There’s a concept in resistance training – training to failure – which can also be usefully applied to distance running. While no one likes to hear the term failure, and training to failure sounds antithetical to improvement, in fact the opposite is true: Failure is necessary for improvement in nearly every venture in life, and training is no exception.
In the context of resistance exercise, training to failure (also sometimes called “momentary muscular failure” or just momentary failure) means that the individual cannot perform another repetition of an exercise without breakdown of form (Steele et al., 2017). I first came across this terminology at Discover Strength, working with CEO Luke Carlson, who was training me at the time. When I was reaching those final reps of an exercise, he would say things like, “You worked very hard to get to this point. This is where the gains are made.” This shift in mindset means that rather than dreading the difficulty of the challenging final reps, we expect and embrace that point where the body reaches its limits. Then we persist to the best of our ability, and push through until the body cannot do any more – i.e., failure.
Applied to distance running, of course we don’t set out to reach failure every day, or even multiple days per week. However, some workouts are intended to be hard, and on those occasions, reaching that edge of one’s abilities is the way to stimulate improvement. Rather than panicking or feeling discouraged upon encountering serious fatigue, we should embrace it and accept that this state is where we aimed to arrive when we started the workout.
It is worth emphasizing that the failure is defined as the point where good form can no longer be sustained. In running, on the other hand, we often go into a workout with a very rigid definition of how many repetitions or miles that we intend to complete. If the workout calls for 10x400m at 90 seconds, for example, most runners will complete those 10 repetitions regardless of whether they are able to sustain good form at the prescribed pace. We consider it, in fact, a failure if we can’t complete the numerical goals of the workout, and may continue on despite a breakdown in form or quality of the work.
Not all workouts are meant to reach this point of momentary failure, but the same principle of a process-focused approach applies to all of our training. Whether you are an athlete or a coach, shifting your focus toward the purpose of the workout, rather than adhering to a strict set of numbers, can ensure that you get the intended physical and mental stimulus from each workout, regardless of the times and distances. Indeed, with the fluctuations in fitness, day-to-day levels of fatigue, recovery, nutrition, hormonal status, weather, footing, and any number of other factors, differences in the objective outcomes are to be expected, while attaining the correct training stimulus is much more within our control.
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.
