Lol. That last one is two and half hours?
Better be fucking good.
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I’ve listened to all of them twice. The first two probably have the most practical information.
Also you can skip to the practical stuff if you want. He has detailed show notes with timestamps of everything they talk about.
That whole podcast is great. Some of the subjects I’m not interested in, like cancer. But of the subjects I am interested in I love hearing Peter Attila’s take on them.
He’s not afraid to question the status quo or conventional wisdom on any issue, including hit button topics. But he also understands science and knows how to interpret/evaluate scientific studies. Which makes him a flying unicorn that farts rainbows.
“I don’t have time to waste on frivolous internet videos” says the person that posts regularly on UP.
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Well there you go, posting on UP is obviously far from frivolous!
I’ve been taking about 10 days between muscle groups. I was doing seven days for a while but I don’t think I was getting enough recovery and stagnated. I’m more or less following the principles of this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength-Training/dp/0071597174
Rough takeaway is that warm up sets are mostly irrelevant and most of the gains are realized in getting close to failure. So one slow and very intense set to failure will get you most of the benefit of a longer workout. And then adjust your recovery time to what feels right, but no less than a week. It’s a pretty funny way to work out, I’m doing three exercises for two minutes each at most, then I’m done. Literally in and out of the gym in ten minutes. Then five days later, three more exercises. Bench, military press, leg press one day. Then seated row, pull down, and ab machine five days later.
I’m definitely not saying it’s for everyone or it’s the best method (the author isn’t arguing this either btw) but it does get results and you can’t beat the time efficiency.
This kind of goes against my experience with 531. It was only adding significant volume that helped me get over a plateau.
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I have a LOT of time for frivolous internet videos. I just want to use that frivoling wisely.
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You should watch 3 hours of YouTube videos about time management so that you don’t waste 2.5 hours watching @suzzer 's video.
“Waste”?
Suzzer can hear you. Hes. Right. There.
I think weight lifting is heavily underrated as a whole and for me personally. It’s benefits on your heart, bones, joints and confidence isn’t comparable to cardio. Like Layne said, you’re going to hurt anyways when you get old so you might as well be strong.
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I think I’m one of the oldest guys here, going on 65, and I just want to let you know that chronic pain is not inevitable. I have no pain. I lift three times a week, three sets on most exercises, ten reps, not too heavy and do not push to failure very often. Any pain in my neck or back is just routine stuff that comes around occasionally and is not severe. It goes away. Friends near my age who don’t lift seem to have a lot more routine pain than I do, because like I said, I have none.
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Yeah, this is absolutely not a coincidence. Resistance training is incredibly effective.
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Ya Huberman Lab has done some podcasts regarding aging, and resistance training seems to be the absolute best way to combat it.
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whelp time to start researching all the different peptides https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm5vLDR2rXk
For teh fitness enthusiast that already has everything they want
Good luck for Chicago. I hear that’s supposed to be a great race and a flat course.
I bought another running book based on a good review from Reddit: Hansons First Marathon. This has some lower mileage versions of the more well known Hanson plans, and I think one of those will be a better fit for me than the other plans that I’ve been considering it. I also think I’ll need to modify the plan somewhat, but I’m getting a little more comfortable with that after reading the sections in the book about how the plan is designed and the purpose of each type of run. I’ve also been diving into the Daniels’s book for a more technical discussion of training.
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long post about comparing marathon plans
Pfitzinger, Daniels, Hanson, and some others are all good. Deciding mostly comes down to how you gauge the relative importance of long runs and tempo runs and VO2 max stuff, which has more to do with what kind of runner you are. Whether you do better with relatively low/high mileage, how you like to arrange rest days, what kind of speedwork you respond best to, etc.
A big challenge of racing your first few marathons is the trial and error of answering this stuff. Long runs are a great example. Yep the risk/reward for long runs starts tipping against most people between 2.0-2.5 hours. Which is huge because staying healthy is by far the most important thing. But it’s not the only thing; for my own marathon training I do at least one or two 24 milers because for me they feel indispensable, but I’d prob feel differently if they took four hours. And I’m sure somewhere out there is some ridiculous sub-2:20 guy who swears his secret is no long runs longer than 18. My god the woman who finished second in NCAA XC this year did it on four weekly runs totaling ~25 miles + a ton of crosstraining. Meanwhile the woman who finished first averaged 90 miles/week. In that crowd 90 is standard, 25 is crazy. They’re both utterly elite. Would 25/week woman have done better at 50 or 100? Beats me.
