4/5/2023 0 Comments 20 day running challengeHe has since spent much of his career identifying just what it was about the 80/20 split that seemed to work so well. Whether it was top runners, pro cyclists, rowers, orienteers, or cross country skiers, Seiler noticed an overwhelming trend of the best endurance athletes in the world doing about 80 per cent of their training at very low intensities. Instead, he identified and explained something that élite endurance athletes, across a range of sports, were already doing – either instinctively or by design. Seiler would readily admit that though he came up with the term, ’80/20 training’, he didn’t invent it. It then became more widely known thanks, in part, to Matt Fitzgerald’s 2014 book, 80/20 Running. What’s relatively new is this theory that an 80/20 split between easy and hard is the specific sweet-spot to get the most benefit.ĭr Stephen Seiler, Professor in Sports Science at Norway’s University of Agder, is widely credited as the person who first highlighted the 80/20 rule in academic circles. Polarised training – combining easy training with hard training – has been practiced for decades. The above might be an oversimplification, and glosses over the nuance of some of the science, but is, broadly speaking, what the 80/20 rule means. In addition, running slowly puts our muscles, bones and joints under less stress than faster running, so prioritising the easier paced runs reduces our risk of injury while still allowing for musculoskeletal adaptations. However, as distance runners, we don’t spend much of our races using our anaerobic energy systems, so it only needs to take up around a fifth of our training. There is still a benefit to training your anaerobic energy systems because you will spend some time out of breath for that hard kick at the end of a race, or powering over a sharp hill – and because it helps raise the pace at which the threshold occurs. The theory is that as running is a predominantly aerobic activity, your training should reflect that with plenty of slower, easy-paced running, when you are best able to use your aerobic energy systems. ‘Easy/slow’ running is below the threshold, and ‘hard/fast’ is close to, or above the threshold. It tends to occur at around 75-80 per cent of your maximum heart rate, but can vary for each runner. This is the point at which you switch from aerobic metabolism (using oxygen to fuel your muscles) to anaerobic metabolism (when there isn’t enough oxygen available for your muscles to use as fuel). The distinction between easy and hard is based on the athlete’s ventilatory ‘threshold’. Simply put, the 80/20 rule of running training states that 80% of your weekly training time should be done at an easy effort level, with 20% consisting of harder running. In this article, we’ll explain what the 80/20 rule is, it’s benefits and limitations, and how to use it to improve your running. Unlike some of the others, the evidence seems to suggest this is one rule almost always worth following. I’m not going to comment on these except to say they’re generally sound, but don’t necessarily apply to every runner in every situation.Īnother so-called rule that gets repeated often is the ‘ 80/20 training‘ principle. Eat no later than three hours before running.Long runs should be no more than a third of your weekly distance total.Increase your mileage by no more than 10% a week.There are a few ‘rules’ of training and racing that pop up in conversations between runners. In this Training article, we take an in depth look at the concept of 80/20 training.
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