The perfect training schedule - duration

Along with training frequency, the duration of an individual training session needs to be tailored to the desired goals as well as the current phase in an athlete’s preparation.

Depending on the intensity of an individual training session, which we will cover in the next post, athletes have to train for a certain amount of time per session to stimulate different physiological adaptations.

Today we will cover the second component of a perfect training schedule - duration.

The benefit of duration based trainings

While most endurance sports like running, cycling, or triathlon measure events in covered distances, during training, in most cases, athletes have to be active for a certain amount of time elapsed.

This has the added benefit of being applicable to every athlete in the same way. Let’s compare a distance based training to a time based one.

Distance based training session

A training session that would include a 2k warm up, 5x (250m hard + 150m easy), and a 2k cool down would have all athletes cover the exact same 6 kilometers. The novice runners might need 30 to 40 minutes to complete it and this would be a great workout for them. On the other hand, an intermediate will cover the same distance in about 25 to 30 which might not be enough to give their body the needed stress to force improvement. An advanced runner will finish the same workout in under 20 minutes which is not nearly enough for them.

Time based training session

Now let’s look at the same workout but from a time perspective. The same workout could look something like this: 10 min warm up, 5x (1 min hard + 2 min easy), and a 10 minute cool down.

Now the workout will be 35 minutes for everyone but they will cover 6, 8, or more kilometers, depending on their personal abilities.

This will give everyone the same amount of stress and allow them all to improve their performance.

There is no right or wrong approach here when it comes to time vs. distance based training sessions. However, it’s often easier for endurance athletes to stick to time based training because generalized training plans can be more applicable to a wider group of athletes. Coaches can balance between time and distance based training session when they really want to fine tune individual aspects of their athlete’s performance and they are OK with decreasing the scalability of a certain workout.

Training duration based on goals

Now that we know the difference between time and distance based training, let’s have a look at different goals we want to achieve by making the workout shorter or longer.

As a general rule of thumb, the longer the workout the lower the intensity.

Speed and power

To run faster, an athlete has to train faster. To put it a little more precisely, in order to run faster for a longer amount of time athletes have to enhance the creation of more fast-twitching muscles which produce more power but fatigue much quicker than slow twitch muscles.

This can be done by incorporating short and fast interval training sessions. These will, generally, last around 30 to 60 minutes and usually consist of a certain amount of alterations between fast movement and rest.

Runners usually do those sessions on tracks where it’s easy to cover a lot of ground by going in circles as well as having a stable surface without and bumps or holes so they can purely focus on speed.

Another thing that is used mostly by cyclists is to have hill repetitions where they alter between going hard uphill and using the descents to recover.

You can read a little more on speed training here.

Aerobic capacity

Aerobic capacity is defined as the bodies ability to use oxygen during physical stress. The bigger your aerobic capacity is the more oxygen you can draw into your body and get it to combine with the glucose in your blood to give you energy to move forward.

To improve aerobic capacity athletes have to lower the intensity a little while increasing the overall duration of the workouts. These workouts can take from 60 to 120 minutes and include longer, steady-state intervals.

One of the most popular methods are high intensity interval training (HIIT) where an athlete executes certain movements for 1 to 3 minutes after which have a quick rest and then repeat this a certain amount of time. The warm up and cool down portions can be increased to enable aerobic adaptations and improvements.

Endurance

Building endurance is the most time consuming aspect of training for longer events. There is, unfortunately, no real substitute to long and easy to moderate movement.

It’s very important to not increase the duration of the long training session by more than 10% per week to prevent possible injury.

Runners can slowly build up to a 3 hour long run while cyclists should aim to have their longest sessions being around 5 to 6 hours long if they are training for endurance.

It’s important to allow for recovery after a endurance session in order to give the body time to rest and absorb the stress. This can be done by taking a day off from training or adding a swim session for triathletes.

How much should your longest session be?

As a general rule, athletes want to aim to complete the full distance in training but this can be increasingly hard as the distances an athlete trains for are getting longer.

A marathon runner should never run a marathon distance in training because the added stress will have diminishing returns and will increase risk for injuries.

That’s where the overall training load comes into play. But that’s something for another time :)