A coaching thread

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Jun 2019
1:58pm, 19 Jun 2019
255 posts
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SODIron © 2012
So we had to tweak the Canova Hill Circuit session slightly last night. Originally we had planned to do the following:

10 Squat Jumps, 25s Steady, Skipping, 40s Steady, 10 Hops, 35s Steady, 10 Ankle Flips, 35s Steady, 10 x Bounding, 10s Sprint, Jog down recovery (repeat to 4 sets)

However, there was such a wide range of paces we had runners all over the length of the hill making it a nightmare. After the first rep we tweaked to do the following sets:

10 Squat Jumps, 25s Steady, Jog back
Skipping, 40s Steady, Jog back
10 Hops, 35s Steady, Jog back
10 Ankle Flips, 35s Steady, Jog back
10 x Bounding, 10s Sprint, Jog back

That worked much better as I was able to engage with all the athletes throughout the session.

We sandwiched 10 minutes tempo running either side of the Hill work as it's a shame to miss out tempo / threshold running when you have all the athletes together.

The key take away from the above is that, we coaches must not be afraid to adjust sessions if they are not working. There is little point in forcing athletes to do a session if you can't observe them and engage with them all throughout the session. Never be afraid to admit to yourself and the athletes that it isn't working and you need to change it.
Jun 2019
2:15pm, 19 Jun 2019
13,714 posts
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Autumnleaves
Yes - sensible advice there. There is no shame in admitting that something that looked perfect on paper isn't quite right in practice! We had another good turnout last night - the 3,2,1 session went well - I think people are getting better at pacing. I made the focus of the drills 'light landings' and we talked about arms quite a bit!
Jun 2019
10:13am, 21 Jun 2019
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TeeBee
Hi all. I led my second ever ladies beginners group on Tuesday. They are all 40+ and one is 80+ ( she's not a beginner but the pace of the group suits her). They all managed 2 miles continuous running except for 2 min recovery half way, so were all over the moon.

I'd like to build up a broad bank of warm up routines for people of this age and ability. Can you let me know your favourites that would be suitable.
Jun 2019
11:00am, 21 Jun 2019
13,721 posts
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Autumnleaves
I always do simple mobilisation of joints first, ankles up, all the way to shoulders. Then start flexing through the foot and ankle, into light jogging - I tend to stick to brief dynamic stretches for beginners. We stand in a circle so if numbers are ok we do some running and out - like the hoky coky! For upper body, facing a partner, hands to hands and pushing alternate arms is a good ice breaker. Always gets people laughing.
Jul 2019
9:38am, 15 Jul 2019
257 posts
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SODIron © 2012
Over the weekend I was reading some material from Steve Magnus, a well known and highly regarded coach from the US of A. I thought I'd share his thoughts on Heart Rate training as I know that many coaches (and athletes) are using a method of heart rate training.

Disclaimer: I am not making any personal statement as to whether HR training is a good or bad thing, just opening up a debate!

<START>

So Steve Magnus (SM) was asked "I believe I know your general thoughts, but could you briefly expand upon why using heart rate monitors to guide training isn't utilized by endurance coaches?"

His response below:

So the basic gist of it is this.

1. HR drift and external factors...if you are in humid or hot climates or if you are dealing with athletes that aren't in great aerobic shift, it shifts things a ton.

2. When you use HR to control training, you are making an assumption that certain HR's translate to certain adaptations. That's not really true.

3. It puts the emphasis on HR being the goal or determinant of the session. The reality though is that it's not. When we're doing a majority of workouts the effect on the cardiovascular system is just one of many things we are looking at. Whatever you assign value to as a coach, you coach towards it. So what happens a lot is the HR zones start dictating training. It's reductionist, we start looking at training only through a cardiovascular lense. When the reality is I can have similar Heart Rates doing a variety of different training sessions. For example, we can do a 5mile steady tempo run at 5:30 pace with a HR at 75%, or we could do 400m repeats in 75 with 45sec rest and the HR could also be 75% for this athlete...Those are two different sessions.

4. HR is kind of useless for short intervals and anything quick. So you can only really use it for training ideas at easy to moderate paces. Which falls outside of the wheelhouse for most team sports and we can use other methods or running by feel to get that same effort in running.

5. It requires a very hard max test to get any idea of max HR.

6. It makes athletes robots. They start relying on the HR, and will hold themselves back to hit a zone, or push beyond what they might need to recover to hit the zone.

</END>

Thoughts? Are you or your athletes coaching to HR?
Jul 2019
1:13pm, 15 Jul 2019
218 posts
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icenutter
My personal journey, since getting my first heart rate monitor watch about 20 years ago, is that it teaches you what the various training intensities to feel like. And I think that is still a pertinent lesson. Hard is really hard and easy should be really easy. I know know what the difference between 173 and 176 bpm is, as that is around my anaerobic threshold. I also spot heart rate drift on longer sessions.

But as a coaching tool, its not really that easy to use. 220 - age for max heart rate is useless. And even then you get heart rate drift, and it doesn't really work for short intervals (as Steve says)

Where my current thinking is giving people paces for runs and reps based on a recent race time; then I use Daniel's tables to work out paces. GPS watches are easy to come by, so monitoring pace comes naturally. But even then that isn't that accurate. But more useful than heart rate.
Jul 2019
1:31pm, 15 Jul 2019
13,807 posts
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Autumnleaves
Interesting. I have occasionally looked at heart rate training - but I only have a wrist based monitor and I know there are doubts about their effectiveness. I find running to 'feel' is a better guide for me of effort levels on a given day. What I have found useful is steering runners who are inclined to run their long runs in particular at too fast a pace to look at their heart rate zones - I tend to find that they then can't argue about having worked too hard!
Jul 2019
5:17pm, 15 Jul 2019
453 posts
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SSLHP (Shoes smell like horse piss)
I've successfully trained with HR but am very aware of the many things that can f*&* it up.

However, given that the majority of the recreational runners I know are 'pace blind' and consider their habitual pace to be 'easy', using a HR monitor to SLOW them down for their long easy training runs is very affective
Jul 2019
6:51pm, 15 Jul 2019
14,888 posts
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Chrisull
Amen to that SOD. Really good post.

I have been arguing 5) for a long time on the HR thread, so much so I think I've just annoyed people. I ask how best to measure max? People go don't do a bleep test, which seemed like a reasonable test (ok fine I say), warm up and run up a hill as you can for several scores of metres. I go, that's lower than the bleep test. I've also read the advice that going to your max takes a while to recover from. People go, yeah, yeah sure, but I've found out the hard way, I got anaemia, my HR was running about 10bpm higher than average, I ran up a hill in a race - THEN it maxed out, and deeply unpleasant it was too (I didn't know all this until later and studying my stats). But reading the literature on studies on cyclists your max can alter even over 6 week periods. And it's like so I have to half kill myself every 6 weeks???

Ditto number 2). 4) I strongly agree with as well. It's not that I disagree with the rest, I do not, 1) and 3) are totally true, only 6) would I add a caveat to, saying that it does have its place, namely in the prevention of overtraining and can be useful in building up LSRs so they're not done too quickly.
Jul 2019
8:03am, 16 Jul 2019
258 posts
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SODIron © 2012
Another good read from Steve Magnus on stretching.

scienceofrunning.com

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