353: Training Cycles: A Powerful Tool for Continuous Running Improvement

In episode 353, we dive into the significance of leveraging training cycles to boost both running performance and overall health. We explain what training cycles are and why they're crucial, and we guide you on how to make the most of them for ongoing enhancement. 

We discuss common pitfalls that runners encounter, such as inconsistency and a lack of variety in training during non-race periods, and offer practical strategies to overcome these hurdles. 

We cover various types of training cycles, including strength building, mileage building, and race preparation, outlining the advantages of each and how they contribute to achieving your running goals. 

Additionally, we introduce the concept of cycle stacking, emphasizing the importance of planning multiple cycles strategically to attain greater success over time. Our goal with this episode is to empower you with the knowledge and tools needed to break free from the cycle of progress and regression in your running journey, fostering continuous growth in your capabilities.

01:39 Breaking the Cycle of Inconsistency: Why Variety Matters in Training

02:23 The Pitfalls of a Monotonous Routine: How It Leads to Decline

05:36 Beyond Races: The Versatility of Training Cycles for All Runners

11:10 The Art of Progressive Overload: Building Strength and Speed

20:53 Navigating Mileage Building and Strength Training

24:37 The Importance of Listening to Your Body

27:27 Maintaining Speed and Strength During Mileage Building

30:32 The Role of Mobility and Drill Work

Thanks for Listening!!

Be sure to hit FOLLOW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one!

Grab your free Strength Guide for Runners here.

Interested in our coaching program? Check out our coaching options here.

Grab your free copy of the Running Snapshot by clicking here.

Come find us on Instagram and say hi!

Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

Transcript

Angie: 0:00

This is the real life runners podcast, episode number 353, A powerful tool for continuous growth and improvement. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about one of our favorite tools to use so that you can see continuous improvement in your running So, if you're curious what that is, stay tuned. Tuned. What's up runners. Welcome to the show today. We are talking all about training cycles and how to use Training cycles to both improve your health and your performance So if you're new to the concept of training cycles, we are going to explain what they are We're going to explain why they're so important and then we're going to teach you how to use them to maximize the effectiveness of your training because We want to help you guys get off the running rollercoaster that so many runners find themselves on where it's like you make progress for a little while and then you decline in fitness and then you make progress and then you decline in fitness. We want to help show you a way to make more continuous improvement in your running so that you can. You know, basically use every single cycle and we're going to get into exactly what that means to your advantage so that you can continue to get stronger and faster and achieve the running goals and the health goals that are important to you.

Kevin: 1:38

Right. Cause so much, what happens with, with a lot of runners is they, They train very specifically when there's a race, and then when there's not a race, one, they're much less consistent, and two, there's no variety in the training. It involves a lot of, I'm gonna go out and run some amount of time that feels right on that day without any Any focus on, on rhyme or reason to it, which I think also is why it loses a lot of consistency is there's no good reason for what they're doing at any particular day.

Angie: 2:08

Or they go out and do the same thing every time.

Kevin: 2:10

Yes. Right.

Angie: 2:11

And that can also be like the other side of the coin. Like some people go out and they just kind of do whatever they want or do whatever they feel like or whatever they have time for on that day. And there's no rhyme or reason. Other people just have the routine that they always do, and they never really mix it up, and so they find themselves on basically a plateau, and eventually, if you are just staying on a plateau, and you're not doing things to challenge yourself, you will end up declining. Because your body adapts. And so in order to continue to grow and to continue to improve, we have to continue to challenge the body. And if we get into a routine where we're just doing the same thing over and over and over again, that is going to explain why Not only are you going to stop maintaining your current fitness, you are actually going to decline in your fitness.

Kevin: 3:01

Yeah, I don't think that's a plateau. I don't know what that's called. It's a decline o.

Angie: 3:04

Decline o? Uh huh. Is it spelled E A U also? Yes,

Kevin: 3:08

of course, E A U at the end of it. But it's not, like, a plateau where you're hitting the, the, the stop, the, the plateau. Like you're just level and you're consistent every single time. And a lot of people are like, well, if I just do the same thing every day, I'll just be able to maintain where I'm at. But if you do the same thing every day, what you're doing stops being a strain on you. And therefore you can't actually maintain you're actually getting. What you're doing becomes easier every day. If what you're doing Which is a

Angie: 3:34

good thing. That's what we're going for.

Kevin: 3:36

Right. But as you keep doing the same thing, I'm going to do the same loop and it's going to take me about 45 minutes. That becomes less and less of a challenge day after day after day. And eventually doing that same loop in 45 minutes is no longer any challenge and you start regressing.

