Training can be simplified into two main components:
- Stacking & Funneling
- In part 1 of this series, I will be looking at the idea of stacking.
What is stacking?
Stacking is simply the day upon day, week upon week, month upon month, year upon year layering of runs and supplementary work. It's the donkey work. The stuff no one makes YouTube videos about. The daily getting out and working out. Running, hiking, biking, whatever it looks like for you, setting up a foundation of fitness that will enable you to do the "fancy" workouts. Arthur Lydiard is well known for always saying, "You need to do the training, to do the training".
And that is what stacking is, by daily applying placing a physical demand on the body, you are developing your cardiovascular systems, energy systems, muscular-skeletal strength and neuromuscular coordination, to be able to manage, and gain the benefit from, the more intense, race-specific workouts. The more solid and higher your stack, the higher the "peak" you can take your body to.
Referring to the picture of the cairn at the top of this blog, you can see that they first laid the big bulky ugly rocks down, which formed the foundation for the finer, "fancier" rocks to be stacked on top of without falling over.
Again, looking at the cairn, with time, if left alone, it will start to topple over. It is the same with running. You might have heard of "don't use it, loose it". Unfortunately, when we regularly have long gaps between training, our stack keeps rising and falling, meaning we are never on a strong fitness level, to build the work that will raise our performance to where we want it to be, and we feel "stuck", or you hear people say "I am just not fast" etc. Similarly, we marvel at older runners, who with little to no "fancy" training, are able to run incredible times. Why? If you look at their history, they have built an incredibly high stack over the years from daily running, plus, you will find they are still in the habit of week in and week out, getting out and working out.
Does that mean we should never rest? Certainly not. Rest days and off seasons are important for healthy and fast running. The mistakes I see many recreational runners making though are:
1. Too many gaps in their weekly training. They just don't workout often enough, so their stack is small and holey.
2. Too many long breaks in the year. Stack is always rising and falling.
3. Trying to do the "fancy" work, without the foundation to handle it.
Do we stack for parts of the year and then funnel?
No, we are always stacking. The finer details of some workouts change as we move through the different phases of the year, but one thing never changes, getting out every day, and running.
Look out for part 2, where I will delve into funneling which is the "fancy" stuff, to get you to your goal. (if you are stacking!). For now, go RUN!
Need help building your training to achieve those performances? Check out our virtual 1-on-1 coaching package.
Onwards and upwards!
Coach Kathleen
Active4Life School of Running
Cape Town, South Africa