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Scott Johnston
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For mountaineering the stair machine will be MUCH more effective than a 15% inclined treadmill. It will do a fantastic job of building the fitness for going up mountains. How many mountains that you aim to climb have slopes of 15%? It is a pretty guess to say “zero”. Whereas the stair machine angle is in the range of 756-100% depending on the machine. But the escalator type like the Stairmaster brand are brutal taskmasters and we have seen folks like yourself who are “terrain challenged” do all their vertical on these machines and are able to develop their fitness to climb the biggest mountains. Just have some entertainment ?.
Scott
There is an in-depth discussion of the Zone system on our Yout Tube channel here
There is also a similar discussion in both our books. In TftUA you will find it on pages 83-96.
You will find all your answers and much more in both those places.
In short: Top of Z1 is 10% below Top of Z2.
Scott
Mairsile:
Thanks for writing in with your questions. Welcome to EE and I am sorry for your confusion. Both those workouts have been around for over 10 years and have gone through several revisions. You may be looking at versions that were made at different times. So there are several versions floating around and it is likely that this was a copy and paste error.
If you can send me links to where you have found these I will be sure we bring them into agreement so others are not confused. Please email me at Scott@evokeendurance.com.
But to answer your questions;
1) So which is it with exercises like that? Should I be just holding it for 10 seconds and making it harder until that’s all I can do? Should it be 5-6 seconds? Or should it just be however long I can hold it, even if that means minutes?
As the instruction says, to build strength you need to have enough resistance that you can only do 5 reps or hold for 5 seconds (there is disagreement on this for isometrics and some people will say 10 seconds). But the point is you must not be able to hold this position for “minutes” or do 20 reps or you will be building endurance. The core muscles are mainly made up of slow twitch fibers so they already have a lot of endurance. So, training them for strength is more important. And we do this with low reps and high resistance. In the 3Point description, the point I was making is the same for any of these core exercises. When your form breaks down you have achieved the strength training effect. Ideally, you will have enough load/resistance that this happens someplace around 5 reps or 5 seconds. Realize that doing exactly 5 seconds or 5 reps is not some magic number. If the load is high enough maybe you can only hold for 3 seconds. That is still going to give the desired strength training effect.
2) For the General Strength exercises: These are meant as conditioning. They are to prepare you for the heavy loads in the Max Strength phase. These are “General” in nature so they challenge the range of motion and to condition the tissues to loading that they might not otherwise be able to handle. As these are conditioning exercises, I recommend doing 10 reps and if the exercise is single leg like the box step up do 10 reps/side.
My apologies for the confusion and please do let me know where you found these documents so I can correct them.
Scott
The Selection Prep plan running is measured in hours and the SOF plan is measured in miles so they are not really comparable. I would recommend the SOF plan for the goals you have in mind.
Scott
James:
Adding ME training to your program will help your uphills and downhills. I’d start with our GYM ME progression (see the ME article). Do this 1x/week along with hill sprints 1x/week for at least 8 weeks. After 4 weeks progress to doing the hill sprints with 10% of BW added. Keep them in the plan till 2 weeks before the race.
After the 8 weeks shift the ME to long weighted uphills. Use at 10- 15% grade and use 10% BW and run as much as possible. Workouts will start 2×10 then 3X10, then 3×15. Donde 1x/week. Stop all this ME stuff 12 days before your race.
The next training cycle you should start this early and you will get more benefits.
Scott
James;
Andy is on vacation right now. So, you’re stuck with me till he gets back.
Have you tried Voodoo flossing of your calves? If not it would be a cheap and most likely effective way of treating this problem. There are tons of YouTube videos on the technique and bands are not very expensive. Look at this tutorial by Kelly Starret as he is the inventor.
Scott
James:
What I meant, whether I said it properly or not, about running more on trails vs roads is that in general, you can handle more running volume on softer surfaces. However, you will probably be running slower on trails so it will take more time to get those miles.
As such I don’t think there is an easy multiplier you can apply to your road miles. Because at the same HR you will be running slower the impact forces will be lower. The soft surface will lessen the impact. The less repetitive motion (on rougher trails) means less of the exact same foot strike on each stride. All these things mean you can handle more volume on dirt than on pavement.
I think 10% is a safe place to start.
Scott
To replace heart rate with power in any of our training plans you will need to establish your zones using power.
Wear your power meter while conducting the HR drift test to find your aerobic threshold. Using some numbers to illustrate my point. Let’s say you see a 3% upward drift in HR when starting the test at 150 bpm. It is a safe bet that the power you produce to run at a pace that elicits a 150bpm HR and its speed is your aerobic threshold power. So, for Z2 runs you will want to keep your power under that number. If you are training on very hilly terrain you should also do a drift test running or hiking steeply uphill and use the power number you find as your hill power. Flatter and steeper are very likely to give different AeT power numbers.
