Training Principles: Core Values to Embrace
A lot of what I believe in marathon training stems from what Kevin and Keith taught me over the years and what is conveyed in the Hansons Marathon Method books. However, I have also learned a lot from working with so many people over the years and decades that my thoughts have evolved at least, and branched out at most. I’d like to convey those thoughts and put them in universal terms for all race distances, not just the marathon. Here are my top five overall training principles that will help all people reach long-term success in running.
Consistency over big workouts. This is by far the number one thing I would want all runners to learn. The earlier the better! This is even more true since the social media age emerged. I am not saying social media is bad. I think it has made the sport grow a lot and to new populations that normally wouldn’t be out training for marathons. However, you can’t believe everything you see, and that’s people doing these monster workouts all the time, never just showing the “trivial” little stuff. When we emphasize the big stuff, we lose out on a lot of the stuff that actually allows the big workouts to even happen!
The easy 45-60+ minute runs when nobody is watching aren’t sexy. It doesn’t get the kudos flowing, but I guarantee you that if you do those for weeks, months, and years, then your running will have gone places you never thought possible. I learned this the hard way, and it’s a constant struggle with athletes new to my coaching system. However, once they learn, they improve their performance by big chunks in not a lot of time.
So, what do I mean when I say consistency over big workouts? First off, I am not saying to avoid really big workouts. Rather, they should be used sparingly. View your energy as a fuel tank. Every time you really get after it in a big workout or race, you draw from that. If you do it too many times during training, often there isn’t enough left to perform on race day. So, there’s the actual number of really big workouts a person is doing. Big workouts probably mean different things to different people. I would say that every time you swap a workout for a race, you are making it a big workout. Any type of simulator workout. Any long run that goes well above your normal volume and pace. Or, I’d even say that every time you make a workout faster than what is being called for, you make it a much bigger workout than what is being called for. When you consider all of that, many people are adding a lot more stress to single days and doing it more regularly than they originally thought. If you get to the end of the segment and races end up being a far cry from what you thought your training indicated, this is one thing I would really look at.
Maximize your current level before increasing. I was always a mileage guy. I had a decade where I ran 55,000 miles over a 10-year stretch (2004-2014). However, instead of doing 130-150 miles at peak marathon training, or 110-120 miles a week during shorter race segments, I could have scaled that volume back even 10-20 miles (basically my afternoon runs) and focused more on doing actual strength training and mobility work. I feel in my heart of hearts that I would not have only been faster, but I also would have experienced better longevity at a higher level. Honestly, that’s what you see now- our top marathoners still cranking out the volume, but also hitting the weight room and taking it seriously. I get it, I was like if a little bit is good, more is better, and even more is better still. It’s hard sometimes because, in my case, I wasn’t injured that much, so I just kept increasing. However, I never really got better as I kept increasing past a certain point. I was just more tired! My advice: once you get to a point, don’t let volume be the first thing you add to your training. “How do I know?” Glad you asked!
- Build to the number of days you want to run. For most people who follow me, I’d tell you 4 days a week would be my bare minimum. Ideally, 5-7 would be my recommendation.
- Once I am at the number of days I want to be, then I’d focus on building my volume that I can handle for each day. For example, if I am at 4 miles a run, can I build that to 6? To 8?
- If I am running under 6 days a week, am I doing any cross-training on the other days? If not, try to add that in.
- Stretching/Mobility- Am I spending 10-15 minutes a few times a week on foam rolling, stretching, mobility? If not, it makes more sense to add this in than it does to make my run longer.
- Strength- start basic- am I doing at least a core routine? If not, then add on days I am not doing mobility. If I am, then am I doing a specific strength for runners program? No, add that. Then move on to maybe a more heavy lifting program (squats, leg press, etc) and plyo.
Another area to look at is warmups- not just running miles, but doing warm up drills and strides. This 5-10 minutes is often overlooked, but can provide more benefit than making your warmup an extra mile for the sake of extra miles.
Now, ultimately, if you want to just run more miles, then who am I to stop you? However, you will get to a point where you won’t be able to keep doing that. Then what? You’ll probably have to stop because you’ve found yourself in an injury cycle or a stagnation in performance. At some point you’ll have to add these things or just accept that you are not going to keep getting faster. I look at it the way my daughter’s swim coaches talked to her at a young age. They were always telling her that you focus on technique first because you get to a point where you can’t teach that anymore. Once the bad habits or bad form are already ingrained into the routine, it’s too much work to change those. However, if the right routine is already in place, you can always work on the speed. In our case, if we have already made these things part of the routine, the mileage can always be added in later because the foundation to support it already exists! In other words, you’ll be able to see progression for a lot longer before plateauing out.
Look at training holistically. This aligns with what we just discussed, but here I want to encompass all aspects of life. In goal setting, we refer to this as the athlete’s circumstances. This means when setting a goal, we have to account for all things going on in our life- new job, kids’ sports, stress at home, or stress with family, injury, etc. All things need to be accounted for. It’s my experience that many runners will separate out their training from all the other things that are going on in their lives, but then wonder why they aren’t hitting workouts. They try to force the issue on paces or big training volumes when their sleep and nutrition have been off because they are dealing with all this other stuff in their life! Unfortunately, this can lead to the person pushing even more and being even harder on themselves, which just leads to a complete breakdown. It’s critical to be honest with yourself when laying out training and allowing flexibility to deal with life situations alongside training expectations.
Know the system, not just the plan. I could pin it on AI selecting from a whole internet of information, but it really started well before that. We’ve all done it- we picked and chose a little from here and a little from there until we had a whole schedule of stuff we liked to do. People will tell me they followed Hansons before (sometimes for good and sometimes for bad), but once I dig into what “Hansons” they followed, and it really wasn’t Hansons. What makes Hanson’s work is the system. The same can be said for Higdon, Galloway, Pfitz, McMillen, and on and on. Once you start swapping out parts to all these systems, it’s not really anyone’s system. It’s just a collection of workouts.
Now, I certainly don’t want you to think that you have to do Speed/Strength only on Tuesdays, Tempos only on Thursdays, etc. However, you need to know why we are doing what we are doing so that if you are swapping something out, it still fits within the system. Once you know the system, you can make better choices to maybe not just do all the workouts you enjoy, but swap something you 100% dread for something that will still accomplish the same thing, and you can at least tolerate it.
Whether you are using me, another coach, or putting it together yourself, keep these principles in mind, and you will create a foundation that will make you successful over the long term.
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