Interview with Steve Magness

Interview with Steve Magness

In the last couple of years blog by Steve Magness “Science of Running” was more than the source of casual reading ~ it was (and still is) source of tremendous knowledge and critical thinking skills, not only in running but for coaching and training in general. I have been quoting, referencing, linking and stealing (cough, cough) Steve’s material heavily in my writings and practical applications. I cannot recommend his blog highly enough for anyone interested in no B.S. approach to endurance training and understanding of energy systems and metabolism.

Steve was kind enough to do the interview for Complimentary Training blog and share his viewpoints and insights to the readers. Enough of my rant and enjoy Steve’s answers.

Mladen: Thanks for the opportunity to interview you Steve. I have been huge fan of you writings on endurance training and sport science in general. Can you expand how all of it started, what are you doing at the moment and what are your future plans?

Steve: Thanks a lot Mladen.  I really appreciate the opportunity to be interviewed.  I'm a big fan of your site so it's always nice to contribute to sites where people are doing good work.  I'll give the quick answer.  I'm a former prep phenom distance runner, who didn't live up to his potential in college, who caught the bug of wanting to understand why not.  And along the way decided that there had to be a better, smarter way to train then the options that were available at the time.  All that being said, I started my Science of Running blog around the time I started getting interested in combining my own running with coaching and exercise science.  It really took off once I went to Grad School at George Mason University.  From there I did some work with Nike and then found my way to my current job as the Cross-Country/distance coach at my alma mater the University of Houston.  We are currently building a great program and have 4 guys at or under 1:50.2 for 800m on the squad right now, plus some stud distance guys, so it's been a quick turn around job in getting the program where I know we can.

In addition to my college coaching, I coach a few professionals to satisfy that itch.  As far as what's in store for the future, you never really know.  I always have that itch of helping out the best of the best, so I'd like to continue to develop the professional side of things, but the sport of track and field at the professional side is pretty poor.  I don't think people realize how bad off it is in terms of funding and fans across the globe.  It's funny, when I was spending time with the Australian World Champs team this summer, some of them would remark on how well track was doing in the U.S., and how the U.S. had all these sponsored groups and funding to athletes and how it must be popular.  And I was sitting here thinking, 'ummm track is not doing so hot in the U.S.’ I think in the U.S. we look to Europe and think that track is doing great over there, but it really isn't.  So anyways, one of my longer-term projects is to try and look at innovative funding and marketing ways.  To me, track funding/marketing is stuck in the 20th century.

Beyond that, I have some really exciting developments in regards to my work on the blog.  Not quite ready to reveal it soon, but pay attention to the site over the next month and I'll have some pretty cool developments and will hopefully present some good thought provoking ideas.

Mladen: Thanks for the introduction. Let’s start with the “nasty” questions. What are your thoughts on volume vs. intensity debates in endurance training? How is that related to the level of the athlete (beginner, intermediate, advanced, elite), context (time available, resources, facilities, support, recovery options) and objectives (fat loss, health, performance, competition)?

 Steve: Personally, the whole volume versus intensity debate misses the boat.  It's your typical polarizing, one-dimensional, argument that really doesn't accomplish anything.  Of course, you need both, and the answer isn't at either of the extremes.  It's practically an impossible question to answer.  For instance, when people ask if I run a high or low volume program, I always answer with both.  I have some runners doing 40mpw and some doing 90+. It depends.  And that's really the jist of training. It depends on the event you are training for, the individual you are training, and their goals.  So if someone, like Crossfit, tells you that you need very little volume to run a good marathon, well they're wrong.  That's an extreme view that goes against everything we know.  But if you're asking me if we you should do speed intervals 2x a week or 3x, well it depends.  We're arguing over where that middle ground is.  And that middle ground shifts.

I know I'm talking in circles here, but to summarize it plainly.  You need the right amount of volume and intensity to adapt.  You want to press one of them, or any other variable, to continue adaptation in the desired way.  That's the long and short of it.  Do what you need to adapt.  Decide whether you need to endure a quality (and increase volume), or if you need to qualify something, by increasing the intensity.

