Alwyn Cosgrove’s blog: Improving Running Times

Q: How would you train for a 2.4km run (about a mile and a half)? My goal is to run the aforesaid distance under 10mins.A: Two basic methods:

1) Split the distance into four. So you’d run 600m intervals at a faster than race pace (so you’d be doing each one in well under 2:30). The idea being that you ‘d run the entire distance in an accumulative time of less than 10 mins. So you’d allow full recovery between efforts, and perform 4-5 sets. Each week – maintain your speed, but reduce the rest period by 15s. This should be do-able but it will be difficult.

2) Determine how far you can run at that pace (10 mins for 2.4km). Let’s say you can run 1.5km at that pace but then you start to tie up and slow down.

Then we work on running that shorter distance as fast as possible – full recovery, and repeating.

Once you can improve your time for that distance by 10% – we retest your ability to perform at that speed and start over.

The key to running faster is to spend time running faster Most people would approach this challenge by just trying to run 2.4km as fast as possible. The problem here is that it essentially “rehearses” and programs the body to perform at that slow speed.

We need to program the body to perform at a faster pace – so we break the distance up into more manageable “chunks” that allow you to run faster.–

AC
www.alwyncosgrove.com

Tags: Running

After a slow start this morning – I’d stayed up to watch the Friday night re-run of Law and Order. I know that I shouldn’t have done, but I wasn’t tired and I just didn’t have the motivation to go to bed. I knew that I’d pay the price this morning, but it was Saturday, so I gave in and slumped on the couch for another hour.

This morning it was back to the workout. I’d missed training properly for more than a week because I’d had a twinge in my right elbow. Just when I’d started to really upshift my routine, but I guess that carelessness caught up with me. I’d failed to rerack on the incline bench press a couple of weeks ago, just missed the hook on the right hand side and no matter what I couldn’t lift it that fraction of an inch to get it back there. I think that strained it, though it seemed OK and the following weeks workout just was too much.

So last week was an exploration of the cardio I’d been avoiding for the last few weeks. I need to do the cardio because I’ve gained a bit of fat and rather more important I run into oxygen debt too quickly when I’m lifting. It’s a hangover from being an asthmatic 120lb teenager, but I damaged my knee when I was younger and every time I’ve tried to get back into running it flares up. This time I’m sticking to the flat as I’m sure it was hills that caused the last flare up – I did it hill walking with a heavy backpack. So far this week I staggered round my course which must be something over two miles, first a mix of run and walk then last time I decided to just try a slow jog, because if I’m to upgrade to an interval routine on that route, first I need to be able to actually run it! That worked OK and took me nearly half an hour. That wasn’t so good, ten years ago, the last time I did any running I used to be able to do three miles comfortably in that time – but maybe I’m underestimating the distance – I can live in hope!

Today I did the last routine from the intermediate syllabus from Craig, the one that I should have done a week or so ago. I thought I’d finish it off just to test out my elbow and to get back into the swing of working out again, so I didn’t push it.

Superset 1
Barbell squat (I really need a rack so I can do this properly) 10 x 45, 10 x 55
Stability Ball rollout 20, 20.

I find the ball easy so I’m guessing that I’m doing it wrong

Superset 2
DB Reverse Lunge 5 x 45, 5 x 45
Side Plank, 30s, 30s

I took the plank easy, I don’t really want to build up endurance on it, so it’s time to upgrade it

Superset 3
DB Row 10 x 24, 10 x 24
Back extension 15, 15

I backed off a lot on the row in case it triggered my elbow. It seemed fine so instead I made the moves explosive which worked well enough.

I’m really starting to hit the limits on the weights and lack of rack. I’d like to be in a bulking phase now, but I just can’t do it. So instead I think I’ll have to continue with the conditioning exercises.

The jog I was expecting to be difficult and indeed the first half mile or so I could really feel the muscles around my knees twinging from the squats even though I’d not gone full out on them. When When I started the workout I’d been staring up at a bright blue sky covered with tiny little brilliant white clouds. By the time I was running it had clouded up and got a little bit chilly. That was good though and I was wearing my new shorts instead of the tracksters so it helped me stay cool.

The return leg of the route is really not my favourite. Not only is it uphill (just a gentle slope) but it’s along a main road and the air quality is not great. I’m going to have to change that I really am because I can’t imagine that it helps my residual asthma as I stagger along gasping for breath.

Surprisingly I beat my previous time by a couple of minutes. I guess that being better warmed up compensated for being a little more tired. The final uphill sprint of a couple of hundred yards almost killed me, which is how it should be. I really hated the return leg. Even though my breathing was keeping up, my legs hurt and I had to firmly shut away the thoughts of giving up. Exercising is hard work and sometimes it really isn’t enjoyable. But it’s good after, and I need to impress my younger girlfriend, so it’s worth it.

I had a lie down after I’d showered. That really took it out of me and that is what I need from a workout. If I don’t push my body then I’ve wasted the time and effort.

Lets see if I can cut down the time – that took two hours from start to finish, at least double the time it should have, but quite a bit of time was spent playing with kit and putting it away. It’s not good for optimal muscle building but I hope my improved cardio fitness will allow me to reduce my recovery time between sets so I spend less time gasping on the ground and more time changing weights!

