Give me a Break: How to use planned and unplanned breaks in training

It’s ok to admit it, you’re not the only one. We’ve all done it at least once in our training lives. Stopping your watch when you walk on a run….taking longer breaks between your interval reps…taking a 30 sec break between your repeats instead of the whole minute planned in your training.

It’s a common trend among athletes to take too much or too little break because the workout is feeling too tough or too easy. But don’t short change your rest when it comes to your workouts; What you do between your reps counts just as much as the reps themselves.

This is because your workouts are designed to stimulate your running muscles, heart, and hormones to respond in a very specific way. Each workout is meant to target one or two goals: Like build your aerobic strength or improve your aerobic endurance. To hit that, your body has to be pushed to a certain limit (heart rate, level of fatigue, or speed). It also has to be in that limit for a specific amount of time, so that when the workout is done you’ve spend X amount of time there. This is how you grow fitness in a specific sense (again like aerobic capacity) and as a whole (meeting your race demands).

But if you’re resting too long, too short, too fast, or too slow you’re missing the mark of the workout. Say I give you intervals to do with, like 4x 800m intervals with a 2:30 min rest in between. You crush the first one at your goal pace so you tell yourself “this is too easy, let me knock my rest down to 1:30 min.” You easily hit your second rep, but your third one is barely on pace and your last one is just a second or two over. You hit your goal pace, but you had to fight to do it. Your heart is racing and you had to really sprint that last rep. Guess what…that workout was kind of a failure. You worked way harder than you had to and your stressed your system more than you had too. Instead of 2 miles at interval pace, you likely did half a mile at that mixed in with some junk miles that really did nothing but made you hurt more (you’re in that nasty grey zone, where you did too much damage for your body to recover for your next workout, but not enough to stimulate a specific energy system to help you run faster.)

Rest isn’t just a suggestion, it’s based on your fitness and the demands of your goal workout. To get the most of your training and build on your workouts you need to follow your rest as much as your paces.

If you need to take an unplanned break of walking, or slower running than a workout asks for it’s ok to keep your watch going. It may mean that your a little fatigued or sick and your body’s just not feeling it. As your coach I still want to see time in rest so I can evaluate how your session went and make adjustments if needed.

Basically, be humble about your recovery and don’t be ashamed of taking unplanned walk breaks when needed. It’s a part of the process of training. Good, bad, or struggling…as a coach I wan’t to see every part of your workout so I can we can honestly evaluate your training and make adjustment along the way.

Coach D