Angie: 3:50

Right. Because Essentially, if you want to continue to progress, if you want to continue, whether it's to get faster, to run longer, to feel stronger, you do have to challenge the body, because when you challenge the body, you force the body to adapt, and this is one of the reasons that we live longer. Um, to use training cycles because they, they not only help to kind of keep things a little bit more fresh, help prevent boredom with your training, but they also are very effective tools to help you make continuous progress over time. So let's talk about what they are.

Kevin: 4:26

Thank you, doctor. What, what exactly is a training cycle? How do we define this thing? It's a set period of time with a clear defined goal at the end of it. And most people, as we alluded to at the beginning, use a training cycle for a race. The race is always the clear, defined goal at the end of it, but it doesn't have to be. You can have training cycles with all sorts of different goals at the end of it. The key thing is that you set a time window with a clear goal at the end. Whatever that happens to be. And then at the end of the cycle, you check and make sure that you've, you've reached that goal. And if you didn't, then you can adjust things, maybe redo that cycle. You can make adjustments based off of a clear goal. That does not have to be an actual finish line with a number on your chest.

Angie: 5:11

Right? Because you don't want to just have a goal when you're race training. When, what happens often then is that people train for a race and then they kind of float for a while and they just lose fitness between races because there's not A quote unquote real goal for that time period. They just kind of go out and run and then they're like, Oh, I should probably sign up for a race again so that I actually start training. But what we're trying to help you understand is that there's lots of different things that you can do in between races. You don't need to race. Every week. You don't have to race every month. You don't have to race every quarter. Even you can have, you know, just one or two races a year, especially if they're bigger races. That's actually a really smart thing for you to do to help your body give your body enough recover time in between. But training cycles are important because They allow you to always have a goal, even if that goal is maintenance. Because like we just said, sometimes the goal is actually maintenance for some people. Maybe you've got a lot of other things going on in your life and you just don't have the time or the amount of effort to focus on your training right now. That's cool. But at the same time, you don't want to lose all the fitness that you built. Maybe you came off of like a, a tough training cycle and you take some time to recover, but you don't want to allow yourself to regress because there's You have some goals for the future. And so even if the goal is maintenance, if you're just going out and running and not, you don't really have a structure to your runs, oftentimes you don't maintain, you end up declining and losing fitness in that period. So when you have a specific goal for the cycle, it allows you to focus on that one thing. And then basically what you can do is take these cycles. And stack them on each other so that you are continuously building which will help to lead to continuous growth. And we're going to talk about that later in the episode on exactly how to stack those cycles for the maximum effectiveness.

Kevin: 7:08

I mean that's the super exciting part because that's where you get to like the exponential growth. So many people build to a race and then they pull back and they build to a race and pull back and there's no stacking of one cycle to the next to the next, let alone like four cycles within a year. Over the course of 10 years, suddenly you've stacked 40 cycles on top of each other? That makes a lot more growth than, I'm gonna build towards this half marathon, float for 3 or 4 months until I get bored, oh, I should sign up for another half marathon, and now I do my next race. You're not stacking anything, you're stacking cycles. you're regressing and then kind of starting maybe a little bit ahead of where you started the last one, but you're not, you're not able to build.

Angie: 7:46

Well, and that's what one of the complaints that we hear so often is like, I feel like I'm just running the same time over and over and over again. I'm not, right. I'm not seeing progress. And this is often one of the big reasons why people aren't seeing that progress that they want to see. So whenever you are in a training cycle, we always. You know, really, really, really encourage our athletes. I will never use the word force because I have no control over what our athletes actually go out and do on any given day, but we highly recommend focusing on one thing at a time. That is the point of a training cycle. You set your priority. You have a very clear defined goal for that time period. And that is the. The main priority and the main focus. And so, when we use training cycles inside the academy, most of our training cycles are based on a 90 day period. Sometimes, depending on what kind of a race you're doing, especially if it's a longer race, that can extend out to more of like a 16 week, like a 4 month period instead of a 3 month period. Um, but again, when we use these 90 day cycles, it's not like, Okay, the only during this three month period is when we're actually focusing on the race We use especially like Kevin is a great example of this when he trained for the 100 mile He the goal he always knew was a hundred miles It took him nine months to train for it because he had different Cycles focused on different things to build up his body in the safest and most effective way possible

Kevin: 9:14

I mean, I really don't Directed the entire calendar year to that.