David Butcher

Related Links:

• Muscle Transformation… Skinny to HUGE – The Man Whos Arms Exploded Part 1 The Man Whos Arms Exploded Part 2 The Man Whos Arms Exploded Part 3 The Man Whos Arms Exploded Part 4 The Man Whos Arms Exploded Part 5.

• MuscleDistrict.com » Blog Archive » 1988 to 2003 + 90lbs bigger – net : I’ve trained clean for more than 15 years. After many years of training I am still making progress (SLOOOOOOOW) and enjoying the ongoing challenge. I am well educated in the sciences and train both intelligently and intensely.

If you are sick of doing crunches and cardio without getting any results, without losing any belly fat, or without getting flat abs, then I have GREAT NEWS.

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Today I have guest post by Vince DelMonte, one of our trainers covering the topical subject of six pack abs.

6 Pack Abs – The Secret To 6 Pack Abs

By Vince DelMonte

Everywhere you turn, someone’s promising the next secret to getting 6 pack abs. Some of these so called ’secrets’ have some degree of accuracy, while others, not so much. Deciphering which are the best methods to getting 6 pack abs is going to be critical to your having success with this goal.

The biggest area you need to focus on when trying to obtain 6 pack abs is going to be on your diet. Like it or not, the old saying that ‘abs are made in the kitchen’, is probably one of the most truthful statements in the fitness industry. If your diet isn’t in line, your stomach is going to show it.

So, what should you be doing with your diet?

First, ensure you are getting enough protein. Not only is protein going to form the key building blocks you need to build muscle tissue, but it’s also going to provide you with a better feeling of fullness than eating just carbohydrates alone would for example. Protein is more expensive than any other macronutrient meaning that your body will burn more calories breaking down protein compared to carbs and fats.

Next, don’t be afraid of dietary fat that comes from primarily monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats such as olive oils, fish oils, a mix of nuts, natural peanut butter and avocado. While it’s true that eating fat will increase your calories fast, as long as you keep it between 20-30% it can be one of the best things to get 6 pack abs fast. The important point here is that dietary fat helps keep your insulin level stable, which, when high enough can actually cause fat gain itself.

Furthermore, dietary fat will keep you feeling the fullest for the longest duration in time; longer than both protein or carbohydrates would. Interestingly, some diets high in fat can get you 6 pack abs fast because your body learn to metabolize fat for energy.

So, while you do need to watch it, be sure you are getting some in your diet.

Finally, when it comes to carbohydrate intake and getting 6 pack abs, you want to focus most of your carbohydrate intake around the post workout period.

About the Author:
Vince DelMonte is the author of Your Six Pack Quest found at www.YourSixPackQuest.com; He specializes in helping chubby guys and gals get six pack abs without gimmicks, supplements or dieting.

So, you’ve decided that you want to improve your fitness, to not be the skinny guy whose only future is as a marathon runner?

Where do you start? I’ve been working on the goals that are a vital part, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make a start. If you’ve not been exercising for a while then it’s important to put your ego on one side and to be realistic. Getting a health checkup if you are over forty is a must unless you are sure about yourself.

My advice would be not go overboard, and I think a good start to get you into the swing of things is to take small steps. Small but intense steps. After a lay off of some time, I chose Craig Ballantyne as my trainer and I worked through his routines to tone up, get myself used to exercising again and most importantly to avoid injury by overtraining too much too fast.

Here is an example of his work, something that is short but as intense as you want to make it.

If you want to see more of his work, click here.

Tags: fitness, craig ballantyne, turbulence training

After some thought I realised that I’d leapt before looking with my last blog entry, but then I realised that I’d done so because that was how I often work. Sometimes you have an idea about what you want to do and you set goals around it. This gives you the motivation to then be more methodical about it. Setting a goal and then running after it is likely to end in tripping up because your eyes are on the horizon and not on the ground where you are running. In this video I’ve tried to address the background for the decision making process and give some logic to it, something that should help you to ensure that the goals are grounded in reality and that you have chance to check for obstacles before you start sprinting.

Here is a short video in the context of fitness for the skinny guy, the picture size is perhaps a little small but it was a balance of getting something small enough to play. Ah well, it’s all about learning and growth.

My thoughts for today revolve around goal setting and in particular, setting yourself long term goals. Fitness is for life, no matter what you are interested in, be it muscle or strength building, long distance running or whatever. If you’ve got a long term vision, and be prepared to be very courageous about setting that long term goal, then you can start working shorter term goals that work to achieve it. If you find yourself doing something that isn’t going towards your long term goal then it gives you a chance to pause and perhaps to change course. If you don’t have a long term goal then you may not realise that you in fact going round in circles or even worse going in completely the wrong direction!

When we finally make the plunge and start something new, it may be something that we’ve wanted to do for a while or perhaps it’s just something that has caught our attention, we often have a flush of enthusiasm about it. It’s interesting, fresh and perhaps we have some emotional attachment or commitment to it and I think that enthusiasm and emotions are very often interconnected because enthusiasm is an emotional response.

