Marshall Burt’s Velocity Focused
Training
Part 2 – Individual Workouts
The Individual
Workouts -----
Chose a “main event”. Your main race distance
that you have a goal time for.
--- Design a goal pace workout for that race distance, and make it the
first workout in the training schedule.
--- For the other workouts in the training schedule, choose other race
distances common to the sport. Include ones that are at each of 2
extremes [long and short] in duration, and therefore in training
velocity. This provides a comprehensive group of training stimuli.
Limit the number of workouts to that necessary to run your main event,
and 2 – 3 other distances.
--- This process of creating workouts insures that all of the workouts
in one’s training program are relevant to the sport, and that all
paces run during the workouts are relevant to goal times. This in
turn, insures that the workouts in the training program are designed
to cause/induce the process of gene transcription of specific genes in
the brain, nervous system, and muscles that are responsible for
recruitment, recruitment rate, and recruitment duration at a level
that will be significant and necessary in order to eventually achieve
one’s goal time.
In Track & Field, the common race distances are [100m, 200m, 400m,
800m. 1500m, 5000m, 10,000m, marathon].
If your event is 1500 meters, you should have a 1500m goal pace
workout for your “main event”. To fill in the rest of your training
cycle, there should be at least one workout at a race distance that
requires extremely high velocities [ie. 100m goal pace workout]. There
should be at least one workout at a race distance that is set at the
long end of the race distances that are common in the sport [ie.
marathon goal pace workout]. Any other workouts should be some
variation on these 2 themes.
Physiologically, for laying the ground work for a facilitated level of
improvement in recruitment ability over the long term of your life and
running career, it is wise to include a stimulus for maximum
recruitment, and a stimulus for maximum recruitment rate. They should
be intervals that are extremely short in number and duration.
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The Physiological Reality of Gene
Transcription Oriented Progressions
--- It doesn’t matter where your fitness is relative to your goal.
This training program is designed to allow you to start where-ever you
happen to be at the time, and progress from there. Even with short
duration repetitions, your fitness will move. If you’ve grown up in
this sport from an early age, you’ve been indoctrinated into looking
at short durations as “anaerobic”. Physiologically, it would be wise
to unlearn that. With training, whatever you believe is anaerobic
today, will be less so tomorrow as mitochondria are added as an
adaptation to training. Your fitness will move with short durations
and will begin moving faster as you progress to longer durations.
Accept no limitations. What you don't know about the human body can
limit….
--- your thinking
--- your reasoning
--- and the design of your training program
Training produces adaptations to training;
--- among nerve and muscle fibers that are active during the training
--- among nerve and muscle fibers that experience large increases in
activity during the training
Note the use of the phrase "are active". An increase in activity of
specific nerve and muscle fibers regardless of fiber type is the
mechanism of something important to this subject. In thinking through
how to implement this point of view, it may help to work through some
of the more obvious rhetorical questions;
----- how many nerve and muscle fibers do you need to have active in
order to run the times you want to run in your races
----- does running at your goal paces recruit the nerve and muscle
fiber types that you will need to have active in order to run the
times you want to run in your races
----- if the answer is yes, shouldn't this be a consistent training
stimulus embedded in your training program
Continue to the logical conclusion…….
----- do you need to train at nerve and muscle fiber
recruitment levels that you’ll –never- be using during your races
----- if the answer is no, shouldn't you train at goal paces so that
you'll always be activating the number of nerve and muscle fibers that
you'll be using during your races [meaning….shouldn’t you avoid
training at slower velocities]
----- given the answers to these questions, does it seem logical to
believe that one must do slow paced traditional "base building" at
velocities you'll ---never--- run during a race. If the answer is no,
then why do it?
The next step in reasoning one’s way
through designing a training program that develops running performance
[on purpose]……
In designing specific workouts in an all-goal pace all the time type
of training program, which is by definition an all intensity all the
time type of training program......avoid the temptation to play mind
games with rest periods in between one interval run and the next, or
between one training day and the next.
If you've grown up in this sport from an early age, you have likely
been indoctrinated into the requirement to take no days off, and to
take short rest periods during interval workouts.
Unlearn both of these practices. Neither is physiologically wise,
sound, or necessary in this type of training program.
Next: Run Training
Protocols