OK, endurance athletes. Remember the 80/20 Rule? I know I sure do because it’s been around FOR-EVER. The 80/20 Rule suggests that endurance athletes spend 80% of their time training at low intensity & 20% of their time training at moderate to high intensity. Pretty basic! And as a general prescription for training…it’s actually quite solid. But how this concept gets applied (or not) in actual training is another story. So, I decided it was time to revisit the 80/20 Rule for endurance training.
The 80/20 Concept
I love the simplicity of this rule – 80% of your training time is spent at low intensity & 20% of your training time is spent at moderate to high intensity. There are several ways to apply this rule to a week of training:
1. Designated Days – The hands-down easiest way to apply this rule is to designate 1 of your training days as the “mod-high intensity” day & the rest as “low intensity”. Although quite simple, this method does come with problems. If you work out less than 5 days per week (1 / 5 = 20%) and/or you do a longer workout at a higher intensity, you can quickly surpass 20%.
2. Designated Time – I’ll argue that a better method is to use time rather than days. Simply calculate 20% of your total training time & that’s the designated mod-high intensity amount. (I.e., For 8 training hrs, 6.4 hrs are low intensity & 1.6 hrs are mod-high intensity.) Not only does using time help maintain the appropriate balance between low & high intensities, but it also encourages us to train at the appropriate intensities. How so? Read on.
The Dreaded Gray Zone
Over the years I’ve talked & worked with many, many, many endurance athletes. And the #1 error that we all make (me included!) is that we train at basically one pace – moderate. You know the pace. Athletes call it “Level 3”, “Tempo”, “Zone 3”, “Steady State”. Coaches call it “the gray zone”. This is the pace that makes a workout just hard enough to feel like you got an awesome workout…yet easy enough that you can maintain it for a few hours. It’s the pace that we all love to train at because it FEELS like we did good training. (A side note: A true Tempo pace is one that you can hold for roughly 1 hour in a race…not several hours.) To put a finer point on it, most athletes train too hard in the easy workouts & too easy in the hard workouts. And that strategy, my dear athletes, will get you a whole lotta nowhere!
Slow Down to Go Fast
Yep, as I’ve said so many times before…you gotta slow down to go fast. Here’s how our designated training times (based on the 80/20 Rule) help us do this.
1. It’s Planned Out – Because you’ve done the calculations BEFORE you did the training, you’ve already set yourself up for success. Now you already know (based on our 8 hours of training example above) how much low intensity vs high intensity you need to do. With the numbers in front of you you’re less likely to go out & “just train” at whatever speed you happen to feel like doing. And we all know what speed that’ll be, right??! Tempo!!
2. Workout Length Matters – It’s should be no surprise that the longer the workout the more you’ll trend toward lower intensities. So, when someone says that they’re doing a 2 hr “speed” workout…you gotta question whether they are actually doing “speed”. More than likely they are doing a Zone 3 workout. And if they say they’re doing 05 min speed repeats in a 2 hr workout…you still gotta question it. See #3.
3. Make the Hard Days HARD – By my definition, “speed” workouts are 20-60 sec with lots of rest (1-3 min) in between. The whole purpose of a speed workout is to go FAST. Anything longer than 01 min & you’ll hold back…you’ll hold a bit in reserve just so you’ll make the interval length. And if you’re holding back, that’s not “speed”.
3. Make the Easy Days EASY – To be able to go hard, you have to be recovered & rested. That’s where the easy days come in. Again, most athletes train their “easy” days at too high of an intensity leaving them fatigued & broken down. In a depleted state there’s no way that you’ll be able to go FAST…and if you insist on trying you may very well come up injured. How easy is “easy”? A great way to monitor this is to nose breathe. If you can’t nose breathe, you’re going too fast. Nose breathing is a bit like having a governor on a car – it brilliantly controls your intensity & keeps you from picking up the pace. I encourage you to try it!
Happy Training!
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