How to train like Parker Valby for injury prone runner

Running should be ‘the five paces’, and cross train the rest. Only run the amount of ‘the five paces’ that you can tolerate, before bumping it up.

Look up Horwill’s ‘five paces’.

Valby uses the arc trainer, not the elliptical. Big diff.

Ok didn’t realize it was that different. Was mainly asking how I could incorporate cross training into my running schedule where I’ll only run a few days a week? And how much?

What I’ve been doing and what I’ve found works for me is during a regular training week I like to do my runs on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (long run and two workout sessions). On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, I like to get in the elliptical at a pretty decent resistance level and on days where I’m not busy with work or other things I stay on it for 45 minutes straight. It doesn’t sound like much but if you put in enough effort it leaves you drenched in sweat and breathing heavy. I’ve found that it’s helped give me that aerobic benefit that I would get on a regular run minus the impact and load your body would normally be taking. On Sunday I either rest or ride my bike for an easy hour. I hope this helps, I’m still fairly new to this training method so I understand it’s probably not the most ideal setup but it’s been helping me stay injury-free on my running days.

Thank you. I think workouts running and easy runs cross training like you do is best. While injured I do 9 hours a week of crosstraining. Would 4 hours crosstraining and 15-20 miles be good for a HS girl? Most mileage I’ve ever done is about 40-45mpw.

This is the best answer. Anything non-race specific should be done in a form of training that doesn't cause injury risk. For most people, this is still running, but with your history, this is obviously not the case.

Depending on who you ask, Elliptical (time spent exercising) is only worth about 50-80% of Running (again, time spent) at a similar effort. Because using the Elliptical is much less weight bearing (also why you get that 50-80% idea), your max heart rate is also probably lower on it, meaning equivalent efforts happen at lower heart rates (think 3-7% of your max lower, or 5 - 15 bpm).

Training theory still holds, easy days need to be (relatively) easy, but because you're using a metabolically easier training method, you need to increase the time spent 20-50%. So, if your regular easy day is 60 min at 145 bpm, on the elliptical this would be 72-120 min @ 140 bpm, however, this is where your own trial and error comes in. Because you are not training for a race that requires racing for that length of time, you may be better off increasing the intensity (still aerobic) in order to make it more race specific. This means you may be better off having a "tempo" day to recover, such as the equivalent to 30-45 min @ marathon pace (running, roughly 175 bpm), meaning 36-90 min at that same intensity (maybe 170 bpm).

No one has all the answers, but basically trial and error/personalization is king, if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, try something else (which you're already about to do). Just remember that if you're training the aerobic "base", you don't necessarily need to be sport specific (same muscle group helps though), whereas if you are training aerobic/anaerobic race specific work, then sport specific exercise will always be the best option.

Good luck! Also, check out this website/pdf, a double Olympic gold medalist in long distance speed skating shared his training doing this method as well (and he trained A LOT) :

howtoskate.se

How to skate a 10K

How to skate a 10k… and also half a 10k by Nils van der Poel.

Link:www.howtoskate.se/

I intend to do whatever Parker does. And I am really hoping to bump into her somewhere.

First start with the basic structure of a microcycle, i.e. training week. You should do at least half of the week running (sport specific). So if you train 6days/week, at least 3 days should be running. Than plan how much hours per week you can spend for training. E.g 6h/week. Then think if you can stand 3h of running without injury. Can you do it hard or do you need also easy running to survive? And so on, top down method.

She swims too, I believe she said 40 minutes at a time on days when she uses the arc trainer.

Nils van der Poel is great. On one hand, I think bike is probably more specific to skating than it is to running. On the other hand (and I surely appreciate that he made this point), if you're gonna put in that kind of volume you gotta train in a way you don't hate, so OP may want to consider spending some easy time on the bike in order to get out of the basement. Or an Elliptigo like Meb!

This has not been my experience at all using the elliptical. In fact, equivalent efforts tend to have a higher heart rate than running to the tune of ~10 bpm. On the stationary bike I have to work hard to maintain the same HR as I would for running, but definitely not on the elliptical.

Ok. It’s quite simple. You can do all of your easy running and long runs on the elliptical, because it’s pretty much proven to reap the same benefits as easy running.

You still need to do session milage though, but I’d recommend switching all of it onto the treadmill. It’s much more forgiving than outside. You should be able to get away with doing hill reps outside, but just avoid 200s and 100s in general because they’re pretty useless for building fitness and just not viable on treadmill. The rest should take care of itself

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've got a few kids on my HS team who really struggle to stay healthy. I dropped a couple of them down to 3 days per week and they ended up finishing the season with solid PRs.

Sorry about that, Accidentally posted a response with no response.

Our school has a couple of crappy ellipticals and low end spin bikes. This is probably more than many high schools can offer, but less than the top, well heeled schools can. We've made a mixture of circuit training and bike/elliptical for our injury prone kids.

Circuits are body weight type exercises that will get the heart rate up. Think: Lunges, jump squats, burpies, push ups, air squats, various core type stuff......We'll do circuits with 30 seconds on/30 off for sets of 15 minutes. When kids go on the bikes or ellipticals, it's either easy recovery type stuff or threshold interval type stuff.

When we run, it's usually pretty fast. Sometimes, it's just relaxed strides on the grass for stride mechanics. Sometimes it's a 20 minute threshold effort run. Sometimes it's CV type intervals for a total of 15 hard minutes. Rarely, it's hard 800s with full recovery. I guess that would be 4 or Horwill's 5 paces.

Mostly we've been feeling our way along and trying to do enough focused running to address biomechanics and filling in with the other stuff to keep HR elevated long enough to reap aerobic benefits.

If you don’t mind, what are decent PRs that you mean?

I think the problem here is you’re doing way too much harder stuff. If you’re mainly running 800s it would maybe be different..

But in order to handle hard training you need the base, like 80% give or take of low (actually low) HR running/cross training. Biking is ok, but it doesn’t translate too well to running without additional stimulus. And the circuit training you mention doesn’t seem like it would really have positive impacts on running

40 minutes in the pool but some or all of it is aqua jogging.

tiktok.com

all the pretty girls cross train @parkervalby

anna hall

all the pretty girls cross train @parkervalby

Link:www.tiktok.com/@annaa.hall/video/72086...

It definitely seems time for some experts to put out free Internet training plans that use arc trainers in the plans.

Daniel’s could add a chapter on how to expertly substitute in the following for runner’s who aren’t currently too injured to run but want to maximize cardio volume:

eliptical

arc trainer

bike

pool running

swimming

alter g / lever, etc.

For example, are the above just zone 2 easy substitutes or can you get in your threshold or speed works on one of them? How?

The basic concept is simple for (most) people to understand (unless they are a deranged troll on this site):

-a runner can increase their amount of total training volume at elevated heart-rate, with the addition of cross-training, that they would not be able to do strictly by just running more before breaking down.

There are an infinite permutations and ways to do that, and coming up with what works best for an individual to improve their fitness shouldn’t be difficult to figure out.

But it’s Valby’s specific training protocolthat people are interested in. There is probably a market selling copies of her training log, maybe in the form of an inspirational book.