I know that the sport is alactic/aerobic and therefore the aerobic system needs to be trained becasue of it’s effect on helping recovery following intense bouts of exercise. I know that Charlie has advocated that this system should be devloped using tempo runs. I have been using these on my off days from lifting to help develop this capacity and I deffiently like it alot better than long distance runs.
My question is, why is it better to use extensive tempo to devlop this characteristic than using the older distance running approach, especially for football players/athletes in general.
I want to be able to convince others of the uselessness of long distance running to get athletes in shape for the season.
I would never say that long distance runs are usesless… just measure VO2max on sprinters, and they are running tempos!
There is place and time for everything in training… I would start with continuous method (20min steady runs) then switch to changable continuous runs (fartlek or something) and then switch to interval training (freighbour method 2min 180bpm 3-5min 130bpm, long tempos etc), also you can combine them in one microcyclus (week)…
Its difficult to tell your football players to go out and jog for 20-30 mins. To them that is really boring and a pain in the ass. They much rather agree to do 100’s and 200’s at tempo pace with short recovery. Also during Slow distance training the HR goes into steady state and during tempo it can go higher than it would during the distance run go back down a bit durign recovery and go back up. I think this is much more benificial in devel. the cardio system and more specific to the demands of the game. Also although mechanically ext. tempo is far from sprinting it is closer to sprinting than jogging.
I agree also with Quick, about that tempo is being more specific for football (or other sport games)…
The question is how much distance, how long rest, resps, sets etc according to current aerobic level of an athlete to improve aerobic fitness??
By the way, tempo (shor tempo) is not so great in developing aerobic capacity as would we like… it is better for speeding up transition between rest and burst of activity (decreasing inertial characteristics of heart and lungs)…
If they dont like doing cont steady or changable runs (fartlek), they could do 2min 180bpm, 3 min walking (130bpm) (or 600m tempo should I call it) or maybe 3x10min (170-180bpm) rest 5 min… or running at OBLA… there are numerous possibilities…
Everything is used only the volume varies over year… introducing too fast something specificial in preparation could lead to too fast entering into sport form (I dont know if you wests know about this conpepc) and sport form can only exist for 2 - 2,5 months and it should be happening during comp period…
If your team is good at aerobical, you can use tempo do keep it that way, but if is not… use longer tempo (400-800m) - interval training, or custom methods for developing aerobic capacity (but not oo much)…
Since you are mentioning this method again, what would you suggest to someone with a HRmax of 172 b.min-1 ??
Also, by OBLA do you mean the fixed value of 4 mmol.l-1 ? And if yes, what happens with two individuals having maximum lactate values of, say, 5 and 12 mmol.l-1, repsectively ?
Then he could run at certaing percentage of HRmax or HRR (Heart rate reserve)… Or he could run at certaint pace (%max) for given distance - tempo…I mentioned this as an example not something seriously… Why are you pushing that tempo (interval tarining) so much, and pushing out continous methods?? I would not drop-out anything… because you can use them both for variety… every thing can be used… only the volume varies (over the year)!
Again you can use contin. methods for droping sports form to rebuld it again… there is a lot of posibilities…
I think we have argued about this one before… NO I dont mean 4mmol/l of bLA… but rather on a pace where bLA start to build up (it can be at 3 or 6mmol/l, nevermind)… keeping this pace for 10-20min develpos mitochondria in muscle and offcourse heart an lungs…
