Train Frequently, Year-Round
7 Principles of Training:
#6) Train Frequently, Year-Round
Out of all the loading strategies in training, frequency is king.
The degree of impact training volumes, intensities, and densities can have on a runner all hinge on training frequency.
The ancient philosopher Aristotle noticed this dependency long ago when he said, “We are what we repeatedly do.”
Fast forward a couple of thousand years and both sports science and training best practices have validated the importance of optimal training frequency to athletic improvement.
Arthur Netwon, in the 1930s, was a pioneering figure for increased training frequency in running. Back then, it was common for runners to train a few days a week for only a handful of weeks before a race and then take several months off from training. The popular thought then was: too much continuous running training would short circuit one’s nervous energy, causing a variety of ailments, among them premature death.
Today, we are more aware than ever of the importance training frequency has on performance.
Modern best practices call for two running sessions a day for elite runners, six days a week, for the majority of the year. The volume, intensity, and density of those sessions differ depending on the phase of periodization. For novices, it’s far better to perform a little running (20 - 40 minutes) almost daily, than sporadic heavy doses of running separated by several days.
For most runners, training twice a day for periods of between 30 minutes to two hours seems to produce more benefit than running for 3+ hours in a single outing (see Chapter 8 in Viru & Viru’s Biochemical Monitoring in Sports Training).
There is a wide body of science and research that looks at why this is the case. It’s scattered in textbooks and research articles and is complex and multi-factorial since the body is an interrelated system. But practically speaking, a significant influence of why these session limits exist may be due to decreased motor output, which is expressed as decreased coordination, resulting in longer ground contact times per step in the running gait, shortening of stride length, and a slowing pace.
Effective training for improved running performance centers on developing the ability and capacity to sustain short, rapid, powerful ground contact, which increases the corresponding stride flight time (and length), and thus pace, for the duration of a race. Training which results in long, slow ground contact and a short stride length might not help performance for most runners.
Does this mean you should never perform longer duration runs which may result in long ground contact times?
It depends.
If you’re a marathoner trying to upgrade your ability to use fatty acids as a fueling substrate to help sustain your energy levels on race day, then longer duration runs do have a high training effect on the critical ability. But if you’re a 1500m runner trying to run as fast as possible for less than 4 minutes, there is little need to expand your body’s fatty acid metabolism, since race day performance doesn’t depend on it. So you may be better off with frequent shorter duration runs with short ground contacts and longer flight time.
Whatever means and methods you employ in your training, you’d do well to remember we are what we repeatedly do (and don’t do). It will be hard to go wrong by orienting your training in the direction of what you want to become on race day.