Mladen: What are the ‘components of success’  (determinants of endurance performance) in endurance running and how should those be addressed in a training block (sequential, parallel). Can you explain more regarding the ‘funnel’ periodization?

Steve: I like to break it down simply.  We can look at the race demands and add that to how our individual’s characteristics shift those demands, and come up with what is important to reach their goal.  It's almost like you create this model of what the race or event consists of. Simplifying it further, we need a base level of endurance and speed for each race.  In a funnel periodization scheme, you're essentially building the base of speed and endurance.  And as you go along in your training plan, you try to convert that base of both qualities into something more specific.  So we are working from the extremes, such as just easy running and pure sprinting, and bringing those towards each other as we get closer to our race.  So that the most important work, the specific work is reaching it’s peak before we begin to taper.  So it's a process of building up qualities, the translating them.  So as an example if we get really good at doing longer work, what does that do for a 5k runner directly?  Not a lot.  It acts as a supporting mechanism.  So we take that longer steady work, and once we build that up, we might introduce more threshold paced work to translate that steady work into something more specific.  Then we might do more 10k paced work and so on until we build up our specific 5k work.  I guess if I could put it simply, it's just general towards specific, progress the qualities we are trying to develop during that period, and never leave anything behind, meaning don't just build up pure speed and then forget about it for 2 months because the emphasis shifted.  Maintain it. 

Mladen: This is bothering me for some time – how should endurance training be based: on physiology or performance? By physiology I refer to various thresholds and intensities associated with physiological profiles (LT, VO2max etc) and by performance I am referring to race or hard training performance like 5K pace, 10K pace, 1.5K pace, MAS. How are they related and what are the pros and cons of both approaches? Can they be complementary?

Steve: I prefer that they are based on the real world, with knowledge from the physiology.  So you use the physiology to know what is going on in the body.  And to come up with models of what you are trying to do.  So, I might know that at around threshold we are at a steady state.  So to improve my high end aerobic endurance, I might work just above or below that threshold intensity.  Or I might come up with a model knowing that fatigue in the 1,500 occurs because of the brains reaction to the build up of certain by-products.  So to combat this, I create a situation of ever increasing by-products, but design the workout in such a way so that the person emotionally handles it, so that next time he's learned that he can withstand that much pain/build up.

But when you train, I almost see the paces as a bit mathematical. It sounds simplistic to say, but if I just did 5xmile at 5:10 with 3min rest.  Then next time I need to adapt in that direction, I change something.  It's stimulus and adaptation.  I might change the speed, the volume, the rest, the rep length, whatever.  Something changes, and in what direction it changes depends on what way I'm trying to adapt.

It sounds simplistic, but it's all applying a stimulus and adapting.  What we don't do is use certain physiological zones.  We aren't training to have better zones.  We train to improve performance.  What we get caught up in doing is saying I do X workout at VO2max speed.  Why?  If your VO2max speed is 2:15 per mile, will doing them in 2:14 versus 2:18 be different?  According to the zone scheme, if this fell in the same VO2max zone, no.  So we could have someone doing 6x800 and going 2:14 first week, 2:15 2nd, 2:17 the 3rd, etc.  Is he adapting?  Nope.  What I'd rather see is that if he did 6x800 in 2:15, that we look at it in terms of challenging the body.  We're looking to "embarrass" the body so that it adapts slightly.

Mladen: Continuing on the previous question, there seems to be distinct adaptation variability among runners who performed same training program (e.g. runs at 70% VO2max) – there were responders and non-responders in performance and also responders and non-responders in various aerobic and metabolic parameters. Taking this into account how do we know what is a stimulus for a given individual and how do we go about improving aerobic performance? How do we know that, for example, training at LT will improve LT?

