With Coach Kelvin, offering Online Running Coaching for We Run and the We Run Virtual Running Club, and 1:1 Running Coach for Leeds and surrounding areas.
What Do We Mean by Workout Frequency?
Hi folks, it’s Kelvin here, We Run coach for Leeds and surrounding areas as well as online coaching.
In this little video, I’m gonna talk about workout frequency, and when we say workout, I’m talking about a run that has a little bit of intensity in it or it’s a longer run. These harder efforts are then padded out by other runs to get that weekly volume.
Why Most Runners Use a Seven Day Cycle
It’s really common for a whole number of reasons to work on a seven day cycle. More often than not, that’s people’s work life – maybe working Monday to Friday with the weekend off. That means they can do a longer run or a workout on a weekend, and coaches programme in a seven day cycle.
One of the reasons that works from a physiological standpoint as well is we usually need about two to three days to recover from a slightly harder workout.
An Example Training Week
I’ll use myself as an example. I do a recovery run on a Monday. I do easy with some strides and maybe a little bit of steady running on a Tuesday depending how I’m feeling. I might just keep that easy with strides.
I add some sort of intensity on a Wednesday. I take Thursday as my day off, and then I kind of repeat that. So Friday is super easy. Saturday is easy with strides, and Sunday I do a longer run or a mid length run with maybe a little bit of tempo in there.
What I’m trying to do there is make sure that I am recovered enough to get the best out of my workout on a Wednesday, and then I don’t beat my body up so much that I can’t complete my longer run or my mid length run on a Sunday or maybe a Saturday depending on how that works.
Adjusting Workouts When Recovery Is an Issue
What I wouldn’t do is elongate that seven days if a runner was struggling to recover from those workouts. So say we were programming something for a runner and they were really finding that they came to Sunday’s long run and the legs were still feeling a little bit too beaten up from an interval session on a Wednesday, I would adjust the intensity of the Wednesday workout.
I wouldn’t just go, let’s not do the long run on a Sunday, let’s do the long run on the Monday or the Tuesday and start to stretch it out. That could work for some runners – some runners that work shifts, maybe some runners who are retired who don’t really have a seven day schedule.
But the truth is we really want two to three days rest between each strongest training stimulus.
Why I Use a Seven Day Cycle in TrainingPeaks
The other reason I work on a seven day cycle is the platform that I use to schedule workouts, TrainingPeaks, works on seven day cycles. I’m just gonna show you around that with a quick screen recording to help you understand why I use seven day cycles and not 10 or 12 day cycles.
So this is my training on TrainingPeaks. There are a lot of other platforms that coaches use to schedule workouts, but I believe they’re all fairly similar. Some people might find this quite interesting as a little standalone section of the video.
That’s my training and the things that I’ve completed. I won’t go into that too much. But the things that lend themselves to why I work on seven day cycles with both myself and the runners are that if I go into my dashboard, everything’s by week.
So longest workout, I can easily see trends and adherence on a weekly basis. If that was to stagger over more than a week, it would be a little bit more difficult to see. Things like distance per week, timing, heart rate zones, timing, speed zones are all done by week, so it makes it very easy for me to see at a glance what’s going on for a runner.
Elevation gain and timing and heart rate zones are shown for a time period. I’ve got a 12 month time period up here. I can choose whatever I want or custom dates. This wouldn’t make a difference how many weeks people were cycling their training in because it’s just time in heart rates over that period of time. But again, this is a useful tool that I can pull up – maybe the last three months, the last month, the last six months or even 12 months of a runner’s time in heart rate zones to make sure that we’ve got the right intensity distribution to help a runner move towards their goals.
Fitness History and Weekly Trends
The other thing that’s interesting is fitness history. This is done on heart rate and training stress score, and I can have my 60 minute, 20 minute, five minute, one minute and five second power. It’s how much time I’ve held that heart rate for as a maximum in that time period.
If we zoom in a little bit on my 60 minute power – one 70 heart rate held for 60 minutes – that’s only five beats below my lactate threshold two. There are two races and I can click on that and go into the race to see the workout.
Because this is weekly, I can see that this is gradually decreasing from those races, which is what I’m wanting at the moment. Even over the last four weeks – 78, 79, 64, 63 – 20 minute power is decreasing, and that’s because I’m going into more of a base building phase where I’m easing back on the intensity and adding in more volume.
So the weekly view really helps me look for these trends. Below the grey line is monthly and above that is weekly. That training load over the last four weeks is what I’m gonna feel in my legs at the moment, so it’s important for me to have an accurate grasp of that.
Training Stress Score and Load Management
If we drop back to my calendar, TrainingPeaks and other platforms work out a training stress for each workout that’s based on training zones. You do have to have your training zones set correctly to a certain degree, but maybe not something I’m gonna go into now.
If we look at my training zones, I know that these are set correctly and my threshold heart rate – which is my LT two lactate threshold two – is also set correctly.
When I build a workout for myself or a runner – one mile easy, five mile tempo which is zone three, one mile easy – it allocates a percentage of threshold heart rate. Zone two is a certain percentage of threshold heart rate, zone three, zone four, zone five and so on. It gives me a training stress score, which I’ve got set on heart rate training stress score. You can set it on pace for those that run on flatter surfaces or those that don’t have a chest strap or an optical armband.
That workout gave me a planned workout of 65 as a training stress score, and when I did the workout, it gave me 61, which is very accurate. So each workout gives me an accurate training stress score.
What’s really interesting is it then gives me that weekly so I can work out if I’m trying to increase training load over a period of time. I can look at the training stress score of 2 92, then the next week 4 0 9, then the next week 4 43. I’m trying to accumulate load through those weeks in that training block.
It’s just another tool that I can use to see if I’m doing more time or more time at intensity. The algorithm is accurate because it is using my actual data.
We can even use this as a tool for those that don’t even use a Garmin watch. If someone’s still using a Timex watch, we can still use TrainingPeaks because all of those metrics can be inputted manually.
Wrapping Up
I’m gonna stop that for now. There’s quite a lot there, and I’d love some questions on TrainingPeaks or workout frequency.
I hope that all makes some sort of sense and I know there’s quite a lot in there. If you’ve got any questions, please pop them down in the comments below. And for now, happy running.
