New research suggests that sometimes the most important thing is what you DON'T do

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Performance Secrets:

A high-quality, practical new training study was published by Drs. Will Hopkins and D. J. Hewson from the Department of Physiology and School of Physical Education at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Hopkins and Hewson are accomplished, experienced researchers with a keen interest in how certain types of training change performances, not just physiological variables. In their new investigation, they've taken a look at the link between specificity of training and the performance of distance runners.

An extremely important aspect of the study was that absolute training paces for each runner (say, 250 metres per minute) were converted to relative training paces by expressing them as a percentage of the runner's personal best pace in 3000-metre races.

For example, if an athlete could run 3000 metres in 9 minutes (333 metres per minute), then a training run at 250 metres per minute was not tallied at that absolute pace but at 250/333 = 75 per cent of personal-best pace. Similarly, intervals carried out at 400 metres per minute were expressed as 400/333 = 120 per cent of best 3-K speed.

While those computations may seem a bit esoteric, they represent a clever way to get around one of the key problems associated with descriptive training research. That is, lots of training studies have shown that total mileage doesn't have much impact on race performances. In other words, athletes who run 50 miles per week don't run faster races than individuals who average 40 weekly miles, or some other number. What these same studies usually show is that faster training paces, not higher mileages, lead to faster race results.

Many people look at such studies and say, 'Aha! This proves that higher training intensity is the key to great racing'. The problem, of course, is that better runners tend to train faster than mediocre runners, and the higher average training paces may simply reflect differences in basic running ability, rather than an overwhelming influence on race performances.

To look at it another way, one runner may run at six minutes per mile during training while another moves along at seven minutes per mile, yet each may be at 80 per cent of aerobic capacity. It would be wrong to say that the first runner's faster 10-K time was due to higher-quality training, since each trained at 80% VO2max.