READ THIS

This is an article out of the crossfit journal. It is very informative. Think about if you wife/husband says you are training to much? Wouldn't you like to make them happy? And yes also get your training in also. Well It is a win win. 

check out crossfit endurance.

In reflecting on the CrossFit Certification seminar I

recently attended at North Santa Cruz, these words

still ring in my ears like Christmas bells: “Increased

work capacity across broad time and modal

domains, increased work capacity across broad time

and modal domains, increased work capacity across

broad time and modal domains.”

The same weekend as the cert, three of the athletes I

train were running the New York Marathon. They all

finished and felt as though they had not really done

a marathon, unlike many marathoners who train

only long distances for long hours. At my training

business, we start with technique with everyone

we train. We teach each of them to squat, deadlift,

snatch, and jump. It does not stop there. We look

at their ability to keep a foot underneath themselves

when running and how quickly they can “pull” it up

off the ground as they move forward. This is the

most effective approach to improving running that I

have found, and as their speeds and paces get more

impressive, the better the athletes get at correcting

their technique in all sports as they begin to adjust

to the neurological patterns associated with proper

form.

Once we are comfortable with the technique we

Increase the work capacity. It’s about power! Time

to get serious. Typically, soreness follows, which is

to be expected but often comes as a surprise to

the non-weightlifting individual. I always laugh at this,

because most endurance athletes don’t connect that

soreness with their other experiences. For example,

when their legs are shot at the end of a marathon,

they tend to think it is somehow “aerobically”

related. So, even though they could not be more

wrong, they typically respond by increasing training

miles to try to get muscle and tissue breakdown to

stop. However, we go in the opposite direction: we

CrossFit them! Then, once we’ve increased work

capacity, we can focus on results, because if we

are going to train someone for something that is

ultimately what we are looking for, right?

Sample endurance training program

Since my first article on endurance training in the

November 2007 issue of the CrossFit Journal, I’ve

received numerous questions and inquiries from

people who’d like more information on the what

and how of our philosophies and using CrossFit in

training for longer-distance events. I wish I could have

some program that would look at each individual

and spit out a tailor-made program. Unfortunately I

don’t have that and I can’t just put out a month-long

program based on your needs and your energy and

what you can and can’t handle without looking at

what happens to you in training.

What I can do here, though, is to break down the

last five weeks of training we used for an athlete

preparing to run a hilly 50k (that’s 31.2 miles, with

5,490 feet of climbing) as his first long-distance race.

This particular guy—we’ll call him “Rookie”—was a

newcomer to these kinds of distances. The longest

run he had ever done was 15 miles, and before

beginning this program, he was not even actively a

runner. We implemented the plan below for the

last five weeks of training before race day, and,

on November 18, he completed his 50k with no

problems.

Please keep in mind that this program is not

developed specifically for you: it is developed for this

particular person. You will need to look at what you

can handle. This means several things. Can you make

your intervals (speed and recovery); are you losing

strength, power, speed, flexibility; are you sleeping,

eating, and feeling good? (Negative replies in these

areas are all indicators of overtraining.) If these are

not, you have to change something! Please beware

and understand that this program is for someone

who has been conditioned to handle CrossFit and a

running program.

We started Rookie off by figuring out how much

running he could handle in terms of speed, pace, and

hill work. The Tabata run substituted for hill training

in the end, but we started out using 100-meter hills

that were run fast, with a very high cadence. Then

we started having him do 1.2-mile hill climbs at about

a 6 percent grade. The speed work is based off of

time trials he did in the beginning and throughout

the training. Each time his PR went up in a specific

run, or when he could recover in less than 1:15 from

intervals and hill repeats, we increased the intensity/

paces.

If you do Tabata runs, leave your ego out of it. Start

slow and scale up. I’ve had people fly off the backs

of treadmills trying to prove something and failing

miserably. Running at a 12 percent grade on a

treadmill at 10 miles per hour will crush anyone if

they are not ready for it and their form is off. The key

to the Tabata run is to keep your cadence incredibly

high (110+ foot strikes per foot per minute). To