• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Breaking Muscle

Breaking Muscle

Breaking Muscle

  • Fitness
  • Workouts
    • Best Shoulder Workouts
    • Best Chest Workouts
    • Best Leg Workouts
    • Best Leg Exercises
    • Best Biceps Exercises
    • Best Kettlebell Exercises
    • Best Back Workouts
    • Best HIIT Workouts
    • Best Triceps Exercises
    • Best Arm Workouts
  • Reviews
    • Supplements
      • Best Pre-Workouts
      • Best Whey Protein
    • Equipment
      • Best Home Gym Machines
    • Certifications
      • ISSA Review
  • News
  • Exercise Guides
    • Legs
      • Back Squat
      • Bulgarian Split Squat
      • Goblet Squat
      • Zercher Squat
      • Standing Calf Raise
      • Hack Squat
    • Chest
      • Bench Press
      • Dumbbell Bench Press
      • Close-Grip Bench Press
      • Incline Bench Press
    • Shoulders
      • Overhead Dumbbell Press
      • Lateral Raise
    • Arms
      • Chin-Up
      • Weighted Pull-Up
      • Triceps Pushdown
    • Back
      • Deadlift
      • Trap Bar Deadlift
      • Lat Pulldown
      • Inverted Row
      • Bent-Over Barbell Row
      • Single-Arm Dumbbell Row
      • Pendlay Row
Fitness

How Elite Endurance Athletes Got There (And How You Can Too)

Most of us will benefit far more from learning how the pros got to where they are, rather than what they do now.

Andrew Read

Written by Andrew Read Last updated on September 17, 2014

While I’m as amazed as everyone at what elite athletes are capable of, I’ve never been too interested in what they do for training. Sure, it can be eye-opening to see just what the human body can do, like the time I realized that an Ironman world champion spends as much time on his bike each week as my total training time – and then adds running, swimming, and strength work on top of that.

But what I’m interested in is what they did when they were beginners and intermediates, because that’s where the real magic is. Let’s be honest, most of us aren’t elite and we’ll benefit far more from knowing how the pros got to where they are now, rather than what they do now.

Speed Work Is the Icing on the Cake

Nowhere is this more obvious to me than when it comes to endurance training. There are few high-level endurance athletes these days who have a plan that looks like Miguel Indurain’s. His plan was so old school it had moss growing on it: five days per week ride five hours at an aerobic pace. On the sixth day, ride about half that, but hard.

That’s it, and it was good enough to win him five Tour de France titles. But when you look at elite cyclists now, you’ll see all kinds of tempo or threshold work, “efforts,” and all other kind of fancy terms that all amount to the same thing – do some higher intensity intervals.

Looking at that advice as a beginner, you’d be forgiven for thinking that base training should have no part in your plan and the majority of your miles should be spent focused on hard efforts. One of the major problems these elite athletes point to in many people’s training are the junk miles. In this sense, junk refers to mileage that is done without a specific purpose, such as with the intention to run hard.

But one of my favorite sayings is, “Speed work is the icing on the cake, and you don’t have any cake” (with thanks to Slowtwitch). That means, until you have a decent aerobic system and run with good form, you don’t deserve to do any speed work.

This is clearly contradictory to what we’re being told by champions and coaches. In one corner, we’ve got people saying pay your dues and spend time doing slow work to build the capacity. In the other corner, we’ve got a group saying that you should only focus on doing faster paced work.

The thing is that they’re both right. Sort of.

Build Up a Base for Your Body

Early on in any sport there is no ability for a person to go hard. Take boxing as an example. You don’t walk into the gym on day one and start sparring. You walk in, learn to wrap your hands, do technique work in the mirror, and work on an inanimate object like a bag.

As you progress, you may start doing some pad work. Then, you’ll do pad work with your trainer starting to move and maybe even throwing a punch back at you to force you to cover up. Then, you’ll start defense drills with a training partner, learning how to parry, slip, and turn your opponent. Finally, you’ll get to sparring, but that process may take months. And even then, the jump from sparring to fighting is another giant leap.

And that’s exactly what running is like. You start with a run/walk plan that gradually and safely allows you to build up to an hour of steady aerobic running. Depending on your starting point, this could be a year away. During this time there is no need for speed work as your body simply isn’t ready. You’re still baking your cake. Trying to run faster at this time, before your body has fully adapted to the stress of running, will likely only speed up the injury process, not your running.

