Tempo form

is it okay to be tired when doing tempo? i get off work from doing construction and its really my only time to do it… unfortunately my feet and calves and overall body is just tired. but i get through it

I would perform other means:

1: bike tempo
2: mb circuits
3: gs circuits
4: pool

Why ? Isn’t tempo supposed to leave you with a recovered feeling regardless of the state you start your session in?

We have lots of athletes that work construction/landscaping jobs during the summer. I end up re-organizing their training and stripping away a good portion of the work to compensate for the fatigue created by these manual labor jobs. Such jobs reduce the amount of energy you can devote to training, and all training must be contracted in order to preserve quality of work for the few elements that remain. Time that would normally be used for training is now devoted to restoration methods.

Read N2 comment.

yes, i have cut my training down to twice per week. im exhausted every night. i always try to get a session in on sunday night and then once during the week. i feel like im not getting better when i drag ass through my workout. sometimes its necessary though i think

Yes , excellent advice and often I find people look to others to facilitate or take the responsibility for regeneration. Charlie used to get pretty annoyed with some ( no not me;)… when he covered the massages ( who doesnt love that?) and the atheletes were not doing their part. He used to say, you give me 90 percent and I give you 90 percent and you give me 100 percent and I will give you 110. Charlie was never a fan of half effort anything.

Yes - often I’m simply trying to mitigate damage created by someone else or something else (i.e. a construction job or ditch digging job). I had one athlete come to me complaining about work and that his strength is not going up. I explained to him that if he continues with this particular summer job, we would be thrilled if his strength simply stayed the same and not decreased. As Ange explained, if you compromise your training and you only can contribute 80-90% to your workouts, you will be lucky if you see any significant improvement. We’re not telling people to quit their jobs, we’re simply explaining how difficult it is to burn the candle at both ends.

Often - I do Foamrolling before (normally a hr or more before) my runs, If I’m too tight and have niggles. Most of the time, after that, I can train well. Sometimes, a Quick 20min nap followed by a Coffee and 1hr later i’m ready to go.
Tempo done easy enough, or even a 20min Slow Jog followed by stretches leaves one feeling 10x better.

As per how to do tempo
I agree that Eventually - you want tempo to be a thoughtless act. Great for clearing the mind.
I say eventually, as If your technique is Crap - then What’s the point?

Technique is Same as sprinting - just smaller.
Small ground contract times (not over striding)
Dorsi flex of the foot same, landing on your foot pretty much the same
Shorter arm swings, but same rotation and other items though the hands and elbows
Holding your hips in alignment
Not having your feet over pronate etc

Once you can do all this, IT’s all second nature and off you go. Just do it.
Normally it does not take long to do this - but it’s very individual.

Read it.But my question stands unanswered,if you get the point.

You also see this in high school with year round sports. I have to constantly explain to athletes that the two to three days a week soccer/volleyball/basketball practice plus weekend tournaments they’re doing is killing their track season and they aren’t improving or getting worse.

do you think a great diet and maybe an extra hour of sleep would be enough to counter act anything?

how about doing your session before work if possible! after work you just recover and rest or do some ab work or elevation/ice bath/hotcld shower/ems etc etc

I think the basis should be eating as well as you can, and sleeping as much as you can.

As X-man said, can you train before work? I found my training and recovery improved when I was going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 5:30am (for training) instead of 11pm-12am and getting up at 7am and training at 6pm.

personally find it works really well for tempo / conditioning but not so for speed & weights.

my apologies if this is the wrong thread to post to.
This is a speed endurance prescription.

Speed Endurance runs are high intensity runs of 70-150m performed at 95-100% of race pace. Typically, the volume for Speed Endurance workouts is in the range of 300-1200m of total running. The purpose Speed Endurance workouts is to develop the capacity for maintaining maximal or near maximal velocity. Speed Endurance workouts are especially important for short sprinters. An example of a Speed Endurance workout would be 3 x (80m, 100m, 120m) with full recovery.

would this mean run 80, 100 and 120m with full recovery between each and then repeat x 2 more time to bring total volume to 900m. Assuming as you get closer to competing and running at fastest it may only be done 1 for a total of 300m?

Thread hijacks suck and this thread is about TEMPO. Is it that difficult to hit the ‘New thread’ button or something?

my initial question was “is it okay to be tired when doing tempo”

then it spawned into how to not be so tired when doing tempo.

thanks to all who responded

Thanks for setting the thread back to your original question.
To summerize what the others have outlined No you really need to re evaluate what you are doing if you are tired doing tempo all the time.
Perhaps you could think of this another way and this time let me ask the quesiton.
If I am building a house do you think I would be ok to not have a foundation and not follow any codes?

Thinking of Tempo as a foundation is key. Thank you Ange for great image.