Angie: 9:17

Yeah,

Kevin: 9:18

so I guess

Angie: 9:18

that's true. So it's more it was

Kevin: 9:20

like 11 12 months Yeah, devoted to one race, which was kind of weird and kind of crazy But I did not say that's

Angie: 9:27

what happens when you choose a hundred miles, right? But I didn't

Kevin: 9:29

say here's my 11 month training plan. I said, here's what I'm gonna focus on for the next two weeks Two to three months. Cause it didn't exactly divide out into perfect 90 day cycles. It was like, here's what I'm going to focus on for the next two months, the next three months, the next, however many weeks, and I came up with different ideas, which is what we're kind of moving into the next area of the different types of cycles.

Angie: 9:50

Well, but here's the thing too, is yes. While we, and I, you know, want to just mention this because you just. Brought that up. Not all cycles have to be 90 days. You know, you, you, it can be much shorter. Like there is going to be a time where after a big race, it's like Kevin's hundred or maybe for you, it's a half marathon or a marathon after a big goal race, you're going to take a recovery cycle. That doesn't mean you need to spend 90 days recovering. You know, maybe you need two weeks, maybe you need four weeks, depending on how beat up your body was after that race, that would be a full cycle. It's just really focusing. On recovering from that big race. And maybe that's a, you know, a much shorter cycle. And then you go into a 90 day cycle. Maybe some of your training cycles are eight weeks. Okay. So 90 days is not like a hard and fast rule. It's just one of the general things that we like to subscribe to within the academy, and then we adjust on, you know, based on individual needs and goals and life, actual

Kevin: 10:48

calendars, because sometimes the races are certain distance ahead. And you're like, well, actually it's. 17 weeks until my next race. So how do I fit that thing? And it's like, well, we're going to make that work.

Angie: 10:58

Right. And so the one thing I really want to point out before we go into like the different types of training cycles is that when we do this, when we use training cycles, the goal is always to maintain one area. While building another and this utilizes the concept of progressive overload. So essentially, to make progress and to get stronger, to get faster, to make any sort of physical progress with your fitness, you need to do something called progressive overload. And essentially what that is, is it's overloading the body in one area and then allowing enough recovery For it to grow back stronger than it was. And this is, you know, we've talked before about the stress recovery cycle and the way that the body adapts to different stresses. And this was actually, um, a topic of the free class that I, that I, uh, taught last week. If you're interested in that, head over to realliferunners. com forward slash class, and you can sign up and access the recording of that class. It was really, really powerful, um, because The stress recovery cycle is the most important thing that we need to learn how to manage as runners if we want to make continuous improvement and do our, you know, best to decrease injury along the way. So, let's talk about types of training cycles, specifically that are non race related, but we will Talk about races also, because that's obviously a big type of training cycle. So the first type of training cycle that we want to talk about is a strength building cycle.

Kevin: 12:20

This is your favorite.

Angie: 12:21

Well, that's why I'm talking about it. And you notice that just happened to pop up first on the outline. Shocking, shocking. Um, so in a strength building cycle. Like I said before you want to maintain one area while building the other so if the goal is to build strength Then we are maintaining our mileage and our speed So we're not trying to build mileage and build speed at the same time that we're trying to build strength We are focusing in on getting our muscles stronger by lifting heavier by increasing The load that we're placing on our body through strength training. So maybe that's that we're lifting heavier weights. Maybe it's increasing the frequency of our strength training sessions. Maybe it's both. Okay. Depending on who you are and in your familiarity with strength training. Um, but that's the goal is to progressively overload the body to get the muscle stronger.

Kevin: 13:10

One of the big things that I think you have to make sure on this one is that you're not at all trying to work on increasing your mileage. If you're really focused on building strength, You do not also want to focus on increasing mileage at all. Like your mileage needs to maintain because you're actually going to be tired from the lifting days on building strength, depending on your familiarity, your comfort with building strength, you might get faster during this cycle, just as a by product, right? Because we're not avoiding anything. We're not, not doing speed during the cycle. So there is still speed happening. And by building your strength, you're going to be able to get your, Going to be able to put out more power and putting out more power is literally just going to make you faster,

Angie: 13:48

right? So it's true that a lot of people do notice speed increases or endurance improvements during a strength building cycle. That's just not the focus and it's not the priority, right? It's just

Kevin: 13:58

fun byproducts. Exactly.

