How to use ‘waves’ in your training

How to use ‘waves’ in your training

Periodicity

When training for a particular race there are a number of plans you can choose from.  It’s a bit like choosing a diet or a exercise program.  Everyone has the guaranteed solution for you that will do the trick.  Most of them do something but seldom is any one approach correct over a period of time.

When it comes to training for a long race you might consider a longer horizon to get the most out of your genetics and peak in the right way at the right time.

Most plans for the marathon build up distance and volume of miles gradually over time.  This will give you the endurance to run the event, but long runs themselves won’t give you any speed.  They may keep you from slowing down but they won’t speed you up.

To speed up you need some sort of speed work.  It comes in different shapes and sizes from track workouts to tempo runs but it is all designed to make you faster at your chosen race distance.

Then there are specific strength work outs.  This is where you focus on making your muscles stronger.  Whether those are your quads with hill work or your glutes by doing planks it is another way to get you to the finish line without slowing.

In addition there are workouts that focus on your form and are meant to help you run more efficienly at the same effort.

The trouble is, with all these different flavors of workouts your head will start to spin.  You can’t do all workouts all the time.  Some of the worst training plans I’ve seen try to cram a little bit of everything into a 3-month training plan.  Like a bad recipe.  A handful of this and a dash of that.

The way the pros do it is that they periodize their training.  They focus on different aspects of improvement in different cycles leading up to their event.  In this way they build one cycle on top of the previous cycle to add improvements without losing the value of the previous cycles.

Typically this will take the form of building a solid base then fine tuning as the event approaches.

It’s not a 100% shift in the focus of your training.  You don’t go from 100% speed work on the track to just long runs.  You move the focus of the quality workouts and leave the base about the same.

When you set up your training this way you create macro-cycles.  Within those macro cycles you have micro-cycles.

For example let’s say you have a 6 month training plan for the marathon.  You might set up 3 macro cycles of 2 months each.  In the first 2 months cycle you are going to primarily focus on building up a good base by running a good form long runs and doing heart rate training.

In the second 2 month cycle you might focus on building aerobic fitness by switching your focused quality runs to long tempo and hard step-up runs.  In this way you are laying some good, longish, hard efforts on top of the fitness you have built.

In the final 2 month cycle you might then focus on some faster speedwork and some course specific work, like hills.  This will build speed on top of your fitness.  A good coach will design these master cycles for you so that you peak at the right time.

The micro-cycles or waves within each of these macro-cycles might then be weekly.  It may take the form of week one medium effort and volume, week two hard effort and volume, week three very hard effort and volume, week four back off or relative rest.  In this example the micro-training waves would repeat through each macro-cycle.

Why do you care?  Well you care because if you have the time to train you can set up a plan that focuses on specific areas of strength and weakness in a rigorous, periodic fashion that will get you to the starting line much fitter than if you tried to do a little bit of everything or a simple incremental load of volume and intensity.

Since I’m running a marathon every month I have just about one cycle between marathons and I can use that to focus on a weakness.  This month I had a 6 week gap between races.  This last race I felt like my endurance was poor so I focused this last cycle on getting some heavy miles in and some long tempo runs.

Now that I’m within 2-3 weeks of the race I’m doing a micro cycle that is less miles but focusing on downhill running for this specific race.  At the same time I’m lessening the volume to taper so my legs will be ready when I show up to race.

Ask your coach and look at your yearly training cycles to see if there is an opportunity to work in some macro-cycle focus to your training.