Steve: The truth is we don't actually know.  As coaches we make our best-informed "guesses" based on experience and science.  I mean look at the research on altitude or any training parameter, and the variation from doing the EXACT same protocol or training system is all over the map. That's why I think it's so important to change how we frame training.  It's got to be individualized, and we have to frame it as trying to apply the correct stimulus to get that one person to adapt in the direction we want them too.  If we frame it as stimulus and adaptation, then figuring it out becomes easier.  We shouldn't just say to improve LT we do threshold runs at X percentage of pace.  Instead we look at the individual person and say we want to improve his high end aerobic abilities.  How do we do that?

We reach into our tools of the trade and think of threshold or tempo runs first, but if we realize that this guy is a fast twitch monster, we know that he probably won't be able to sustain the intensity needed to get the adaptation.  So instead we do shorter intervals, not too fast but faster than a tempo run, with really short rest.  We accomplish the same goal, but in a different manner.  There's no one simple way to attack the same adaptation.  That's what kills me.  Be imaginative.  Use your brain and figure out the myriad of different workouts done in slightly different ways that accomplish the same adaptation.  Because the reality to me is that it isn't a responder or non-responder thing, it's about applying the correct stimulus or not.  If I challenge someone to do 5xmile in 4:40, and he kills himself to do it and may barely survive using a race effort, then I shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't adapt after doing 5 weeks of this workout once a week.  It's not that he's a non-responder to mile repeats.  It's that the way they were done wasn't the right stimulus.

So the point is, in order to know how to improve aerobic performance, you use experience combined with some science. It's not that hard to realize that if we want to improve our threshold, or our ability to be comfortable at half marathon pace, that we need to do longer work at similar paces. Any coach can figure that out.  But whether we do 5miles at 5:30 pace, 2x4miles at 5:40, 6xmile at 5:20 with 1min rest, or any other combo depends on the coach figuring out what is the correct way to do it.

Mladen: What are your thoughts on HRV and other monitoring tools?

Steve: HRV has a lot of promise. I don't think it will ever be the defining measure that people want it to be.  But I don't think that defining measure exists.  I mean I've done work with ground contact off a drop jump to look at neural fatigue and it can be useful.  Similarly, you can do simple tests like a repeated finger tapping test to look at neural fatigue.  But the reality is that the best test is one that is useable day in day out.  For the vast majority of those, it's just learning to read our athletes and having them communicate with us how they feel.

I've gone through a lot of monitoring systems, and the one that worked best for me and made an actual impact was simply by using a simple 3 part color coding system on an athletes training log.  If they looked good and reported they felt good, they're block for the day was colored green. If it was okay/average, yellow.  If it was bad or they felt bad, then red.  The almost Christmas color scheme would stand out on my training logs and let me know visually and instantly how the athlete was progressing.  It was instant, easy, feedback.  So it made a difference because it translated from monitoring to practice.  You'd be surprised, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see if an athlete is on or not by just watching them and talking to them before a workout.

So to me, the best monitoring/recovery tool is the one that is usable for you. 

Mladen: What about altitude training and the novel heat training?

Steve: This might sound repetitious, but altitude and even heat training are simply a stressor. They are a different kind of stimulus.  They are a stimulus in a completely different direction, but nonetheless a stimulus.  And I think it's best to look at each the same way.  If you look at it in terms of being a stressor, then you can understand a bit better why some don't adapt.  A recent study showed that responders to altitude aren't necessarily responders all of the time.  That means sometimes they go to altitude and don't get the benefits.  If you look at it in terms of a stressor, then the answer becomes maybe it's because they went to too high of an altitude, or trained to hard, didn't recover enough this time, wasn't nutritionally prepared, and so on.  