Angie: 14:00

And that's the thing is really during all of these things, when you are working on one area of your body, of your training, of your fitness, you will see Roll over in other areas. So by increasing your strength, you are going to see increases in speed and endurance. It's just that we're not focusing on those areas. And that's really one of the main things that we really teach overall in the Academy is that by focusing on the process and by focusing on the specific goal that you're working on, you are always going to have these beautiful strategic brought by products in other areas. But that doesn't mean that we have to focus on the exact paces that we need to hit by focusing on building strength and by getting stronger and correcting some of these weaknesses and these imbalances, we're just going to naturally have some of those increases in endurance and speed. And that's just So much fun to see

Kevin: 14:54

which is great because then if you move into a cycle where you're like, all right It wouldn't then I'm gonna increase my mileage. It's already gonna feel a little bit easier on the endurance side You're like, oh well now I want to really train and ratchet down like a 5k time like okay, but you came off of strength So you're going to be able to push faster during your speed workouts because you're pushing faster and speed workouts You're naturally going to end up with faster race times. It all just kind of loops together

Angie: 15:18

Right, because ultimately you're just getting in better shape and this is one of the things that I think people get wrong is that they think that they need to focus on all areas and if they're neglecting, quote, unquote, neglecting an area, then they're going to lose fitness in that area. So it's like, well, if I don't keep increasing my mileage, then I'm going to lose the ability. And what I, what people always see, maybe not always, I never liked to use the word always or never. But, which I really just used both in the same sentence right there. I believe

Kevin: 15:49

you did. You said, I never like to use. I never like to use.

Angie: 15:51

I try not to use the word always or never because there's always exceptions and people can always point out how, you know, that's not the case. But many times, most times rather than not, when you're focusing on one thing, you get results in other things. Lots of different areas versus if you're trying to focus on all the things that at once, you often don't see progress in any of them.

Kevin: 16:13

Well, yeah, if you try and juggle seven balls in the air simultaneously, you're going to drop all of them. Whereas if you're able to just actually focus on juggling two, then when you try the third one, it might actually be like, Oh wow, I actually have some juggling skills. If you start with seven, you just don't ever develop any of the skills.

Angie: 16:29

Fun fact, Kevin is able to juggle. So that's another.

Kevin: 16:33

Only three.

Angie: 16:34

But, but you, that's a cool little fun fact that you guys might not know about your podcast co host over here. Um, so I can, I can juggle three for about 10 seconds. You're pretty good at like, just go like, actually like, yep, I'm just juggling three balls now and I'm like, Oh, how long can I make

Kevin: 16:53

it? Last hope I don't accidentally throw this one across the room. And

Angie: 16:57

then all of a sudden one just flies out of nowhere. But anyway, um, so that would be the goal of the strength bullying cycle is, is really Working on muscle strength. Um, I personally like to work on full body muscle strength because I see running as a full body activity. There's a lot of people that say, Oh, well, I should just focus on my leg strength or my calf strength or this or whatever I think we should really focus on the full body because not only to help us as runners, but really just to help us in our real life. You know, we're always going to be lifting and carrying things and reaching up to get things off of high shelves and. We don't want our bodies to break down as we get older. We want to stay strong. And so I think that we should always be focusing on full body types of exercises and then use certain Exercises and, um, exercise circuits strategically to focus on, you know, building different muscles for specific goals.

Kevin: 17:50

That's why I love having you as my strength coach is the best because I'm like, all right, I need good exercises that are good. Full body exercises are going to help me feel stronger as I run. And also I'd like to look good without my shirt. So can we get a combination of these things, even if you have to throw in like a couple, like. Extra exercises that are completely worthless to my running. I still just when I take my bicep curls like bicep curls Not really doing a huge amount for me in the later miles of an ultra

Angie: 18:19

Okay, so yes and no and this is one of the fun things about this I'm just gonna go ahead and break the water. I'm gonna break down this myth real quick Not only just a water bottle, but when you build muscle You are increasing the glycogen that your body's able to store.

Kevin: 18:34

Nice. Because

Angie: 18:34

glycogen is stored both in the liver and in muscle. So by increasing the volume of muscle tissue, regardless if it's in your bicep or in your quadricep muscle, you're increasing the amount of glycogen that your body can store.

Kevin: 18:46

Because once your body's running low on it, it's gonna search for it wherever it is. It's gonna find it wherever it. Yeah. Okay.

Angie: 18:51

And all muscle is able to store glycogen. It's not like you can only store glycogen in your quadricep muscles, you know, you can also store it in your biceps, but, but yes, so it actually does, you know, working on your biceps actually does have a functional, even though it might be a little bit smaller, you know, but a functional use as runners, other than just to look good in.

Kevin: 19:15

All right. Perfect. All right. So another cycle that we can focus on is the mileage building cycle. Your

Angie: 19:21

favorite. This has

Kevin: 19:22

got to be one of my favorites. Um, in this case, you're maintaining your strength. So. You have gone through possibly a strength cycle or you're at least pretty you know that you're comfortable at Your current strength level to try and try to increase other areas of running like mileage or speed in this case We're upping our mileage. We're gonna focus for the 90 day cycle or whatever the time period you've put on it on Literally just running more. Okay, whether you are running more on every run during the week or you're, you're increasing your long run. You're doing a combination of both of them. You're just running more time or distance. But at the same time, you're not ignoring your other areas. So you got to make sure that you don't stop strength training. You just stop focusing on strength training. You're not going to be exhausted from your strength workouts because you still have more miles to do.

