“Never Losing Anything” Canova / Between seasons

Yes. It's called an active base phase. You touch on all the systems, but not in anaerobic quantities so high it leads to overtraining, suppressed immune system, injury, etc.

This blog post gives a brief summary of Canova's base phase.

Marathon Training Methods by Renato Canova

Ok so: emphasize more mileage, short speed like strides, and easier longer tempos, and then touch LT and 5k pace on occasion so as not to lose it?

If I am used to a 45min LT run and 5x1mile at Vo2 as in-season staples do you think having weeks like this would make sense?

Mon - Easy + strides

Tues - MP tempo

Wed - Easy

Thurs - Easy + hill sprints

Fri - Easy + strides

Sat - Alternate between workout 1 & 2

Sun - Long Run

Workout 1 - 6 x 1mile @ LT

Workout 2 - 6 x 800m @ Vo2

Not frequently, but changes the mixture of ingredients, in the general stage which qualities are also abandoned for a short time but resumed in the fundamental phase. When shooting, in any case, are in the background compared to the general and fundamental qualities. If the athlete has had a very expensive marathon season, the general phase, can also last 8-10 weeks in which the main qualities become bio-mechanical now degraded and not metabolic.

Experienced athletes need to get away from two ideas that speak to the topic you’ve inquired about, concepts keeping you slower than you could be and never coming close to your true potential…

The first and most important idea that we as runners and endurance athletes as a whole hold on to this idea that one’s vo2max, and thus the maximal aerobic capacity of one’s aerobic engine, is genetically determined and can only be improved in the short term. The idea is that one will see a quick jump in their vo2 max during the “newbie gains” phase of one’s athletic development, and then you’ve reached your genetic ceiling with respect to vo2 max, which again would be the maximal aerobic capacity of your engine.

This idea of a “genetically fixed” vo2 max has become the general consensus in spite of it being a misrepresentation of what’s actually possible, (a hint, it can be developed long term). As a result of this misunderstanding, the training paradigms that are the norm will NOT focus on what is the key lever to improve all other physiological variables that impact performance in any endurance sport: vo2 max or said another way the aerobic capacity of one’s engine. Instead, training will focus on the levers that can improve performance in the short term but are ultimately limited by ones maximal aerobic capacity. This would be things like threshold/FTP/critical velocity, anaerobic abilities, running economy, etc…

To borrow an analogy, your vo2 max is the ceiling and let’s call the other big time driver of performance, threshold/FTP, the floor. It’s the “height” of the floor that is a better predictor of one’s race day performance BUT that doesn’t mean it’s the most important lever to train for long term progression. The floor can only be raised as high as one’s ceiling will allow; one can’t keep raising the floor (threshold) long term unless one raises the ceiling nor can it “push up” the ceiling. Conversely, raising the ceiling (aerobic capacity) can “pull” the floor up and/or make room for more one to keep pushing up the floor, (threshold).

Still, since we have this fixed and genetically determined mindset about vo2 max and the capacity of the aerobic engine, we focus our training on these physiological variables that can only improve as much as one’s aerobic capacity will allow. This leads to the second idea that a runner aspiring to continue to develop as an endurance athlete long term needs to get away from following and learn a different approach…

Since one embraces this misconception that they can not continue to develop their aerobic cavity long term, the focus instead gets shifted to training the their physiology that is ultimately constrained by their aerobic capacity. So what ultimately ends up happening is that the advanced athlete eventually ends up in this cycle of taking day their threshold to its absolute limit relative to one’s capacity and on the knifes edge of breaking down. This is the “macro cycle” where you are “peaking” for a key race and then “recovering” with the “necessary” time off after pushing their threshold to its absolute limit. This ultimately results in long term stagnation at best.

My view is that this would be quite different if we were to understand that one’s vo2 max can be developed long term, (great article from exercise physiologist Alan couzens showing evidence this is not only possible but normal with the proper training focused on long term development - https://simplifaster.com/articles/how-trainable-is-vo2-max/). If one could see that it’s possible to continue to progress the aerobic capacity long term then that would be the focus for their training 90% of the year. One would worry less about periodization schemes, peaking, taking time off, etc… and instead adopt a similar attitude to what Canova is saying and always look to add, not subtract. One would not give up their heard earned fitness with long periods of time off, and it wouldn’t feel necessary because the training was always progressive within the abilities of the athlete to recover. The recovery was “baked-in” already week in, week out.

I expect this likely to get a lot of pushback and happy to point folks to the evidence to support this heterodox idea. The problem is that there’s just not much long term studies out there on vo2 max, and the rate of improvement is quite rapid at first then slows dramatically BUT still improves nonetheless. You can look into famous Hickson study for instance showing that study participants continued to see vo2 max improvement after already seeing ~40% jump,

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Linear increase in aerobic power induced by a strenuous program of endurance exercise - PubMed

Eight subjects exercised for 40 min/day, 6 days/wk for 10 wk. For 3 days/wk they performed six 5-min intervals of bicycling on an ergometer against a resistance that elicited VO2 max, separated by 2-min intervals of exercise...

Link:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/838658/

The interesting point with this study too is that they stopped improving because they opted out of continuing with the rigorous (to put it mildly) routine and training protocol. This is another reason why we don’t see many people making these claims and building their training around it. The training to improve vo2 max for experienced athletes is HARD.

Thank you for the helpful post.

geometry dash

I remember reading a Ryan Hall interview once where he said he could barely run one mile at his marathon pace at the start of a training build-up.

You can't be very sharp all of the time. You still have "the thing you built" even if you can't hit your V02 for a few weeks/months.

I read the two links and found them informative, but it sounds like the first one is saying “Vo2 can keep being improved through a ton of easy and aerobic running” whereas your second link seemed to say “Vo2 improved drastically over 10 weeks when athletes were hammered with 6x5min @ Vo2 3x per week, and a 40 minute all out run 3x per week”

Am I reading those right?

Going to second what Progressive Aerobic Overload is saying. Didn't read the whole write up but Alan Couzens is a great resource for information like this. Has tons of data from athletes that he has trained over years and years. Not a short term study.

His twitter is also really informative.

I just give you my best experienced advice in this matter. Forget about base phase! Never lose what you have gain and just keep on improving . This is a little bit same philosophy as Canova even if he build in phases and I'm not.

All I gained from the Couzens article was that he trained them with a lot of easy running and Aerobic Threshold, which from what I understand. Would equate to Marathon Pace or what Canova often calls “Fundamental Tempo”

And who are you telling people to forget about base phase?

Just ignore him. It's that sad old Swedish guy who thinks he is a coach. He is mentally ill and needs professional help.

One of the world's very best now living coaches . But you and the big world of running don't know that yet. 😉

Best? You mean best at supporting doping and coaching a doper?

Ah yes. That's true.

First off 5-15% seems much lower than any place else I have seen for an untrained individual. That is like the improvement you get from going from 40mpw to 70mpw.

As far as the well trained guy who went up 40%, that is impressive. If most of it came from him losing 15kg from all the added training, not so much.

The second paper matches what I have seen in a lot of studies. The kicker is always the next 12 weeks. You get huge improvements in pretty much every study by adding intensity, but most also so the improvements really slow after 8-10weeks.

There are very few studies on elite athletes (versus undertrained people. Anyone is improving if you take them from 3 hrs/week to 6) and how to get them to improve. Maybe elite guys really should hammer 3xvo2 max to provide the stress need for improvement but I haven't heard of anyone surviving it. Maybe short periods (say 10 days with 4 vo2) might be survivable and give big improvements but I am suspect.