Can I do strides everyday

It depends on the intensity.

Its like asking if running 5 miles is a bad idea. If at an easy pace or at various paces, its fine. 5 miles at 10k pace every day is a bad idea though.

If your strides are 100% effort sprint, every day is a bad idea. If controlled, I wouldn't think they would hurt. I run strides most days.

I do 5x20s progressive to 90% effort with 20-30s walk rest. It is not very taxing so doing it every day would work. I don't do it after workouts. See no point

On easy, recovery, and long run days I put in 8x100m strides at the end. I start out slow, build up, then slow back down. Usually takes around 28-30 seconds. I go on the minute (30-32 seconds rest). I feel that this has helped my form a lot since I'm hyper focused on it during the strides.

If my legs are toast the day after a hard session I will avoid strides as I feel like it's when I might pick up a hamstring or calf strain. Any other day I add strides if I feel like it. I generally include them as a part of a warm up for interval sessions.

In general, yes. When in shape and racing fast, I was doing 5–10 strides on all my easy days. 100m with a gentle rolling start, usually pretty fast by the end, casual walk back to start line for recovery. Intensity varied greatly between days. Some days, if I felt super fresh, my first stride might be 14s and my final strides would be in the 12s range. If I was feeling beat up from yesterday's workout, I might just do a handful of strides and it wouldn't be unusual if I barely went faster than 16s for them. At that point I like to think of it as more of a "loosen up the gait" than "practice your speed and technique", if that makes sense.

FartKing69 wrote:

I like to think of it as more of a "loosen up the gait" than "practice your speed and technique", if that makes sense.

This. Strides at the beginning warm up the muscles. Strides after a workout help remove some of the inevitable stiffness that occurs after a workout.

Runners tend to think that more is better. More is not better. Faster is not better. Strides are like drills. Use them wisely

I do a few easy strides before intervals and even fewer and easier before an easy run, but I do them. I love to do some slow intervals barefoot on the grass after a hard track workout, but sometimes walking off the track to my car is all I can handle.

runslower wrote:

Is this a bad idea?

Yeah

No, you'll die.

Depends where you are in your training cycle, and what type of racing you do. If you are running track and doing intervals, for sure. 6 x 100 slowly building to race pace before the main intervals of your workout. This after a warmup run of course.

Longer road races, strides are great from 6 - 8 weeks out as you do more speed work.

FartKing69 wrote:

In general, yes. When in shape and racing fast, I was doing 5–10 strides on all my easy days. 100m with a gentle rolling start, usually pretty fast by the end, casual walk back to start line for recovery. Intensity varied greatly between days. Some days, if I felt super fresh, my first stride might be 14s and my final strides would be in the 12s range. If I was feeling beat up from yesterday's workout, I might just do a handful of strides and it wouldn't be unusual if I barely went faster than 16s for them. At that point I like to think of it as more of a "loosen up the gait" than "practice your speed and technique", if that makes sense.

this is correct. With particular emphasis on the last two sentences. No reason you can't do what I used to call "pick-ups" on mellow/recovery days but, as several have mentioned, zero reason to run *hard* strides the day after a workout, just do mellow pickups. So yes, you can do "Strides" every day.

runslower wrote:

Is this a bad idea?

You've already gotten some good advice on this above, so I won't elaborate too much. But, strides aren't supposed to kill you. The point is to loosen up, get some leg turnover, wake up some of those fast twitch fibers and keep your legs fresh.

If you're doing them all out and feeling terrible during and after, you're probably not doing them right. Strides are supposed to make you feel good, not destroyed.

I don't think there's anything necessarily bad about doing them everyday, except for asking, why are you doing nothing but strides every day, and not mixing it up with some other workout types that could work on some aspects of running fitness not stimulated well with strides?

maybe a dumb question. But for those that do 100's at the end of an easy day, how do you figure your distance of 100 meters? by eyesight? Pick a spot that looks like a football field away?

Mickk Jogger wrote:

maybe a dumb question. But for those that do 100's at the end of an easy day, how do you figure your distance of 100 meters? by eyesight? Pick a spot that looks like a football field away?

I'm prepared for all the flak I'll receive for this statement. I'm a bit more than 2 miles away from a nice big park and a track. So almost every run I go to the park, run around, stop at the track and do drills and strides, then run the ~2 miles back. I don't have a good location to do drills/strides near my current apartment. Soon I'll have a house on a quiet street, I plan on just picking some landmarks: mailboxes, telephone poles, driveways, whatever, and using that for all my strides.

Mickk Jogger wrote:

maybe a dumb question. But for those that do 100's at the end of an easy day, how do you figure your distance of 100 meters? by eyesight? Pick a spot that looks like a football field away?

I don't know how they do it, but you could achieve nearly the exact same result by running short bursts of say 15 or 20 seconds.

sometimes i count footfalls. left foot hits ground 45 times = roughly 30 seconds. close enough. for 100 meter strides you could count 25. you could also just go by time on the watch, or just wing it. one other thing i sometimes do is do a stride the length of my block. blocks in my city are 1/8th of a mile in the north-south direction. so they're a good length for a long-ish stride.

If they are done where they last less than 12 sec and you get enough recovery it should be less than s 24 hour recovery.

- I ran 8x100m strides with 100m recovery (1600m) in 4:59-5:02 in practice on all the easy days;

- I ran 8x100m strides with 100m recovery (1600m) in 5:05-5:08 after the run on easy days; no strides after the hard days.

This added some needed turnover and enabled me to switch gears more effectively in races.

My junior season prior to the focus on strides (and other developmental areas):

4:21.43 - 1:57.95 - 9:29.21

Senior year, after strides + focused workouts:

4:13.63 - 1:54.68 - 9:14.55

I saw a remarkable improvement in other teammates as well (down to 4:19.4, 4:29.5, 4:33.6) adding those strides and some 1,600m ladders (400 on 200 off; 200 on; 200 off; 400 on) in 4:44-4:48 ish into the main staple of workouts.

Good luck

fisky wrote:

This. Strides at the beginning warm up the muscles. Strides after a workout help remove some of the inevitable stiffness that occurs after a workout.

My coach (a 400 runner and hurdler) has always said that, and sprinters and 400 runners do them at the end of a workout. This makes a lot of sense to me, as if your entire workout totalled a few hundred metres, it was their version of a cooldown jog.

As a 1500-and-up type, I always found doing them at the end of a long/hard workout a bit strange. They would not be run with good form. It made a lot more sense doing 3-4 good strides just before the first long rep of the session.