What's up? Motivators Taren here.
If you've ever looked at prorunners or triathletes or do athletes or trail
runners and thought how is it that they are able to run so fast for so long?
Today we are going to get into the four main in things that they do to structure
their training program that allows them to run the way that they do.
And these are things that you can apply
to your training program to make sure that you can run faster without getting tired.
When regular people want to do something
personally amazing in an endurance event, they use motive training plans.
Whether you're just getting started or
you've done several events and want a little more structure to step up your
game, we know what it takes to get amateurs to their goals.
No matter how big or small, you can accomplish anything you want.
You just need a plan designed
for the unique needs of people with families, jobs and a busy life.
The motive training method is that plan to get you to the start line feeling
confident and across the finish line feeling strong.
The first thing that professional endurance athletes do to make sure
that they are able to run fast without getting tired is that they've just done it
a long time and they've built up that durability over years.
Stick with me here because we're going to get into the things that you can really
apply to your training program and change right this minute.
The thing that you can apply to your
training right now is just a kindness to yourself and an understanding that none
of those athletes started and were able to run extremely fast right away.
Maybe the odd prodigy was able to run
really fast right away, but I can think of one professional
triathlete in particular, lucy Charles Barkley,
who came from an elite swim level and it took her years to be able to run
consistently without breaking down and getting injured.
So somebody like that who was in her young twenty s and came from an elite endurance
sports background of swimming, still needed years to be able to build up
the run durability to be able to execute a good training plan to run fast.
Then US age groupers can understand that it might take us a long time, too.
The second thing that professional endurance athletes have going for them,
the low end of their speed is very, very fast.
Take 100, 200, 400, 800 meters sprinters out of the equation
and just look at five k all the way up to marathon running.
And what you'll see is that almost all
of the energy contribution is from the aerobic system, not the anaerobic system.
And what this means is that the runners are able to do this not because their fast
is extremely fast, but because they're slow is actually quite fast.
And their aerobic capacity with their hearts and lungs is really very high.
So it's just that their steady effort
seems quite fast in relation to our quite fast as age groupers.
To really briefly show what's going on here, if we're comparing a professional
to an age grouper and what's happening in their body, we can just look at what's
happening with the build up of lactic acid in their body.
There are two thresholds in the body being
VT one, which is the ventilatory threshold one, that's the aerobic threshold,
and this is the point at which you start accumulating lactic acid.
This is commonly known as the aerobic
threshold, VT two, the ventilatory threshold two.
This is where you start accumulating a huge amount of lactic acid and can
really only hold anything above this for about 60 minutes.
Now, where this starts getting different is what if the pro is able to stay under 2
lactic acid at a four minute and 32nd per kilometer pace?
And that's about right for a lot of pros, while a lot of age groupers are going
to be at a six minute per kilometer pace at that same lactic acid level.
So what's going to happen is,
when we get up into this area here, which is commonly known as the fast
running, this is what we would associate with a lot of five KS and ten KS and fast
intervals of four minutes or eight minutes.
Well, it's just going to be faster,
because all throughout this, they are also going faster.
They're building up a lot less lactic acid.
So at these levels, we might be looking at something like
a three minute kilometer for very fast athletes, where for an age grouper,
it might only be at a four minute kilometer, that they can hold a small
amount of speed relative to the professional.
What you can do in your training plan to accomplish this and improve your
running is by spending a lot of time at a low intensity effort level.
This is where we talk about polarized
training, where you spend roughly 75% to 80% of your time under that VT one point.
This is building up your body's aerobic
engine so that you can go faster even at an easier feeling effort level.
The third thing that professional endurance athletes do to be able to run
fast for a long period of time is they build up their intervals sequentially.
And they don't just do this one time,
they do this every single year and every single training cycle.
For example, they might start at the beginning of every
single season with five minute intervals, and then six and seven and eight.
In the off season.
A lot of professional athletes are doing very short, intense bursts.
They're doing 50, 30, 62nd intervals,
maybe some two to four minute intervals if they feel like it.
But they don't start building in those
intervals and doing long, grinding intervals year round.
As the season starts and we get into spring, they might start including
four minute, five minute, eight minute vo Two max building intervals.
So they're building the ability for them
to transfer those short intervals with short fast speed into long speed.
And then gradually, in the last three months before a race,
they'll start doing more tempo effort training.
So this might be running 30 minutes,
40 minutes, even up to 60 minutes at a tempo effort.
And then at the end of the season,
they'll drop back down, repeating the cycle over and over.
What happens with most amateur athletes is
they do the standard three to six minute interval year round, not going at the very
end of building up their speed up very, very short, intense burst,
transferring it over to longer and longer intervals throughout the year.
So what you can do in your training plan
is have different focuses for your intervals over the course of the year.
Over the off season,
you can forget about intervals at the very beginning of coming out of an off season.
You can focus on those intense 15 to 62nd
bursts with big rests afterwards, then gradually start extending those
intervals into two to eight minute intervals, shortening the rest in between.
And as you get closer and closer to a race, start doing longer tempo
focused intervals of 20 minutes, 30 minutes, all the way up to 60 minutes.
Professional athletes are able to hold
these fast paces for a long period of time, but not year round.
They really refine it,
building all the way up to their key race throughout the year.
So taking that long build up is something that you should do, too.
And the fourth and final thing that allows professional runners to be able to run
faster without getting tired is their body is built for it.
Now, you might say, well, my body just isn't built for that.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't
things that you can change with professional runners.
They tend to have long gas rocks where
they're built like a spring in their lower limbs.
In a lot of runners, their lower leg is actually narrow and not very heavy.
Many world class runners have a high lactate tolerance where they're able
to run very fast without building up a ton of lactic acid.
Or they might have a very high Vo Two max
where they're able to process a lot of oxygen every minute.
Now, the body structure things you can't
change, but the high lactate tolerance in the Vo Two max are certainly things
that get improved with a good training plan.
That's why I think that every athlete should be using a pyramidal model training
plan where about 75% to 80% of the time is spent at a very low intensity effort.
About ten to 15% of the time is spent at that moderate intensity.
The tempo effort to get ready and comfortable to race for a long period
of time and hold that speed for a long period of time.
And then another final 10% to 15% at very
high intensity levels, building the ability for the athlete to run fast.
Following a well designed training program that uses these parameters is just
naturally going to improve your lactate tolerance and improve your Vo two max,
which can be improved by as much as 20% in every single athlete.
So why not follow a training plan designed
to improve your physiology and be able to run faster without getting tired?
Hopefully you found that helpful if you're
starting out and you're finding that some of these points are difficult to actually
execute, particularly bring your heart rate down when running.
There's a video that we have on the screen that is one of our most popular videos
of all time that helps athletes instantly learn how to run with a lower heart rate,
to be able to execute that excellent training to make their slow end faster
and execute a really welldesigned pyramidal based training plan later.
Motivated leaders.