Living and coaching in Houston, we always get a lot of crap about it being hot and humid, which it is during the summer (but the winter it's the best place to train!). Whenever I do coaching clinics, people always ask if it's possible to train world-class distance runners in Houston.  Of course it is.  Jackie Areson ran a 5k PR of 15:12 doing all of her training in Houston.  More recently, Becky Wade, coached by Jim Bevan, ran a 2:30 marathon doing all of her training in Houston.  Frank Shorter used to a bulk of his training in Florida.  I'm always amazed people think like that, but the reality is that heat/humidity is a great training tool just like altitude.  So you can't do longer work as fast in 90deg weather, well you can't run as fast at 8'000 feet either.  It's a trade off.  At 8k feet, you are taking in less oxygen.  But in 90+ your body is shifting more of the blood flow from your muscles to cooling.  So you get a huge bump in plasma volume if you do it right.

Both are stressors.  Altitude is the sexy training thing to do.  Heat works as well, but it hurts a heck of a lot more, and doesn't have the huge following, so people don't flock to the south.

Mladen: It seems that runners are catching on strength training. Do you think high-rep approach or low-rep approach should be preferred? How do you integrate the two in the training cycle?

Steve:  These things work in cycles.  Go back 40-50 years and the strength training that Percy Cerutty emphasized heavily in his program wouldn't be too bad today.  He got it mostly right.  For us, strength training is another piece of the puzzle.  You have to realize that it's not the most important factor, running is, but it doesn't mean that it shouldn't play a vital role.  The first step is movement with any program.  The program should be designed to develop better movement patterns and act as an almost prehab program.  Once good movement is established then you start doing strength training for performance.

As far as the program specifics, I think you look at what the goals of the strength program are.  As I said, first off is movement and injury prevention, but when we move towards training for performance that shifts.  In distance running we're looking for a few basic things, first is reactivity off the ground and creating a better spring like system. So we have to get the lower body ready for eccentric loads and rapid loading and unloading of force through simple plyos. The other big thing we're looking for is increasing power without adding mass. So if we can learn to recruit more muscle fibers and translate that into more force production potential, then we become more efficient every stride and we have a larger muscle fiber pool to draw upon.  So to me, we have a mixture of movement based systems with some more explosive and plyometric work once they are ready.  In the end though, I always ask what's the most specific strength work we can do for runner?  And the answer is simple, it's sprinting.  So even if you don't lift, go sprint as a distance runner.  You get a high plyometric effect with a huge muscle fiber recruitment and power output.  Can't do much better.

Of course this all depends on the goals and type of the runner.

Mladen: What books and web sources do you suggest as a must read?

Steve: I'll go outside the box and suggest some that have nothing to do with training first.  First, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow is a must read.  It teaches you how we process information, what our natural bias' are, and so much more.  I'm a big reader in neuroscience and psychology because I think coaching 101 is understanding the person so a lot of my recent readings fall into that category.  For injury prevention for runners, the best book is Jay Dicharry's Anatomy for Runners. It's simple, yet useful. As far as training books go, I'm pretty hard on training books.  In the running world, they all seem to say pretty much the same thing.  For those reasons, I'm a big fan of Renato Canova's Scientific Approach to the Marathon, and Jan Olbrecht's Science of Winning.  Both make you look at training in a slightly different way.

As far as websites go, there are so many. Alex Hutchinson has a fantastic blog at runner's world that I highly recommend.  But really, in the date of information overload, it's about organizing the good material.  So I recommend setting up an RSS feed that coalesces relevant journal articles.  And then follow impactful people in your field on twitter.  If something new or thought provoking comes out, you'll see it first on social media.  It's a great way to stay up to date easily on the latest research and training trends.

Mladen: Thank you very much for taking your time to do this interview. I wish you all the luck in the future endeavors.

Steve: No problem Mladen.  Thanks so much for the opportunity

Periodization confusion – Slides from WindSprint 2013

I had a pleasure to be one of the lectures at WindSprint 2013 held in Sundsvall, Sweden. I have finally met French sprint coach Pierre Jean Vazel who I know for years from Charlie Francis forum.

Among other presenters were Aki Salo (great presentation on relays), Takanori Suyibiashi (Japanese sprint methods), Roland Lööv (his presentation was on Swedish, so I didn’t understand much).