The problem with enthusiasm is that it’s a finite resource and after a few hours, a few days or perhaps a week or two our enthusiasm will wane and yet another unfinished project will bite the dust. Often we feel a little bit regretful, perhaps we feel guilty if it was something important to us so we try and revive it, but now we’ve lost the emotional push, the enthusiasm, and most likely the attempt will be in vain.

The answer is to understand that we have patterns to our behaviour, which I want to go into more detail in another time. The truth is that we are driven by habit far more than we realise or wish to admit. We might make excuses about preferences or external forces but the time we get up, the time we go to bed, the clothes we wear, what we eat and so forth often have a large part of habit about them. Rarely do we challenge our habits with any vigour because they are comfortable, we don’t have to think about them. That isn’t automatically a bad thing, but changing habits is quite hard and is likely to take at least three weeks of new behaviour, safer to say a month, before a new habit will replace the old. Hardly surprising then that a flush of enthusiasm doesn’t last long enough to really impact.

The solution is to plan for failure. We know that the enthusiasm will not be enough on it’s own and it certainly won’t last long enough. The biggest problem most of us face is that our lives are already full. In order to start something new, something old must give way, something we are in the habit of doing.

What we need to do is to focus the enthusiasm on changing our lives so that the new thing has a chance to grow, and not to use the enthusiasm to do the new thing. If we can restructure our lives or do whatever is necessary to allow the new thing to develop then we have a much higher chance of succeeding. Remember though that the enthusiasm won’t last long enough to maintain that lifestyle change, but success is more likely if we focus our attention on structure instead of on the project.

Today I thought I’d share an email I received from Dr Bryan Walsh. Now, you might wonder why I think it’s relevant, but I think that it has a couple of points that are key to the health and fitness of the skinny guy. I’ll say outright that there are some slightly dubious points about this piece of research, but the contentious points aren’t really related to the point in hand here.

Dear David,

Every time I turn around . . . it turns out my mother was right.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” she’d say. And she was right.

But she didn’t believe in breakfast for the reasons I’m about to tell you . . .

Earlier this week, researchers presented their findings that a big breakfast is important for . . . get this . . . losing weight.

Yes, you read that correctly. A big breakfast – as much as half your daily calories – can help you lose weight.

This means the “I’m going to skip breakfast today because I’m too busy” mentality is the exact opposite of what you need to be doing if you want to lose weight.

The Study

In this week’s annual Endocrine Society meeting, it was reported that obese women lost almost five times as much weight eating a large breakfast than did women eating a restrictive low carbohydrate one.

And just how much weight did these women lose? After eight months, women in the control group eating a restrictive low-carbohydrate breakfast lost an average of only 9 pounds. The women eating the “big breakfast” diet lost almost 40 pounds!

Forty pounds of weight loss over an eight month period by simply eating a big, balanced breakfast. Wow.

Why it works

According to researchers involved in this study, when you wake up in the morning, you are primed and ready to eat. If you eat right away, your body uses the food for energy and helps set your metabolic rate for the whole day. If you don’t eat however, your body starts looking for other sources of energy, namely your own muscle tissue. Then, later that day when you do decide to eat, your body is already in “energy saving mode” and stores what you eat as fat.

So based on this, researchers created what they called the “big breakfast” diet. Their breakfast, which accounted for a full 50 percent of the daily calories, included milk, 3 ounces of lean meat, two slices of cheese, two whole grain servings, one fat serving and one ounce of milk chocolate.

Now that’s what I call breakfast!

In fact, their “big breakfast” diet was almost 1,300 calories. A far cry from your typical coffee-and-bagel breakfast.

A bigger, better breakfast

While I philosophically disagree with their breakfast menu mainly because of the inclusion of dairy (far too many people are sensitive to it these days, causing gut inflammation and a host of other issues – see my previous post Dairy Does Not Do It), I love the fact that they have shown the importance of a big breakfast on weight-loss.

There are many ways to eat a “big breakfast” each morning, but here’s one example:

• 3 to 4 ounces of good-quality, organic meat (last night’s leftovers work well)
• a bowl of slow-cooked oatmeal with some flax seeds, coconut milk, a little honey, cinnamon and fresh berries
• Tea or black coffee

Again, there are many options but the point remains the same . . . a big, balanced breakfast, as much as half your daily calories, is a great way to start your day.

And your waist line may end up shrinking because of it.

Yours in health and happiness,

Bryan P. Walsh, ND

P.S. Please, share this information with your friends and family, and then have them visit www.fatisnotyourfault.com to sign up for future emails such as these. Skipping breakfast is one of the big myths of weight-loss and this study needs to be shared with people interested in losing weight.

Now, most of you aren’t going to be losing weight, but I think this strikes to the heart of why we have trouble gaining weight. I often read people commenting about fast metabolisms and the like, but I think that’s often just an excuse. Most are skinny because of poor nutrition. Gaining muscle is hard work. Make sure that you don’t allow your body to burn that hard won muscle because you can’t remember or be bothered, whichever is the case, to eat properly.