Keep Working at the Junk Miles

The thing everyone misses about what professionals are doing now is that they spent decades doing plenty of easy work earlier in their careers. Keeping with our cake analogy, all the time they spent on easy base work over many, many years left them with a multi-tiered wedding cake. If you want to truly excel, then you need to find a way to do the same.

In today’s time crunched world, one of the best ways to get in base miles is by running (or riding) to and from work. Not only is this a great way to energize the body for the day ahead, but it’s a good way to keep the intensity down, too. You’re unlikely to go all out if you know you have a killer workday ahead of you and then another run home. The advantage of this is that you’ll have many opportunities to build the skills of running and riding. While seemingly low skill activities, the body still needs to learn how to do them efficiently in order to become better at them.

In the early stages of creating an endurance base, you’ll get big improvements just from spending time daily practicing being better at endurance work. Keep at the so-called junk miles until you start to plateau. I’d suggest that at this point you’ll have transitioned from a beginner to an intermediate and that will be the appropriate time to start thinking about a small amount of higher intensity work each week.

This is exactly where I am right now. I do some harder work, but in a two-hour run, I may only run thirty of those minutes hard (as two fifteen-minute blocks). The rest of the week follows the same pattern with less than a quarter of it being higher intensity work.

Easy Endurance

I like to think of this approach as easy endurance. These moderate sessions push your fitness up while limiting the stress on the body from harder paced work. For those of us who are a bit older and don’t recover as well, it’s far more important to be able to train again tomorrow than to train so hard today that you can’t move tomorrow. Slow and steady will see you far better off long term than all-out now until you need a trip to a surgeon.

Photo 1 by Darz Mol (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Andrew Read

About Andrew Read

Andrew Read is like that old guy in the Rocky movies - he has a funny accent, hates everyone, and no one ever knows if he's happy or sad. But just like Mickey, he knows training.

Even back in grade school his teachers would complain he was spending too much time reading bodybuilding magazines or trying new exercises in the gym. These days nothing has changed and even after a lifetime of competitive martial arts and some time spent in special forces he still maintains that same passion for increasing human performance, especially that go all day, out run a zombie, live in an apocalyptic wasteland kind of fitness.

Having been a Master RKC, Andrew is recognised as one of the best kettlebell trainers in the world.His specialty is elite performance and he has been involved with training three world BJJ champions.

View All Articles

Recommended Articles

Amor Fati: How Loving Your Fate Helps You Grow
sprinter
Start Strong, Finish Fast
double unders
The Hybrid Power Conditioning Program
shutterstock187230896
Endurance Athletes: Add Strength to Up Your Game

Primary Sidebar

Latest Articles

Bodybuilder Logan Franklin “Cried For 3 Days” After Withdrawing From 2022 Olympia, Outlines 2023 Return

How to Do the Reverse Biceps Curl for Complete Arm Development

Dennis James, Miloš Šarčev Believe Mamdouh “Big Ramy” Elssbiay Can Win 2023 Arnold Classic

Strongman Tyler Scott Obringer Axle Presses a Massive 192.8 Kilograms (425 Pounds)

Latest Reviews

ISSA Personal Trainer Certification Review

ISSA Personal Trainer Certification Review

Best Whey Proteins for Packing on Muscle, Shredding Down, Meal Replacement, and More

Best Pre-Workouts for Building Muscle, Running, Taste, and More

Best Home Gym Machines

Best Home Gym Machines

woman lifting barbell

Be the smartest person in your gym

The Breaking Muscle newsletter is everything you need to know about strength in a 3 minute read.

I WANT IN!

Breaking Muscle is the fitness world’s preeminent destination for timely, high-quality information on exercise, fitness, health, and nutrition. Our audience encompasses the entire spectrum of the fitness community: consumers, aficionados, fitness professionals, and business owners. We seek to inform, educate and advocate for this community.

  • Reviews
  • Healthy Eating
  • Workouts
  • Fitness
  • News

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS Feed

© 2023 · Breaking Muscle · Terms of Use · Privacy Policy · Affiliate Disclaimer · Accessibility · About