- Oh, holy molies Trainiacs.
I just ripped the legs off of the ride group
and mine in the process.
So obviously, this year, it's not necessarily
about peaking for races.
And a lotta people are looking at how do they overcome some
of the things that have been holding them back?
One of the places that people tend to fall apart the most,
like where weaknesses show up, is on the run.
What we're gonna talk about today is how, in just 30 days,
you can unlock a lot of running potential
with an exact training plan that I'm gonna give you
that's gonna keep you injury free.
It's gonna build your run durability.
It's going to increase your neuromuscular power,
allow you to, basically, like I say,
unlock a lot of running abilities
that you didn't know you had.
Come to think of it, I used exactly this
to shave 25 minutes off my half marathon time?
Works.
(bouncy hip hop music)
So now, Trainiacs,
I'm sure a lot of you might be a little bit skeptical
as most people are when they first click on a YouTube video.
But I wanna show you the example that happened
to me by incorporating some of the techniques
that you're about to learn to see how significant
an improvement you could potentially do.
So this here is the 2011 Manitoba Marathon.
This is the first half marathon that I ever did.
And the time that I ended up doing was an hour
and 52 minutes.
And over the winter, and more like basically
the last few months of the winter between 2011 and 2012,
I ended up deciding that I was going to try to structure
a training plan.
I learned as much as I could,
and I included some of the things
that you're about to learn.
And the results, without losing piles of weight,
without changing my run technique, without having a coach,
without running tons more than I was before,
really just by structuring my training properly,
the results were pretty drastic the very next year at
the same course, same exact setup in 2012,
was instead of that 1:52:00, a 1:32:00.
And I was still focused on triathlon training
at this point.
At most, I was running three times a week, if that,
and I think more than anything,
it was like two times a week with even less structure
then you're going to get.
So what you're going to be getting here is a 30 day plan
that is going to accomplish three main things.
Number one, it's going to improve your run technique.
Number two, it's going to unlock a whole bunch
of speed that you might have plateaued right now
or you might not even know that you have.
And number three, it's going to increase your durability
as a runner so that you've got this base
of good technique, of good potential,
and when you start running more
and doing proper triathlon training,
maybe later this year or next year,
you're going to be able to absorb that safely
without any risk of injury.
Let's start off with improving your technique,
and for that, we're gonna go outside.
So with regards to technique,
we wanna make you efficient.
And the thing that we are concerned about
with efficiency is, are you landing out front
of your center of mass?
Now, a lot of people think and say that heel striking,
landing with your heel is the worst thing that you can do.
That's not exactly right.
It's actually been shown in studies that is more efficient
at anything slower than a six minute per mile pace,
which the vast majority of us are doing in triathlons,
that landing on your heel is more efficient,
but the most efficient
is whatever your natural biomechanics are.
So whether you're landing on your forefoot,
your midfoot or your heel,
I don't care as long as it
is underneath your center of mass.
So with this drill,
you're gonna learn how to land
and load your weight more underneath your center of mass.
Most beginner triathletes and new runners don't do this.
What you're gonna do is you're gonna start
just by hopping on one place.
And you're gonna notice that you're not gonna hop
with your feet out in front of you.
You're gonna hop with your feet under
your center of mass.
Then what I want you to do is hop from one foot
to the next.
Same thing, you're gonna land with your feet underneath
your center of mass.
Then what I want you to do is when you're doing this,
just start leaning forward.
So what you're gonna do in these runs,
and I'm gonna explain to you where
you're gonna do them in the runs,
is every few minutes or so, you're gonna come back,
regroup, stop, and you're just gonna start doing
some butt kicks and then lean forward.
And that is the technique that I want you to do.
You're gonna land under your center of mass being nice
and efficient not putting on the brakes.
Let's go back in.
All right, so we're back inside.
That's technique.
Now we have to move on to unlocking your speed
and building up durability.
And we're gonna do both of those with this training plan
that I want you to go through.
What we're gonna lay out is 28 days of training.
At the beginning of this, on very day one,
I want you to do a five kilometer time trial
as fast as you can go.
Then at the very end of this,
I want you to do another five kilometer time trial in
the same conditions, the same course, as fast as you can go,
and that's how we're gonna judge
how much you've improved by.
When you do that, come back to this video.
If you remember to do that, comment in it, and let me know
what your improvements were.
So we've got the four week plan here laid out,
and before we start filling it out,
what I want you to do with bike, swim and strength
is keep doing whatever you're doing
as far as your regular schedule goes,
but dial it back about 50%.
At a time where we're going to really focus on one
of the three disciplines, we wanna make sure
that you're going to absorb those improvements by dialing
what we're doing in the other disciplines back a little bit.
So let's get into filling out this plan.
Now, the first workout that we're gonna do is the long run.
And I want you to put the long run on the Sunday because,
as a triathlete, we need to know how
to run long on tired legs.
We do that by running on Sunday after entire week
of training.
So long run, and we're gonna continue that
for the rest of the entire four weeks.
The next run that I want you to do is a fast run.
And I want you to space that a fair bit away from
that long run.
So I want you to do that on Tuesday.
So fast run and same thing.
I want you to do that for the remainder of the four weeks.
We'll get into the details.
The third workout that I want you to do is a steady run,
otherwise known as a tempo run.
