Talking with Coach Joe after a speed workout, January 26, 2010

The Function and Importance of Speed Workouts

Editor: Tonight I watched the group do the workout with you and Toby. I'd like to talk about the workouts - how they help, how they work, what they're for, and so forth. Tonight the group did hill workouts - Tell me about that.

Joe: One of the advantages about a hill workout is that it helps to do multiple things. It not only helps your aerobic capacity, which of course running fast up hill will do, but it will also work on the strength of you legs. You're not just going across level ground, you're working against gravity. One of the things that people may find surprising is that runners often have weak legs. In terms of muscular strength, a hill workout will lift the body and not just move it forward. A problem for distance runners is that normal training is not about lifting a great amount of weight, but rather about moving your body weight over and over - repetitively. So the endurance is there but the strength is not. That's problematic because if you don't have enough muscular strength, your weak muscles are more predisposed to injury. If you do something a little more strenuous than you normally do and the muscles are weak, then your more likely to get stressed, strained or otherwise injured.

Editor: When someone has never done speed work, why should they do it if they are not interested in winning races?

Joe: That's an excellent question. Running means different things to different people. Some people are competitive either with themselves or with other people - they focus on performance and getting fast times. For other people that doesn't really matter - it's more about being with friends and the social aspect of running. And still another reason people will run is for the health benefits. For most people it's some combination of all of these.

Editor: Are you saying that it's OK not to do speed work?

Joe: It's OK not to do speedwork periodically. Let me explain that. People have different reasons for running but one of the common mistakes I see runners make, and I've been around running for a long time, is people get into a routine - they do the same distance on 2, 3 maybe 4 days a week, and they just repeat that. What happens is when your body acclimates from doing the same thing over and over again it minimizes the ability to handle work, it becomes more efficient at doing that one thing.

But you won't make progress and you may even go backwards by doing the same thing over and over again. So whatever you goals are - to stay fit, to stay healthy, to avoid injury, to run for as many years as possible - you need to vary what you do. You need to run at different mileage levels, different intensities - faster or slower - and you need to change what you do on a regular basis.

Speed Workouts for the Non-Competitive Runner

Editor: So is it possible you could have someone who doesn't want to do "official" speed work, or can't get here, that they could do their own running with a variety different tempos, different hills, different speeds, just to mix it up? And that would keep the runner from getting stale. Would that be another way to say it?

Joe: Yes, but it's less a matter of staleness and more a matter of the body adapting to a certain work load and minimizing its excess capacity to improve. In other words, the body doesn't want to spend any more energy than it has to during a given period of time. But when you do something new, the body will start to compensate: "Oh no I have to be able to handle this new work load" - then it will start to produce some excess capacity. Even if your goals for running have nothing to do with being competitive, even if all you want to do is to be social and get the health benefits, you still need to vary things; you still need to add intensity; you still need to change things regularly.

"Boot Camp" - Special Exercises to Build Balance, Strength and Flexibility

Editor: I noticed at the end of the work out tonight, the group did a series of calisthenics: high stepping, jumping jacks etc. What's that all about?

Joe: That's what we call boot camp and the idea is to 1) get used to doing hard work even when you're tired, and 2) stretch and strengthen opposing groups of muscles to maintain a good balance in your running. There were a number of specific exercises involved:

[High Knees]: Bring your leg up so that your thigh is parallel to the ground . Most road runners avoid lifting their knees high. They tend to just swing their leg forward and shuffle along. We're used to doing long distances as efficiently as possible and it takes less energy to swing your leg forward instead of lifting your knee. The problem with that is, it tends to minimize the use of the muscles and as a result the muscles start to get weaker which predisposes you to injury. But by doing the high knee exercises you make your lifting muscles (quads) contract and get strengthened them and also it stretches the muscles in the back of the leg (hamstrings) so it has a dual positive effect.

[Butt Kicks]: In that exercise you bring your heel up and make contact with your gluteus maximus. It's essentially the reverse of the High Knee exercise. It does a couple of things: it helps to strengthen your hamstring (which is pulling up your heel) but it also forces the quads to lengthen. So as before, you're strengthening one side and stretching the opposite side,

Editor: It Sound like you're working to bring a balance between the muscles in the front of your leg with the muscles in the back of the leg.

Joe: Exactly

[Knee to Elbow - "Coordination"]: These are almost the same as the High Knee. The exercise is called coordination, in which you bring up and across your body and touch the opposite elbow and alternating back and forth, That is helping to stretch out the muscles on your posterior and get the muscles on the inside of the leg, the adductors, to contract and strengthen. Normally bringing your leg across the front of your body is a motion most people never do. And so the muscles on the inner part of the leg get weak. So this exercise will stretch the posterior hip muscles and strengthen the interior adductors.

[Jumping Jacks]:: Remember, you just got your inner thigh muscles to contract with the Coordination exercise. Now the jumping jacks can help to stretch them, because as your feet go apart those muscles have to lengthen and now the outer muscles (abductors) are doing contracting and strengthening.

[jumping]: Keep you knees straight and jump up using the ankle and foot. Imagine yourself as being a pogo stick. All the power should be coming from your feet. Drive up as high as possible keeping the knees straight, both feet together, repeatedly. It does do a great deal to strengthen your feet, both the intrinsic muscles that are located within the foot and the extrinsic muscles -- those that connect down to the foot from the lower leg. All of those are strengthened. It's important because we as runners (unless we have specific problems with our feet) don't generally pay a lot of attention to our feet. But they need to be strong in order to handle all the work that we ask them to do. The exercise both strengthens the muscles and also works on the flexibility of the many joints and connections within the foot.

Editor: This has been a great conversation Joe. To sum it up in one word, I would say it's all about balance. Joe: I couldn't have picked a better word. Thanks so much for coming up on such a cold night, and I'll see you out there.