My presentation was probably too meta-physical, but I have tried to cover some theoretical/philosophical aspects of periodization. This was the first time I was presenting, and I did it on English language, so I was a bit nervous (plus being on stage form me is everything  but walk in the park). Anyway, I was pleased by the reception even if could definitely done it better. Maybe next time J

I have covered a lot of topics/concepts and it was hard to go into details on each. The goal was to present the bigger picture and to provide different framework to think about things.

Here are the slides

Running-based conditioning for team sports. Part 2

Running-based conditioning for team sports

General vs. specific debate

Part 2

Click here for Part 1

Principle #5: Training transfer

I have touched upon training transfer in the discussion of work capacity. Transfer is defined as: if I improve in doing X how much will I improve in doing Y? Or in plain English: if I improve my squat strength, how much my 10m run will improve? These two qualities could be skills or motor abilities.

We tend to see higher ‘transfer’ between the exercises that look similar (if you improve vertical press, there is a more transfer to improve bench than squat), but on the flip side there are not a lot of studies on transfer mostly because it is hard to control it. We tend to see cross-sectional studies (throwers who throw X1-X2 tend to have bench press of Y1-Y2, and throwers who throw X2-X3 tend to have bench press Y1-Y2, or vertical jumpers of 30-40inches tend to have squat of 1,5-2,0BW), but they don’t provide any proof of causation: if I improve/change one aspect how much other aspect will improve/change in longitudinal way. Besides, no one is only training vertical press to see improvements in squat 5 weeks later, so it is hard to isolate training transfer from the training noise.

Training transfer tend to be positive, negative or neutral. Positive means that if you improve certain quality you tend to improve another related one. Negative mean that if you improve certain quality you tend to decrease another related one. And neutral transfer means there is no transfer. All this sounds great in theory and it is very nice intuitive concept, but I am still not familiar with sound studies on it using longitudinal approach. The ideas mostly come from the trenches of great coaches, like Anatoly Bondarchuk.

Another thing coaches tend to forget about training transfer is Production vs. Production Capacity. Thus they tend to over-emphasize ‘specific’ activities that look like movements in their sport for the sake of higher transfer (e.g. squats vs. single leg squats on balance board). But we also have Production Capacity transfer – if we perform activities that are not related to the competition activity, yet they tend to reduce injuries and increase availability of the players during the season, I would consider this transfer as well.

For the above reasons coaches tend to favor specific drills, but as we have seen they tend to have problems with specificity vs. overload principle and as we are going to see with specific chronic load syndrome. Besides they forget about transfer to Production Capacity as well.

If you want to learn more about this I suggest you also check the video by Joel Jamieson.

As with develop vs. express problem, training transfer tend to be a dynamic animal as well. For example, improving squat from 1,0 to 1,5xBW will increase your vertical jump in good degree. Improving it further from 1,5-2,0 will tend to improve it as well, but slightly less. Improving the squat from 2,0 to 2,5 will yield some benefits but they are going to be smaller and smaller, while the work that needs to be done is increasing as well the injury potential. This can be said for anything else from hammer throwing to soccer.

We tend to ask questions when is one too strong or possess too much endurance? This is the problem of transfer. With soccer for example, improving you endurance (MAS, VO2max, LT, etc) will yield improvements in game related parameters along with improvements in work capacity. But there is a tipping point where the transfer is neutral and becomes negative. This negative transfer might not be ‘direct’ per se, but rather the process of improving endurance to highest levels tend to distract you from the training that have bigger importance to you as a soccer player.

Same thing with strength training. Up to a certain point, squat strength improvements has great transfer to improvements in acceleration and jumping ability (Production), along with making you less injury prone (Production Capacity).  This transfer tends to get smaller and smaller and building up more strength tend to demand more and more time and energy and end up distracting the players from more important training.  Dan Baker talked about this as well in this PAPER from 2001.