Angie: 20:16

Yeah. And this is often where I tell people, Stop trying to increase the weights, right? Especially if they're coming off of a strength building cycle. They're used to, okay, once it feels easy for me to do 8 to 10 repetitions, then I need to increase the weight, right? That's kind of the mindset that they're in. And then they go into a mileage building cycle and they're like, well, I do, I got to keep increasing my weight. And it's like, no, we don't need to increase the weights that you're lifting anymore because that's not the focus. So the focus is let's maintain the weights where you are right now. And now we're going to build up. The, uh, mileage from here.

Kevin: 20:50

So on this one, and I've got a question, this is not on the outline. And so I'm put you on the spot for this one. I love

Angie: 20:54

that.

Kevin: 20:54

Okay.

Angie: 20:55

Do it.

Kevin: 20:55

If, if you're lifting through this time period and you're like, this is getting like, this feels really light. Like I'm not really pushing, putting much effort, but it's a mileage building cycle. Would you suggest that you're just not building mileage fast enough or that you've gotten so comfortable with that weight that maybe you could increase the weight just a little bit?

Angie: 21:15

It depends on where you are in the cycle. So it, it depends on, you know, is this a mileage building cycle just for the sake of mileage building? Is this a mileage building cycle to set you up for a race or is this actually a race training cycle? You're calling it a mileage building cycle, but it's the first time that you've ever built up to a half marathon or a marathon or whatever that might be, right? It kind of depends, um, on multiple factors, but I, I don't. Usually hear from people that like, Oh, you know, while I'm building up all this mileage, I just, my gym workouts just feel so, so easy because oftentimes they're fatigued from the mileage building. So this, I actually often hear the opposite of, you know. My workouts, my strength workouts are feeling harder because even though I've been doing this weight for a long time, like, I don't understand why you, you even came to me with this. Do you remember this? Yes. Like when you were doing bicep curls and you're like, why all of a sudden is like this weight feeling so much harder. Yeah. Like I don't understand

Kevin: 22:17

it. I can't lift the weight off of my leg anymore. What is wrong with me? And you're like, I was

Angie: 22:21

doing this for weeks and it wasn't a problem. And now all of a sudden I can't do it.

Kevin: 22:25

You're like, well, you did 40 miles over the weekend. That might have something to do with it.

Angie: 22:30

Right. So the goal is maintenance of strength, but don't be surprised if that means that maybe some weeks, especially if you are in kind of a build phase, depending on what, you Cycle you're doing do you want to kind of get into a little bit of the details here about like kind of like two ones Or you know three up one down kind of thing so that people kind of understand what we're talking about and then I I can Add in a little bit more

Kevin: 22:52

sure so one of the big things that It's like an old rule of thumb on the mileage building is that you never want to increase mileage too rapidly And so there used to be this big Guideline of don't increase more than 10 percent of your weekly mileage from one week to the next over The last several years, that's become less of a hard fast rule. They've done a lot of things that you can increase at a faster rate as long as you are really tuned into your body. So one of the ways that I like to work this guy is say, let's build for three weeks in a row. We're just going to keep increasing mileage, increasing mileage, increasing mileage, and then drop down, you know, back to what that first week was on your first, on your fourth week. So pull, have a pullback week. Or as, as we're getting a little bit older, I personally prefer a two week up and then one week down. And I think with two up, one down, you can actually really ramp up your, your increase definitely more than 10 percent a week because you know that third week is always going to be a pullback.

