Coach's Guide: Creating Running Workouts

For some, creating running workouts might be a little overwhelming. For others, this might provide them a creative outlet to strecth their coaching minds. In either case, this is a general guide for those looking to create their own workouts and the variables to take into consideration while doing so. In no particular order they are: total volume of the workout, the volume of each rep, intensity and rest. In this post we will explore how each of these variables come into play and how to adjust them in order to achieve your desired outcome.

What do I mean by total volume of the workout? Volume is typically considered the total mileage run over the duration of the workout. For instance, a workout of 8 by 800 has a total volume of 4 miles. Another way of measuring volume is the total time spent at a given effort. If an athlete is running 8 by 800 @ 3:00 (5k effort), by the end of the workout they would have spent a total of 24 minutes running at the prescribed pace. This really comes into play when coaching multiple athletes. If Runner A is running 8 by 800 @ 3:00 per rep and Runner B is running those 800s @ 4:00 per rep, then Runner B will have spent an additional 8 minutes finishing the same workout. Having run this workout at the same relative effort, it will take Runner B longer to recover. In order to avoid this outcome it would be best to have Runner B run 6 by 800, this way both runners will have run at the same relative effort (5k) for the same duration (24 minutes).

In order to achieve a similiar stimulus while maintaining the total volume of the workout is to adjust the volume of the reps. Above we had an athlete running 8 by 800 @ 3:00 per rep We can make this workout easier by shortening the volume of each rep (e.g. 16 by 400 @ 1:30) or harder by drawing out the length of each rep (e.g. 4 by 1600 @ 6:00). Note that the pace remains constant in all three workouts. The reasoning behind either shortening up the reps or drawing them out will vary depending upon your intended purpose. When running lower volume reps you might be introducing an athlete to a certain race intensity (in this case 5k effort) at a larger volume, or that athlete might be coming off a harder effort but you'd still like to do some work at race pace. On the flipside, one might assign higher volume reps as the athlete approaches their goal race, having built up to it over the course of their season/build. When racing the athlete will be called upon to run the whole race at that specific pace, so running higher volume reps allows for the athlete to run at race pace with fewer rest intervals thus being more race specific.

The next variable to take into consideration is INTENSITY. Intensity is the fan favorite amongst high school coaches everywhere. Afterall, "Speed kills those that don't have it". Intensity is often correlated with pace, but shouldn't always be. For example, if I were to have Runner A run 8 by 800 on the track during a particularly windy day, then they would need to put forth more intensity in order to maintain pace. Keeping such circumstances in mind, I like to define intensity as pace and/or effort. When creating workouts one will run at various intensities in order to stimulate different adaptions in the body (e.g. lactate threshold, VO2max, neuromuscular). It's important to remember that as intensity increaeses, volume will decrease and vice versa.

The last variable to examine is rest. Oftentimes when watching workout videos online this is the one detail of the workout left out (as it's not a "glamorous" as the speed at which an athlete is moving), leaving it to the imagination of the viewer to decide. This is unfortunate as rest should be a key consideration when building out a workout. Where the rest intervals are placed and how long the intervals are, can change the stimulus one is trying to achieve. For instance, if I were to assign an athlete 8 by 200 @ 800 effort with 2:00 rest between reps, this would be more of a neuromuscular workout. Now if I were to take that same workout and change the rest intervals, let's say 2 sets of 4 by 200 @ 800 effort with 30 seconds rest between reps and 5:00 rest between sets, this then becomes a lactic tolerance workout. How an athlete spends their rest is another factor to consider. What I mean by this is, is the rest active (jogging) or passive (standing)? For a workout like cruise intervals I might choose active rest as I want the athlete's heartrate to stay higher throughout the workout. For a workout like 8 by 200 @ 800 effort with 2:00 rest between reps, I would choose passive rest as I wouldn't want the quality of each rep to be diminished because of muscular fatigue or due to the athlete being winded.

We've covered a lot of ground here. My hope is that you've taken away a few nuggets of wisdom, so that you may create better workouts for yourself or your athletes. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me here: https://www.bighorndistanceproject.com/contact-information