The problem is identifying this tipping point, and the coaches tend to the ditch the whole strength thing because they tend to see things in black and white. Things like – if weightlifting makes better football players, let’s recruit weightlifters, or even worse – if weightlifting improves football, then football improves weightlifting, which comes back to develop vs. express discussion.

Going back to the soccer example and training transfer of endurance training. Since this is the dynamic process it is important to identify whether there is some potential for transfer of endurance training (running based conditioning) to game related performance and work capacity (as far as I know there is only one longitudinal study that involved mentioned hypothesis – a study done by Martin Buchheit et al. which I explained in the following post on RSA). And this is the tricky part. It might involve some experimenting and monitoring the effects. In my opinion, the running based conditioning is mostly suited for intermediate guys.

Let me explain. With kids and beginners there is no need to (specifically) improve capacities since they don’t have the skill to exploit it yet (see Verkhoshansky graph in part 1).

With highly advanced guys their capacities are (tend to be) very high (for their sport/position) and their skill to use them is very efficient (although there might be players who are more efficient in using what they have, and ones that are less efficient in using what they have, but they have better potential – training them might be different).

Improving their capacities might involve too intense training or too much volume that might yield no further benefit in terms of improvement of game related performance and that might make them too tired and drained. With these guys the key is to make them able to play year round without injuries and allowing them and the clubs to make God-knows how much billions $$$.

Even with those characteristic some things can still be improved. The problem is that their competition calendar (problem of context) is so dense that it is hard to improve anything in terms of physical quality to a higher degree.  Strength and conditioning coaches that work with highest level clubs (especially soccer), and with the exception of the few, actually don’t do much serious physical preparation work – mostly prehab/rehab stuff, monitoring, warm-up, cool-downs, recovery sessions and everything else low intensity and low volume.

Sometimes the exceptions are off-season, pre-season and bench guys. But this depends on the sport, where soccer is the most notorious for such an example. If you are interested in hearing more about the problems of training in these situations please refer to the following article.

These are extreme cases, but coaches tend to pick them to rationalize their training methods (e.g. Messi is not doing squats, why should my players?).  They forget how much genetically gifted these guys are, and how technical they are. Sport is full of example of the elite players that did jack sh*t in terms of physical preparation and were still dominating due their great genetical traits and supreme technical and tactical skills (and especially in sports that are more technical and tactical dependent than physical – rugby vs. soccer). It is erroneous to base our training to the few extreme examples.

That’s why the guys stuck in the middle (and that’s like 80-90% cases) can drain the most potential (training transfer) from more general activities, in this case running-based conditioning.

Principle #6: Specific chronic load syndrome

Specific chronic load syndrome is nothing else that saying differently that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. First time I’ve heard this concept formulated into ‘specific chronic load syndrome’ term was by Dan Pfaff

We can see this example popping out everywhere. In powerlifting, the debate variety vs. specificity gets another twist – by performing only (or having a great focus on) specific lifts (squat, bench, deadlift) ala Sheiko, one tend to ramp up the ‘groove’ or the skill part of those lifts, but also one tends to overload specific tissues that might needs some ‘rotation’, especially when done with high intensity, intensiveness and/or volume. This might results in chronic injury.

Going back to the running-based conditioning - if these are performed coaches tend to make them more sport-specific: a lot of start/stop and change of direction. Nothing wrong with this approach, but one needs to put things into context.

If the sport practices involve a lot of start/stop, change of direction done at high intensity, then putting more oil on the fire might end up with injury. I will get back to this idea in volume vs. intensity principle as well.

That’s why all general activities, involving running-based conditioning should supplement and complement sport practice.

For example, during the off-season when there is no or minimal sport practices, after one deals with injuries from the last season, it might not be very wise to base all of your conditioning to long slow running. Some more specific, higher intensive running with start/stop, change of direction might also be needed.

In pre-season where there is a lot of sport practices and small sided games, speed work and change of direction work, it might be wise to lower the number of running-based conditioning that involves a lot of start-stop and cutting action.