Angie: 23:56

Mileage a bigger over the bigger picture picture instead of week to week, right? Like maybe looking at your monthly mileage. That's why the heart and the 10 percent rule is not a hard and fast rule So my point here is to say okay If you are on a cycle where say you're building for three weeks in a row or even two weeks in a row Then you might notice that during that third week where you're progressively overloading right same principle is at play here of the progressive overload We're just choosing to do this With mileage instead of weights now, so you're progressively overloading the body in that third week where your load is higher, you might find that your strength, you know, you don't feel as strong during your strength workouts, and that's okay. That doesn't mean that you've lost strength. It just means that your muscles are tired. So when you get to that strength workout, especially depending on, you know, where in the week you're placing that strength workout. You just might be more tired and that's okay because that's the point. The point is to fatigue the body so that the body builds up stronger than before. So don't try to force. The weights in those situations. Okay. Like I'm going to put this out there as like a PSA just because you squatted 100 last week and you're feeling tired this week and you're like, gosh, I don't know. Like I'm even 90 is feeling really hard for me. Don't try to force it and push yourself to 100 just because you did that last week. Dropping back down to 90 during like a higher mileage week is a totally you. Okay, thing to do, and you're still maintaining. That doesn't mean that you're losing fitness. It just means that you're listening to your body and your muscles are tired. So if you were to try to push it out and try to hit those higher weight numbers, you might hurt yourself. Okay? Because when your body fatigues, you don't have the stability and the strength you need. Okay. That you normally have, and if you don't have the stability and the strength, those exercises that you're familiar with are going to become harder, and there's going to be more breakdown, um, of the, of your form during those exercises, which can put your joints and your muscles in compromised positions, which will increase your risk of injury. So all that to say, listen to your body. If you're feeling really tired, During those higher mileage weeks, pull back a little bit on strength training. That's totally fine.

Kevin: 26:11

Yeah. I mean, that, that last point of your form is going to break down as you get tired. I think this is one of the biggest keys on building mileage is making sure that you're still strength training, but making sure that you're strength training with really good form because you're going to be tired and sore. And the opportunity to try and like force a weight by using poor form is real high. Because you're like, well, I want to make sure I'm still lifting at least close to what I was doing a few weeks ago. So I, but suddenly you're doing it with really bad form. The number doesn't

Angie: 26:40

matter. Okay. This is the same thing that we talk about with pacing, right? The number doesn't matter with pace. Like we often talk about how effort level. Matters more than pace or matters more than a specific heart rate this I had a conversation with a person about this Just last week effort your body knows effort level and your body knows time on feet. It doesn't know the pace It doesn't know that you're lifting 10 pounds or 30 pounds or 50 pounds. It knows how hard that weight feels to you Okay, so that is the key to remember when you're lifting weights is that the exact number doesn't matter So if you're feeling really tired and you're like Doing all you can, even though it's a little bit less weight or less repetitions than you were able to do the week before or a couple of weeks, weeks before, that's still okay.

Kevin: 27:27

All right. Excellent. So also during this time, you want to make sure that besides just maintaining strength, you're maintaining speed because a lot of people are like, well, the biggest thing that I want to do is make sure that I up all of my runs and that I'm really cranking up that long run. A lot of people essentially use a marathon training plan as a mileage building plan. Like the goal is to get to 26 miles and the plan essentially. Increasing the run over and over and over again. All

Angie: 27:51

right, now I have a question for you that is not on the outline.

Kevin: 27:55

Okay, fire away.

Angie: 27:56

Why would someone use a mileage building cycle that wasn't training for a longer race? Or like that, you know, right now, that is not the exact goal of this cycle. Like, they're using a mileage building cycle in preparation for something else.

Kevin: 28:12

Uh, increasing your endurance, much like increasing your strength, is always a great foundation and You and I can go back on forth on which one needs to go first But you really just need to keep to increase your fitness you basically just keep increasing your strength and your endurance and your strength in your endurance and make sure that you're Keeping a decent amount of speed throughout and you're gonna be able to race Any distance race you want. If you just keep building those things, that's, that's step three where it's cycle stacking

Angie: 28:42

cycle. Second. Okay. So it was

Kevin: 28:44

beautiful.

Angie: 28:46

I had to sing some random word during the course of this podcast.

Kevin: 28:49

Really, really nice. All

Angie: 28:50

right. So go ahead.

Kevin: 28:51

All right. So during the mileage building, you do not want to skip speed. Okay. The last thing you need to do is finish a mileage building cycle and be like, all right, now I've got a race in eight weeks. Let's just crank some speed. And you've not done it for the last three months. So there's still speed strides. It's a great way to put in some pretty good quality speed, some higher end speed without a lot of wear and tear on the body, especially if you do uphill strides. That's great. Um, some less structured sort of speed play workouts where you're just, you're picking up the pace for a few minutes and then you're easier for a few minutes. If you want to make them more precise, you can go up and down for two or up and down for three and down for three. Like however that goes. It's great. All effort based workouts. I like a lot of effort based workouts during the mileage building time because Like you said, the same way that the, the weight, the number of plates that you're putting up on a, on a squat is not super important. Neither is the pace that you're running your workouts at. The key thing here is that you are pushing your body to higher effort levels, and a variety of effort levels. I think, you know, You know, high end on strides, medium end on tempo runs and then build up your long run.

