises so your muscles can’t acclimate to the same workouts and get lazy. Sound familiar? Yes, so besides having both letters and a number in our name, P90X and your 5 Speed Running coach have a similar philosophy that will keep your muscles honest.

Shaking up the workouts weekly are a great way to get strong. When you run at different speeds you are also working different energy systems. This is important because it takes 48 to 72 hours for an energy system to recover from a workout so after you give that anaerobic threshold system a good workout on day 1, you can rest up day 2 with cross training or an easy run, then switch up to some aerobic speed on day 3 with some 150 meter buildups, enough to get the legs going, but not enough to stress out that anaerobic system too soon.

Changing up speeds on the same day is great for strengthening the muscles too. Even on those easy recovery runs, pick up the speed for 10-20 seconds every 5 minutes or so, then go back to the easy pace. Just make sure you aren’t huffing and puffing too much after the pickups as that means you’re working too hard on the recovery day and not staying aerobic. The ultimate in muscle confusion for runners is called interval training. I don’t mean the 8 x 400 at 3k pace, that is repetition training. I mean old school Mihaly Igloi – style intervals where you run varioius sets of various distance at different effort levels such as fresh, medium, good, very good, hard. Shaking up the training like that produced some of the greatest runners in history, first in 1950′s Hungary and later when Coach Igloi and my coach, Laszlo Tabori, brought the training to the U.S. where the philosophy produced world record holders such as Bob Schul and Jim Beatty and then spawned another generation of greats such as Johnny Gray and Carl Lewis, coached by another of Igloi’s students, Joe Douglas, founder of the Santa Monica Track Club.

Sounds like Santa Monica has had a major influence in confusing muscles. What’s not confusing is the results that can be gained by shaking things up, whether you are working a 5k or a marathon training schedule. Give multi-pace training like 5 Speed running a try and see how fast you can break through plateaus when those muscles can’t predict what you’ll do next.

Now Go Run!

Coach Ken