During the in-season, maybe all that is needed is high-intensity cross training on the bike or in the pool (non-impact). Yet, again this depends on the sport and athlete in question. Make sure to pay attention to acute relieving syndrome and work capacity as well.

All that is mentioned revolves around importance of context – thus there is no ideal solution without considering context.

Another aspect of Specific chronic load syndrome involves smart planning and variety. People tend to ‘adapt’ to certain type of exercises/method/load, both in physiological way and psychological (boredom?). This comes back to ‘periodization’ of training and smart rotation/modification of means, methods and loads to avoid Specific chronic load syndrome and avoid adaptation stiffness (term coined by late Charlie Francis)

Principle #7: Volume vs. Intensity

To improve one’s endurance, should one focus on long slow activities, or focus more on intensity activities? I don’t know any better free sources about it than the following ones:

Methods of Endurance Training by Lyle McDonald

Intervals, Thresholds, and Long Slow Distance:  the Role of Intensity and Duration in Endurance Training by Stephen Seiler

Quantifying training intensity distribution in elite endurance athletes by Stephen Seiler

Science of Running Literature Review by Steve Magness

The Evolution and History of Training: The Volume versus Intensity Cycle by Steve Magness

Crossfit endurance, Tabata sprints, and why people just don’t get it by Steve Magness

Physiological Model of Training- Why it and "zone training" are outdated by Steve Magness

Aerobic Training is NOT the devil and the fallacy of muscle fiber type conversions by Steve Magness

What is the simple conclusion of these articles is that both extensive and intensive methods are important. It appears that elite endurance runners tend to distribute their workloads in polarized manner.

I don’t remember if the following research/case study is mentioned in the above links, but in a group of endurance athletes the improvements in performance correlated with increase in the amount of low intensity training rather than increase in high- and medium- intensity training.

Anyway, the question is how is this related to team sports (or mixed sports)?

There are two published papers on the subject of training distribution in soccer in this case, as far as I know:

Quantifying Training Intensity Distribution in a Group of Norwegian Professional Soccer Players. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2011, 6, 70-81

Effect of Training Intensity Distribution on Aerobic Fitness Variables in Elite Soccer Players: A Case Study. J Strength Cond Res. 2011 Jan;25(1):66-71.

In the study by Algroy the concluded that “present results demonstrate that soccer players do not employ a training intensity distribution typical of high-level endurance athlete training more total weekly hours. Instead, their training is marked by most training sessions having significant periods of time at or above the lactate threshold intensity.” (p. 79)

In a study by Castagna et. al they concluded that “Training spent at high intensity was significantly related to relative speed improvements at 2 mmol · L(-1) (r = 0.84, p < 0.001;) and 4 mmol · L(-1) (r = 0.65, p = 0.001). Players spent almost two-thirds of their training time at low intensities. However, only the time spent at high intensity (>90% of maximal HR) was related to changes in aerobic fitness. These results support the usefulness of the quantification of aerobic training load using HR. Furthermore, it stresses the effectiveness of the high-intensity training in soccer” (abstract)

There is an apparent difference in distribution in percentage (based on the data from the studies, without going into different methods of calculus):

	Soccer players	Elite endurance athletes
Zone 1	73	75
Zone 2	19	8
Zone 3	8	17

As can be clearly seen from the table, soccer players spend a lot more time in Zone 2 (lactate threshold, around 80-90% HRmax, or 2-4 LA mmol/L) and a lot less time in Zone 3 (a.k.a. VO2max zone, above 90% HRmax and above 4 LA mmol/L). What does this tell us? Is increasing Zone 1, decreasing Zone 2 or increasing Zone 3 yield better endurance performance in soccer players?

One thing is sure – we need more data on this, especially longitudinal and how it relates to endurance qualities (VO2max, MAS, Yoyo, etc) and match-related performance.

