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Full Video Transcript

Introduction to Base Training

The base is the most important thing that you do. As the saying goes, great fall marathons who cross country seasons are developed in the summer. But often when we think of base training, we often get it wrong to a degree. We think it’s just put in the miles and accumulate the volume.

And that plays a key part in all of this. But it is not the whole thing. That is the 1960s version of a bass.

The Importance of a Multifaceted Base

What we now know is that we need a multiaceted base. Here’s how to think about it. Okay, what are we doing during a base training period? We are setting the stage.

We are preparing our body. It is building the capacity. What we know from research is if we don’t have a base, if we just jump jump straight into the highintensity work, the hard intervals, whatever have you, we don’t maximize our adaptations from that. And it makes sense because we can’t absorb or handle as much of that hard training as we normally would.

We don’t have the foundation. So, we absolutely need a base. But where

Aerobic and Anaerobic Foundations

we get things wrong is we often think of a basis only from the aerobic side. Now the aerobic side is really important. But we also need the other side of the extreme. So I want you to think of a base as setting the entire foundation from speed to endurance and everything in between.

What we need is we need that dual foundation that allows us then to progress to the next level. So when we think of a base, we not only think of the easy running, the volume, the high-end aerobic work, but also the strides, the sprint work, the neuromuscular base or foundation that then allows us to transition up where we can then handle the speed or faster or more intense work. We need both sides of the equation. That doesn’t mean each side is valued to the same degree.

There’s a reason that from linear onwards in the 1960s we realize that we need a longer period of training to develop aerobically. Why? Because aerobic adaptations generally take longer. This is why if you look at the research, if you look at short studies, 6 to 8 weeks, they say, “Oh, look at this highintensity stuff.

It does just as well as the easy aerobic work.” No. No. is because highintensity stuff you get most of the bang for your buck relatively quickly. The aerobic stuff you need a longer period of time.

So let’s break it down. If we need both sides of the equation, what does this look like? Well, it differs depending on

Tailoring Base Training to Experience Levels

the athlete that you are that coming into us. Because if we build the foundation, where you’re starting from matters. So, if you’re experienced runner like me, experienced endurance athlete, guess what? We can jump straight into some of the more complex stuff or even some of the more intense stuff very quickly because you’ve got literally decades of a foundation of aerobic development.

So, your mitochondria, your cardiovascular system, your capillarization, it’s all there to a degree as long as you’ve maintained it. and you just need to kind of remind and rebuild and then you can jump into the other stuff. Okay, if you’re new or novice, we have to take more time because it’s not only laying that aerobic foundation, but it’s also laying that muscle fiber recruitment foundation and the ability of your muscles, tendons, everything in between to handle the training load. So what does this look like?

Lots of easy. The newer you are, the more easier it should be. What is this mean? Is that for noviceses, that base and foundation might be like athletes like Pavo Nurmy back in the 1920s thought of a base, which is lots of walking, walking and walk jogging can absolutely serve as a foundation if if that is where you are at.

Now, a lot of people will talk about zone one or zone two. Like, I hate zones. They’re just arbitrary delineations, but the point is we need to accumulate enough easy stimulus to get some of those long-term adaptations. For some, that will literally mean 20 miles a week.

For others, 50, for others, 100 miles a week. Start where you’re at. Get consistent at it. And build that aerobic foundation easy.

Now, as you move up the experience ladder, guess what? You can

Advanced Base Training Techniques

handle a little bit more training load, even during that base phase, and we can start to introduce some steady runs, some long runs with progressions, even some high-end aerobic quote unquote tempo work during our base phase and not have it detract. Because let’s face it, running 90 m a week of easy or relatively easy is no longer the stimulus that it was maybe when we first started doing that. So our base, our foundation includes more stuff, okay? Even on the aerobic side.

And this is why if you look at elite athletes, they generally don’t have the two or three month period such as the summer training that a high school kid does when he’s saying, “Hey, I need to build a base. Well, go run lots of miles.” Because the lead athlete has been doing it for so freaking long that going running lots of miles for 3 months isn’t providing that aerobic stimulus that he needs to adapt. He needs other things or she needs other things. So step one is what level are you at?

The lower the level, the lower the experience. More it is about literally time on your feet in a easy enough ability or easy enough run. Meaning you should be able to have a full-on conversation. As you move up the ladder, you want to add stuff that challenges you aerobically, meaning some longer runs, progressions into it, some tempos or fart licks that just stay kind of aerobic and under that lactate threshold, but allow you to kind of boost some of those adaptations um to set the foundation.

