This is the first of a two part series on moderate effort training.
Keep your hard days hard and your easy days easy. This is the gospel of endurance training that goes by many names: polarized training, 80/20 training, hard/easy training. Yet look around at many of the best endurance athletes in the world, from those who perform loads of “threshold” training to the famous daily progression runs of the East Africans, and one must begin to question this received wisdom.
As with most training ideas, there are useful applications of the hard/easy approach, and times when the rule can – and I would argue, should – be violated to improve performance. An alternative that is intuitively employed by many coaches and athletes has been labeled “pyramidal training,” in which you do most of your volume at a relatively easy effort and some training at moderate efforts, and less still at the highest intensities. As a coach, I think both of these frameworks can be useful and be used in the course of long-term athlete development.
Let’s start with hard/easy. This is not an exhaustive list, but here are three common scenarios where the hard/easy approach can be very beneficial:
Slow Down to Go Faster
Many runners feel that they can’t run more than a certain number of minutes, or miles per week, without getting worn down. This is super common among beginners, who go out and grind away, finishing their 20 or 30 minutes feeling gassed. These runners need to follow the advice of slowing down in order to get faster. With an easier pace, they can handle increased training volume, and eventually add some more specific high-intensity work. The caveat to this is that those who are perfectly happy running 20 minutes three days per week can keep grinding away. They will not get more fit by slowing down if they don’t also increase their volume and/or add some true high intensity work.
Mix Things Up
Runners who are in a rut of doing the same moderate effort day after day, and are discouraged from and/or unsuccessful at undertaking harder workouts can benefit. They’re likely mentally and physically stale because they’re always a little tired. These runners need to mix things up, to alter the stimulus a bit. While the runner’s tendency is to try to add hard days, it may first be necessary to incorporate some intentionally scheduled easy days in order to recover enough to handle and reap the benefits of a harder session.
Err on the Side of Easy Days
During the racing season, especially in the final few weeks prior to a peak or major goal race, runners should err on the side of easier easy days. In that window prior to a goal race, being more rested and recovered for key sessions (and of course, the race itself) helps runners perform those sessions to the best of their ability, allowing both physiological adaptation and confidence.
Along those lines, this study from 2021 showed that 8 weeks of pyramidal training followed by 8 weeks of polarized training was better than 16 weeks straight of one or the other, or reversing the order. In other words…more moderate efforts early in a training cycle, followed by polarized training later in the cycle produces superior results.
Part 2 will get into the proper use of moderate efforts, and the different ways of thinking about and structuring them.
Chris Lundstrom is the head coach of Minnesota Distance Elite – formerly Team USA Minnesota – which includes some of the top distance runners in the USA, including Annie Frisbie and Dakota Lindwurm.