(keyboard typing)
And the pace that you wanna run all of these intervals
for the steady run at are,
like I say, comfortably uncomfortable.
What you're going to do is you're gonna go as fast
as you possibly can during each of the intervals
but in such a way that you aren't fading by
the end of the interval,
you aren't fading by the final interval that you're doing
and you end feeling like you could've done one more.
So the first one's gonna feel fairly easy,
and it's just gonna get progressively harder.
That's the right pace
for these tempo steady kind of efforts.
So those are gonna be your workouts.
That's where we're gonna do the work, the efforts,
but you're gonna have still run a little bit more.
And what I want you to do is have runs on the other days
that are short, and we're gonna start
with just a 10 min easy run.
And it's in that easy run that I want you
to focus on that technique.
What I want you to do is about every three minutes or so,
stop, reset, do those drills that I showed you,
pick back up and run again.
Focus on that good technique.
Now here's how we're going to use this training plan
to unlock your run speed and build up your durability.
We're gonna start with the long run.
What I want you to do is do this long run
as long as your longest run right now.
It doesn't need to be super long.
We're not really gonna build it up,
but what I want you to do is do this on trails or hills.
(keyboard typing)
And what I want you to focus on is easy effort.
We're looking at somewhere around
your Maffetone Method heart rate.
Go online.
Google, Maffetone method heart rate,
and be somewhere underneath that.
Very, very easy zone to running.
I'll link to a video at the end of this
to explain what zone two really is.
But very, very easy effort running on trails or hills.
And I want you to, in addition to that easy effort,
focus on fast foot cadence.
So that fast foot cadence,
that quick turnover, that pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,
pop, pop, pop on softer surfaces, like hills or trails,
is going to really encourage you to get off
the ground quickly.
It's gonna reduce your ground contact time.
That is going to reduce your likelihood of injury.
It's going to increase the amount of spring
that you get off the ground.
This is where you're going to make things
a little bit harder on yourself by being on a trail surface,
but by focusing on that fast foot turnover,
it's going to really help you be snappy and not plod along
when you're doing your regular running.
Now, let's get into the fast run.
Now, this fast run is where we're really gonna work
your top end.
We're going to unlock the neurological signal
from your brain to your muscles
to turn over really, really quickly.
And what we're gonna start off with is we are going
to start off with 10 times 10 seconds, max effort
as fast as you can go
on a steep hill.
That's gonna be the key.
That steep hill is going to recruit a ton of muscle fibers
that you aren't currently using.
And to make sure that you can do this over and over and over
and hit those peak efforts,
I want you to take a full three minutes rest between.
So that's what you're gonna do week one.
This is gonna unlock that ability to go fast.
Then we're gonna start refining it.
And what I want you to do on week two
is 10 times 100 meters.
You can do this on a track or just measure out
100 meters on a sidewalk, or just use your watch.
10 times 100 meters, same sort of thing.
Sprint, max effort, recruiting all those muscle fibers.
You are going to have a three min rest between,
and that's what you're gonna do for that.
The next week you're going to do eight times
200 meters with a two min rest between.
And then the fourth week you're gonna do eight times
400 meters with a two minute rest between.
Now let's look at the steady run, this run here on Thursday,
building up your speed endurance, your muscular endurance,
your endurance at a fast pace where you can work hard
while your body is taxed.
And what we're gonna try to do is accumulate around
24 minutes of faster paced running.
This is going to improve that 5K runtime.
So what we're gonna start off with here is 12 times
two minutes with a two minute rest between.
And when I say rest, it's like easy,
easy jog or walk, like full recovery.
I want you to be ready to go by the end of it.
Then the next week we are going to do eight times
three minutes still with a two minute rest between.
Now, here's where it's gonna get a little bit challenging.
We're going to do six times four minutes
with just a one minute rest between.
And then at the end, we are going to do four times
six minutes with a 90 second rest between.
Now to build up your durability,
we're gonna do something fairly easy.
We are going to take this 10 minute easy run,
and we're just gonna increase it by about 10% each week.
So on week two, it's gonna be 11 minutes.
On week three, 12 minutes,
and on week four, 13 minutes
and carry that over to all of the weeks.
Now with that all done,
you will have really worked on your top end speed.
You will have really worked on your body's proprioception,
your body awareness and the getting off the ground quicker,
decreasing your foot contact time,
with that long run on the trails.
You will have built up strength based running
on those trails.
And you will have refined that
with some good steady temple running
that is simulating that 5K pace.
Do that 5K run at the end,
and I can almost guarantee that, if you've done this well,
you've rested properly, you've dialed back all
your other training, you've supplemented it
with just proper nutrition and good sleep afterwards,
you will be a much faster runner
than you ever expected in just 30 days.
It's going to give you the foundation
to end up leaping forward into the end of this year
where you might want to do some races.
If races come back, or you can transfer
that into your training next year.
Final thing, if you're interested in learning more
about running and the overall process that we use
on teamtrainiac.com,
go to triathlonrunningfoundations.com.
You can get the digital book, the audio book there.
You can get the physical book that you can get on Amazon.
It's all linked through triathlonrunningfoundations.com.
And as I promised, if you wanna learn more about zone two
running, easy running, how to set that up,
check out the video here.
Final thing, if all of that is interesting
and you want to see more and you aren't yet subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below.
Happy running Trainiac.
It is going to hurt,
but it's gonna hurt really good, later.