Similarly, you can conduct our AnT test for both flatter running and steeper hiking to find your AnT power numbers which I predict will be different.
It is not trivial to do all this but it mainly just takes time. Power SHOULD be a better way of measuring ad controlling the training effect you are seeking.
I hope this helps.
Scott
My recommendation will be to do only very light exercise during 17-20June. For 23-26 June I recommend rest and eat.
If you have been training well a bit more rest will be the best thing you can do to help with success on your climbs.
If the climb gets pushed back a few days then you can just do some more Z1-2 runs. No ME. If it is pouched back a few weeks then you should go back to training and adding more ME is a good way to maintain that most important quality.
Scott
The ways you are suggest combining these workouts will work very well. The only other thing I have sometimes done is to do a hill sprint session directly before one of our gym ME workouts.
I hope this helps
Scott
Selim:
As much as one can make general recommendations I would say that linear scaling is not going to be the best. Think of the marathon. Often training volume is 80-100miles for this 26mile event. So I think a 50miler will need 75% of the volume as a 100miler. That’s probably a good place to start.
Scott
Great question that shows a good understanding of the training theory we use. The short answer is “YES”, adding either or both hill sprints and strides into the early weeks will help keep your nervous system tuned up and result in more muscle activation. This will help as you transition to more aerobically challenging faster running later in the program.
As to why they are omitted from the early part of the plan: Our stock plans are by necessity a one-size-fits-all plan. We have no idea the level of the athlete who will be starting this plan. Many will have a serious aerobic deficiency and for them just running at and below AET for the first phase is the best use of the time. From the sounds of your history you’ve been training pretty well in line with our philosophy and are entering this plan in a different place than they lowest-level athlete this plan must accommodate.
I suggest adding strides 1x/week to a Z2 run and 1x/week of hill sprints during a Z2 run.
Scott
Dylan:
What a bummer to have this problem and not know what it is or how to treat it. The thing that I think all 3 of your possible causes have in common is the effect they have on your Central Nervous System (CNS). Recently I have been reading about a promising treatment for long COVID that involves transcutaneous (non-invasive, through the skin) Vagus nerve stimulation. The vagus nerve is part of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) that ramps up the parasympathetic side of the ANS. Small electro-stimulus devices are on the market that specifically target the Vagus nerve which is close to the skin surface in the neck and ear. They boost the activity of the nerve which in turn ramps up the parasympathetic system and turns down the sympathetic. You should google this as there is a ton of information and studies on this subject. My reading has caused me to wonder if this same treatment could help with OTS.
I’m sure by now you are getting pretty desperate for help. I encourage you to investigate this and make your own decision. There are a few devices that are FDA-approved for this treatment and are being used for long COVID in many major institutions like Harvard, Mayo etc
Scott
Selim:
With that much vertical gain/loss in your target race I think the Luke Nelso plan scaled down a bit in running volume will work well for you.. While you might want to reduce volume don’t skimp on the special workouts built into that plan.
We’re very glad to hear that the Mountaineering plan worked well for you and think you will find good success with Luke’s plan.
Happy training,
Scott
Jim:
Good for you to do this experiment on yourself. Definitely core temperature has an effect on heart rate. We see this all the time with athletes who are forced to train in hot weather conditions. I’ve talked about this a great deal in the past, but here it is in short form: as your core temperature goes up your body attempts to dump heat through the skin, the capillaries of the skin dilate so that more blood can be shunted to the surface area where you lose heat via: convection and radiation. This greater volume of blood going to the skin means that there is a lower volume of blood available for the muscle work. As a consequence, your cardiac output needs to increase to sustain the same level of work. Cardiac output being the product of stroke times heart rate. At this low heart rate intensity, this happens with an increase in heart rate.
Nonetheless, the heart rate drift is a reflection of a shift of metabolism as well. We see this all the time with folks with ADS using our training protocol and it can be verified in gas exchange test in a laboratory. As to which mechanism, heat or metabolism is most responsible for the upward drift and heart rate, I don’t have a good answer, but I don’t think it’s quite as simple as the article you referred to. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see the metabolic shifts we do using these methods.
Now, let’s move on to your question: With the above explanation, you can see that it’s unclear which factor has the greatest influence. A faster pace with your higher heart rate will definitely give more training stimulus down at the metabolic level in the muscle because you will be engaging a greater volume of muscle fibers to do this work to run faster. just as I would for any runner forced to train in hot conditions I would recommend using the method you just did as much as possible for your training. I think you’re going to be putting a lot more stress if you try to train at 140 when you’re hot
Scott.