Sounds like you already did what I’d advise: to spend a couple quiet hours staring at different plans and fishing around online and trying to imagine what the calendar and key workouts of each plan would actually feel like to live through…and then to just pick the one you have the best feeling about. (While also feeling free to steal any part of any other plan that you think sounds awesome! Because these plans aren’t commandments. And to push the point, why are we even running these plans on seven-day cycles? Because Babylon? I’d bet I’d do better on a nine-day cycle.)
If you’ve landed on the Hanson, that’s awesome. If you were choosing completely blind then I’d vote Pfitzinger—as long as you can start with enough of a base. His plans are broadly successful (and you’ll be able to find lots of discussion about them on reddit etc), but they’re tough and can overtrain folks who come in without enough base. For his 18/55 I think you’d be ok at 35/week but it would be better if you went into Week One comfy with 40-45. Which you could absolutely do between now and then. Btw I think most everyone should ditch Higdon (which is definitely too basic for you).
I know it’s an eyeroll but the key point here is that 95% of the marathon fitness you show up with on race day will come down to really basic stuff. Running more often and building your mileage responsibly, i.e. without getting hurt or worn out, that’s the point. So in that spirit, as you’re adding weekly mileage between now and July, I’d consider backing off every third or fourth week (dropping mileage to ~67%-75% of a normal big week). And always be vigilant that you’re not running your easy days too hard—imo this is maybe the most costly mistake that most people make. And get enough sleep. And eat enough calories, especially when recovering from bigger workouts. There are tons of ways to get faster, but the easiest is to just keep consistently running. And if that’s true then we should be basing most of our training decisions around staying healthy and lively.
(definitely there are exceptions and imo “everything in moderation, including moderation” is the ultimate winning training plan. But it takes experience to know the right moments to go apeshit, and even for seasoned maniacs, 95% of their marathon fitness will still come down to the same basic principles, i.e. staying fit so that they can simply run A LOT between now and then.) (While also keeping in mind that serious fitness doesn’t happen in one training cycle; it takes years to build a deep aerobic base. So for example, runners who can’t choose between pfitzinger 18/55 and pfitzinger 18/70 should almost always choose the lower. They should crush the 18/55 and then run the 18/70 in a year or whenever it obviously makes sense. Marathon training punishes people who chronically push their luck.)
I’m sure I’ve linked it before but I think McMillan has a lot of good things to say about base training. Imo there’s nothing wrong if you just did pure base building from now through June. If you’re getting antsy before June then throw in a fun 5K or some rando speed workouts. In April/May consider adding some more structured strides to the ends of some workouts. In May/June consider adding another occasional strength building / injury-preventing thing (I’m a fan of Brad Hudson’s short hill sprints) once or twice a week. You want to start the marathon plan feeling rested, but ideally also feeling comfy running ~75% of your planned peak weekly mileage. I just made the 75% up, but thinking about it a little, eh that’s not a bad benchmark.
more good news: imo that time predictor calculator you linked feels way off. The majority of runners who train reasonably for both the half and the full, and who run the actual race with reasonable tactics, will run a faster marathon than that calculator is predicting.
For android/chromebook here’s a pace calculator app that I use all the time. If that doesn’t work then the standard pace calculator recommendation is mcmillan’s; it’s clogged up with a lot of bs now but you can still power through the forms and get free predictions in a minute or two. Good luck dude!
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Thanks. A lot to digest here, and I will probably come back with a longer answer later.
Right now my plan is mainly to base build for the next couple months. I signed up for a 10K in mid June to help assess my fitness before starting marathon training in earnest, and I’ll do some VO2 max and threshold work ahead of that.
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Just felt a bit of a pop in my mid back while doing squats. It’s similar to injuries I’ve had in the past but it’s never happened mid-lift like this. It’s pretty bad and I’m headed to the ER for the first time ever.
Can’t wait to flush my future down payment savings fund down the drain because of a fucking workout injury.
Oof. Sorry to hear this. It can happen to anybody. A trainer at my gym who can probably squat 300 pounds pretty easily injured his back just moving an unloaded barbell for a client.