Okay, that’s from the aerobic side of it. Let’s look at the other side of the equation, the

Neuromuscular and Speed Training

neuromuscular or speed side of the base. So, what often happens in classical endurance training is we go kind of from long to short, meaning lots of volume and then we get more intense, more intense, more intense. The problem with this is that it doesn’t give us the neurom muscular foundation to be able to maximize or optimize the intense work. And what do I mean by this is if we haven’t trained to sprint and when I say sprint I mean very short 6 to 8 second reps with lots of recovery.

We haven’t trained to recruit our fast twitch muscle fibers. We haven’t trained to activate as much muscle fibers fast twitch slow twitch whatever to handle the force load requirements. So when we get into doing repeat 200s or 400s at, you know, 800 pace or mile pace or what have you, we don’t have that neuromuscular a base of recruitment and b coordination effect that comes with doing some sort of sprinting. So a base on that side sets the stage for being able to utilize and coordinate our muscles, nervous system in a way that helps us that helps those interval workouts to actually work.

So what does this look like? Again, it’s not going to depend on experience. More noviceses, the safer you have to be. Meaning maybe instead of sprinting, you start with strides.

Getting some easy coordination under low lower force requirements, lower injury risk, and easy to kind of coordinate the biomechanics. You’re just setting the stage. For more advanced athletes, this actually means weekly or sometimes multiple times a week, hill sprints. 68 seconds, sprint up a moderate hill where you can still get some good reactivity off the ground and have long recovery, several minutes recovery.

Why? You’re training your body to recruit the muscle fibers to put force into the ground to coordinate all the movement. And it is not quote unquote in coaching, you know, language anorobic meaning taking away from that seessaw balance of speed and endurance. It’s short.

You cover, you bounce back. It’s not like you’re hammering out 200s, 300, and 400 meter repeats and just lying on the ground afterwards. No, you are sprinting and then recovering. Long recovery.

For more advanced athletes, we might not just do hill sprints, but we might include some sprints on the track. Some 60 meter excels, some flying sprints, whatever it is. Why? Because we’re enhancing that foundation.

We’re improving the stimulus. When we move to flat tracks, it’s often a slightly higher injury risk because the coordination effect or the ability to coordinate and the um tension on the muscles is a little higher because you’re not running up a a hill. So like the eccentric loads are a little bit higher and increased especially when we look at hamstring injuries and things like that. So for advanced athletes, that’s, you know, worth it a little bit.

Strength and Movement Preparation

And the other thing that I think is really important that I haven’t talked about of laying this foundation or creating a base is what I’d call a base of movement or just preparatory strength. Meaning, are you preparing your body to handle the training demands that it’s going to have to undertake? Again, we do this from gradually increasing our volume so we get used to it in a progressive way. But we can also prepare our body for the demands that it will take.

Not only through sprinting and hill sprints, which does that to a degree. Sprinting is the most specific plyometric activity you can do for runners, but also preparing our muscles, tendons, all of that through strength and coordinative work to be able to move as we increase the stress demands and the demands of the highintensity work. So here I like to lay a foundation of easy movement. That’s biomechanics work.

I’ve talked about that in past work or past videos on how to run. It also includes some sort of like drills or movement work that gets us used to working through multiple planes of movement. Vern Gambetta’s work is invaluable here. I love his stuff.

So, go check it out. He’s written a couple books and then writ uh written and talked about it online a lot. But that’s a great foundation as well. And then for the more advanced athletes, again, tying it into that neuromuscular work, often here’s where you include some of the higher load um higher load strength training to provide again that base or that foundation of being able to recruit muscle fibers that you need, increasing total fiber pool so that you can then train them later on.

That’s probably a little too advanced for this video, but we will do one on strength training at some point. So

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

there you go. Instead of seeing a base as just go out and run, accumulate as much volume as possible, we need to see it as a through a multiaceted lens of how are we preparing to handle things, increasing our capacity and increasing our ability to absorb what is coming next, which is often more intense aerobic work, tempos, thresholds, spart licks, and then eventually more intense track work, Right? We’re doing some 10k, 5k, mile, 3k pace work, eventually even sharpening work that is faster than that. A basis setting the stage for all for all of it from a physiological standpoint, from a neuromuscular standpoint, from a muscle tendon unit standpoint.

It’s just a different way to look at it. Hopefully that helps. If you enjoyed, like this thing, subscribe, share it with your friends. The support is always appreciated.

And let me know what you want to cover. I’m just here to provide decades of knowledge and experience that hopefully helps that. Take care, everyone.