Angie: 29:59

Yeah, because like we mentioned before, you never want to ignore one area, okay? Yes, the focus is still on mileage building, but that doesn't mean we completely ignore speed. It doesn't mean that we completely ignore strength. We're maintaining those things. We're making sure that we're still stimulating. Stimulating the body in those ways or

Kevin: 30:18

stimulating

Angie: 30:19

stimuli. I combined stimulating and body into one. That's what that's, that's what that word was stimulating the body in all of those ways. We're just focusing on mileage building in this case more than the other. Um, the other thing that you want to think about too, during mileage building cycles is to make sure that you are also maintaining. Drill work for range of motion and injury prevention. Okay. Like

Kevin: 30:42

a thousand percent on this one.

Angie: 30:44

So a lot of people think about strength training or they think about building speed, but not a lot of people have the same level of awareness or focus on mobility and mobility is essentially the way that your body moves. It's really important for us to maintain good mobility as runners and doing drills before and, or after a run. Are very good ways to incorporate mobility throughout the course of your week.

Kevin: 31:10

And I would even double down on this if you're doing a mileage building plan during the winter where it's snowy and you're doing a lot of running on a treadmill because you have almost no range of motion from just easy running. Like, it's a very limited range of motion, which then gets even more limited when the ground is perfectly smooth like a treadmill. Like, we have to do it down here, where we're running on sidewalks all the time. If you're doing a lot of runs on trails and stuff, you get some natural, like, up and down and some undulation through the paths. It's It's But if you're doing a lot on sidewalk or treadmills, like the drill work is super incredibly important.

Angie: 31:48

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I just think it's one of those things that is often neglected by many, many runners. Um, and it's just super important no matter what kind of cycle you're in. Yes, it's important for mileage building, but I would say it's also important for speed building for strength building because. Anytime we're doing certain exercises or focusing on certain areas, we still need mobility. We need mobility no matter what, just for regular, everyday, real life. And so, whenever we're progressively overloading the body in any one of these ways, We can get sore, we can get stiff and mobility and drill work really helps to kind of counteract that.

Kevin: 32:27

Yeah. I found when I was doing a string cycle last year that I just naturally wanted to do drill work because I felt stiff after lifting, so it just, it occurred to me, I should do some drill work. Cause I feel tight and sore and stiff. So that made sense to me sometimes after like speed sessions, the last thing I want to do is drill work and it's still actually really important.

Angie: 32:47

Yeah. And then another. Cycle goal that you could have is obviously race training, and this would be the most famous of all of the cycles. Um, so we don't really need to get into that too much. But the point here is the same is that even when you are training for a race, yes, the focus is on that race. But when you're training for a race, it's oftentimes you're Either speed or endurance that you want to focus on. People want to, I know everybody wants to run longer and faster and stronger and do all the things at once, but pick one, right? If you've never run a half marathon before, Then your goal really is mileage building, right? You shouldn't be as concerned about your speed during that time It's still going to be important for you to do speed work That's just not the main focus, but if you've run multiple half marathons and you're really going for time Then your focus is going to be more on speed. Again, that doesn't mean you can ignore mileage. You still have to kind of maintain and rebuild your mileage depending on what the focus was of your previous training cycles, but always know what is my goal? What is my main priority and focus of this race training cycle? Is it speed or is it.

Kevin: 33:58

Right. I think race training cycle might be one of the few times where you can for, uh, a couple of weeks just prior to the race, I wouldn't say neglect, but you don't have to really make sure that you're very, very carefully checking thoroughly all of the boxes, like right before the race, you want to make sure that you're really emphasizing things that are going to help you be. Most successful for that race. So, you know, if it's a 5k, you want to make sure that your speed is staying on point, but you're going to cut the long run of the week before. If the race is coming up, you don't want to be sore at all from your lifting session. So you're gonna be able to cut the weight during that because during that, that final race week, maybe stretched out to two weeks at most, but certainly during that last race week, You just want to feel really fresh for the race itself,

Angie: 34:46

right? So then the goal would not necessarily be maintenance of strength. It would just, it would be pulling back and allowing your legs to feel more fresh for race day.

Kevin: 34:55

Yeah.

Angie: 34:55

Yeah. All right. Now let's jump into cycle stacking. So now that you have an idea of what training cycles are, why they're important, different types of training cycles that you can use. Now let's talk about the magical. Use of training cycles, which which is cycle stacking. So essentially what this is is taking multiple cycles and Putting certain them back to back in a very strategic way to help you achieve Bigger goals and make this continuous progress that we've talked about That we've talked about and the key here is to plan it out ahead of time So taking a step back and looking at you know Your year at a whole as a whole and maybe you know if you're doing this now We're already into april you want to kind of look at the next four train cycles or even five It depends on how big your goals are and kind of say, okay So i've got this race in december or i've got this race next march that I want to prepare for how do I Make sure that I am as ready as possible for that race. And the answer is use multiple training cycles to build yourself up so that you feel Strong and ready for that race that you've got on the calendar.