What seems like an apparent conflict between the results of the studies it is actually a matter of context and level of the athletes. With high level endurance runners further improvements comes largely by increasing the amount of low intensity activities (aka junk miles) with intensification yielding some benefit as well (make sure not to ditch the medium ground completely). 

Since they don’t need the extreme levels of endurance qualities nor any other quality in general (as explained in THIS article), mixed-sports like soccer players would probably beneficiary react to increasing the (absolute) amount of time spent in Zone 1, but that kind of endurance focused training will probably move them away from more important goals (see the transfer principle). What’s probably a good strategy is to avoid pounding more in the Zone2 and increasing the workloads in Zone3, at least when it comes to running-based conditioning (with the goal of improving aerobic capacities and endurance).

As study done by Wong et al. (2010) compared effects of concurrent training involving serious strength training (4 sets of 6RM on high-pull, jump squat, bench press, back half squat, and chin-up exercises) along with high intensity interval training 15/15 (15sec run, 15sec passive rest) at 120% MAS on the vertical jump, 10m sprint, 30m sprint, YOYO test and MAS test. There were also control group that only did usual soccer training. The results speak for themselves (page 657).

Does this (improved MAS, YOYO) directly transfer to game related performance, like distance run, or number of sprints? As Mendez-Villanueva and Martin Buchheit concluded this is “simply, more complex” (Eur J Appl Physiol. 2011 Sep;111(9):2387-9). You can read more about this in RSA is Overrated article.

Long story short, this is also a problem of develop vs. express principle. Having improved MAS and YOYO scores means having a higher potential, but finally the game constraints like tactics and skill level, limit your expression of this potential. Where is the tipping point, where further increase doesn’t bring any transfer to Production nor Production Capacity is yet unknown.

Even if the recent studies showed that higher ranked teams actually run LESS in a game (see study by DiSalvo in RSA is Overrated), they also tend to have higher potential (in a form of YOYO score) as shown in a study by Ingebrigsten et al. (J Sports Sci. 2012 Sep;30(13):1337-45), even if they are not from the same league.

One thing is sure – we lack longitudinal studies, where we compare training interventions and improvements in both potential and it’s transfer to game-related performance and injury tendencies (since Low injury rate strongly correlates with team success. Br J Sports Med. 2012 Sep 15)

At the moment I hold the following position – since both the extensive work and intensive work are important in improving endurance, in mixed-sports most of extensive work comes from practices and thus running-based conditioning should take care of higher intensity part of the equation. There are numerous studies to back up this claim (recent one by Gunnarsson et al.), along with opinions and work from experts like Dan Baker (see THIS and THIS), Inigo Mujika and many others.

Please note that the higher-intensity intervals doesn’t necessary involve ONLY glycolytic/anaerobic work (as excellently said in this article by Steve Magness), as aerobic training doesn’t only involve low intensity long duration steady state activity.

Most notably, they (higher intensity intervals) involve intervals above (or closely around) MAS. There are a lot of ways to program and individualize higher-intensity intervals based on MAS score or 30-15IFT and for this reason I suggest checking linked article by Dan Baker and the review paper by Martin Buchheit.

Another important thing to consider in this case is the context. If the sport practices are mostly extensive type work, then running-based conditioning (or general conditioning) should take care of higher intensity. If sport practices are very intense, then running-based conditioning (or general conditioning) should take care of lower intensity. If there are no practices, for example in off-season, then running-based conditioning should take care of both extensive and intensive aspects.

I would love to finish with modified Raymond Verheijen in-season periodization (that a lot of coaches are following at the moment). I basically reduced some of the volume in SSGs (small-sided games) and put some running-based conditioning of higher intensity. If the SSGs are of extensive type, then running-based conditioning is of higher intensity. If SSGs are of intensive type, then running-based conditioning is more extensive (but still intense). Please note that this is only an example.

Conclusion

Hopefully I succeeded in an effort to explain why it is important to implement some form of running-based conditioning into your training system, as long as you choose the best possible option by understanding the mentioned principles, your context, goals and players. This could be applied to all types of general training components as well.