Kevin: 36:06

Great. And I mean, the answer from almost, I mean, really I'd argue any distance is you want to get really fast. You want to get really strong. You want to make sure that you can run far enough to cover the distance. So that's all the cycles.

Angie: 36:17

So which order do you put them in? Right. That, that's becomes the question. And that's really where the nuance and the coaching comes in. You know, this is something that we help our clients with all the time inside the academy, because you can like. Do all the things like Kevin just said, you know, you want to increase your strength. You want to increase your mileage. You want to increase your speed, but what order is the most strategic and the best way for you based on where you are, your experience, your goals, life, you know, like what's going on in your life. Like, are you going on vacation during the summer where you know that you're going to You're going to be in a place where you're not going to be able to run long distances. Like, are you, do you live in somewhere, you know, in the winter where it snows and you know, I'm not going to go out and run long distances. Like we have plenty of people that come in and tell us that. Like, and so in that case, I'll just, that's a great example where winter would be a great, Play time in your schedule for a strength building cycle, because most of your strength training is going to be done inside, right? I don't know many people that are going outside in the snow to do their strength training.

Kevin: 37:20

So shoveling snow is a hundred percent strength training. It

Angie: 37:23

is. But I mean, that is, needs to be kind of intentionally added into your full

Kevin: 37:28

body workout at that

Angie: 37:29

too. But right. Like, so time of year and what's going on in your life, where you live, like all of those things can play into what. You're doing for your different strength cycles, you know, I mean down here in South, Florida I like to put a strength cycle in the summertime because I don't like to go out and run in the 110 degree heat index

Kevin: 37:49

I do so I like to put a build mileage over the course of the summer because That's how my brain works.

Angie: 37:56

Well, cuz you're building up all those red blood cells cells and you know that that is a really good way for you to build fitness and actually allow your body to adapt.

Kevin: 38:04

Right. I mean, I listened to some other podcasts that are like, well, sometimes after you run, you know, you just want to make sure that you really get used to the heat. So finish your run and then you sit in a hot tub or go take a hot shower, hot bath, go sit in a sauna. I'm like, I just ran in a hundred degree heat index. So. I think I'm good to go. They say

Angie: 38:24

humidity is poor man's altitude training,

Kevin: 38:26

right? They'll make sure that you run with long sleeves. I'm like, it's 145 degrees outside. I'll run in whatever I want. It's still heat training. It's going to be fine.

Angie: 38:34

Exactly. And then you kind of just plan it out, right? You reverse engineer and figure out, okay, what, if that's the goal in nine months, what do I need to start with today? You know, what, what needs to go right before that? What needs to go before that? What, what, what, what? You know, needs to go now and doing that in a way that's very strategic, and it also makes it really fun. You know, like I know that I took Some clients through this exercise a couple of months ago, and they were they felt so good like when we came out of that class that workshop that I did, they were like, Wow, like, it's so cool having my whole year planned out like this. I know exactly what I'm focusing on for every single cycle this year, and that Makes me even more confident that I'm going to be able to accomplish my goal.

Kevin: 39:18

Right. Especially like the fourth goal. Cause you're like, Oh, this is how the one just builds to the next, that builds to the next, that builds next. Fantastic. One of the things I think when you're like, well, which, which one do I start with is the one that seems the least. Directly connected to your race is probably the one that you want to start with. You know, the closer you get to your race,

Angie: 39:40

the

Kevin: 39:40

closer you get to the race, the more race specific you want to be.

Angie: 39:42

Yeah, it's true. But overall it depends.

Kevin: 39:45

Well, of course. I mean, the, the biggest takeaway is it involves the person going through all the workouts because it has to work into you and, you know, your previous history of training and stuff like that as well. Like what is, what is the ultimate goal out of the race?

Angie: 40:02

Yeah. Absolutely. So we hope that you guys found this Intriguing and super helpful. Um, if you haven't yet, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts and share this podcast with a friend that you think could benefit from this information. Um, if you are interested in the academy and getting some help and getting some coaching to help you achieve your goals, uh, we are closed right now, but if you go over to real life runners. com forward slash academy, you can put your name on the waiting list so that you know, the next time that the academy is open and as always, Thank you for spending this time with us. This has been the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 353. Now get out there and run your life.