What Exactly Is Grip Strength?

Grip strength is typically measured using a tool called a hand dynamometer. You squeeze it as hard as you can, and it records the amount of force you produce. Most people don’t have one lying around at home, but there are ways to gauge it informally. For example, can you easily lift and carry objects weighing around 11 kilograms (about 25 pounds)? That ability roughly corresponds to a grip strength of 18.5 kilograms for women and 28.5 kilograms for men—levels identified by researchers as necessary for managing daily physical tasks, especially as we age.

Why Grip Strength Matters

So why should we care about grip strength? Because it’s more than just a measure of hand power—it’s a window into your overall strength and health. Studies show that grip strength correlates strongly with upper-body and even total-body strength. It’s practical, quick to test, and surprisingly telling.

Anatomy explains why: your grip depends heavily on your forearm muscles, which are supported by the upper arms, shoulders, chest, and back. Strengthen those larger muscle groups, and your grip almost always improves. In other words, a strong grip reflects a strong body.

Grip strength has also been linked to functional ability— your capacity to perform everyday movements. A 2018 study found that people with lower grip strength reported greater difficulty with basic tasks like climbing stairs or rising from a chair. While grip strength alone can’t fully represent lower-body strength, it’s a solid part of the overall picture of physical capability.

Grip Strength and Longevity

Here’s where things get even more interesting: grip strength can predict your risk of death from any cause—what researchers call “all-cause mortality.”

A 2021 review of nearly two dozen studies found that people with low grip strength had roughly twice the mortality risk compared to those with the strongest grips. It makes sense when you connect the dots. Low grip strength often signals low muscle mass, and inadequate muscle mass increases your risk for conditions like osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mobility issues.

No, you don’t need to look like a bodybuilder. But maintaining enough muscle to move freely—climbing stairs, lifting groceries, or getting up from the floor—is essential to aging well and staying independent.

What’s a “Good” Grip Strength?

There’s no single number that defines a “good” grip since it varies by age and sex. The best measure is functionality: your grip should be strong enough that everyday tasks feel easy. If carrying groceries, opening jars, or pushing yourself up from a chair feels challenging, it’s worth building more strength.

How to Improve Your Grip Strength

Here’s the good news: you don’t need fancy equipment or complicated routines. The key is to focus on free-weight, multi-joint movements that work multiple muscle groups—and by extension, your grip. Below are sample exercises for a three-day strength routine that boosts overall strength and grip power.

Day 1

• Romanian Deadlift – 2–3 sets of 5–6 reps
  A powerhouse move for your posterior chain — glutes, hamstrings, and back — while challenging your grip as you hold heavy weights.
• Suitcase Carry – 2–3 sets of 30–50 metres
  Carry one dumbbell at your side like a suitcase. This builds forearm and upper back strength and tests your core stability.

Day 2

• Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown – 2–3 sets of 6–10 reps
  Strengthens your lats, shoulders, and biceps while demanding a firm grip through every pull.
• Hammer Curl – 2–3 sets of 12–15 reps
  A biceps exercise with a neutral grip that places extra emphasis on the forearms — perfect for grip gains.

Day 3

• Single-Arm Dumbbell Row – 2–3 sets of 6–10 reps
  Works the back, core, and arm flexors. The single-arm motion and hammer grip keep your forearms fully engaged.
• Underhand Triceps Press down – 2–3 sets of 12–15 reps
  Using an underhand grip shifts some work to the forearm extensors, improving balance and grip endurance.

Keep It Simple — and Stay Consistent

Improving grip strength doesn’t require reinventing your workouts. Stick to big, compound lifts and gradually increase the weights you use. Consistency is key—the more you challenge your muscles over time, the stronger they’ll get.

Grip strength may not be glamorous, but it’s one of the simplest and most powerful indicators of how well your body is aging and performing. Think of it as a small muscle group with a big message: strength equals independence.

So next time you pick up a grocery bag or shake someone’s hand, take note. That grip says more about your health than you might think.  

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What is Aerobic Base Training?
Aerobic base training is specific training meant to increase your aerobic threshold, or your ability to perform steady-state work for a long period of time. Base training workouts are simple: go at a pace just below your aerobic threshold—the upper limit of Zone 2— and hold it. 

Your aerobic threshold is the exercise intensity at which blood lactate begins to increase substantially. Below your aerobic threshold, in Zone 1 and 2, the exercise intensity is quite low, and that’s why you can maintain these “easy” efforts for a long period of time. 

Research has shown that almost all elite endurance athletes use aerobic base training as a part of their weekly routine, including sprint-distance triathletes, marathon runners, and Tour de France cyclists. The reason is simple. Endurance events are typically longer than a few minutes, sometimes longer than a few hours, and sometimes longer than a week (in the case of cycling’s Grand Tours). These events place physiological demands on the body for very long periods of time, testing the body’s ability to endure rather than its explosive energy output. 

Training to increase your aerobic threshold, therefore, will allow you to sustain activity for longer periods of time so that you perform better on race day. Only in one-off events lasting less than a minute could you completely forgo aerobic endurance training—think powerlifters or javelin throwers, neither of which are endurance athletes!

Aerobic Threshold and Anaerobic Threshold
In basic terms, aerobic refers to ‘with oxygen’ while anaerobic refers to ‘without oxygen.’ During an anaerobic effort, such as a 10-second sprint, your body is not using oxygen to fuel its main energy source. Conversely, during aerobic efforts like endurance events, your body is running on oxygen.

In fact, there are three different energy systems in the human body—the phosphagen system, glycolytic system, and oxidative system—that fuel muscle contraction. The phosphagen system (the ATP-PCr system) is used for short and explosive bursts of energy lasting less than one minute; the glycolytic system powers high-intensity efforts lasting one to five minutes; and the oxidative system powers longer efforts lasting anywhere from a few minutes to multiple hours. These systems use different amounts of oxygen to fuel exercise, with the least amount of oxygen used for sprints and the most amount of oxygen used for long-duration endurance exercise. 

Aerobic training utilizes your oxidative system and targets your aerobic threshold, which is the exercise intensity at which blood lactate starts to rise above resting levels (typically around
2 mmol/L, or millimole per litre). Blood lactate is directly associated with muscle fatigue and the degradation of endurance performance, which is why it is so important that endurance athletes train their bodies to clear blood lactate. 

As soon as your exercise intensity increases above aerobic threshold, your body can’t clear blood lactate as quickly, leading to quicker and earlier muscle fatigue. Thus, by raising your aerobic threshold, you will be able to go further and faster with less blood lactate buildup, less fatigue, and longer time to exhaustion.

Anaerobic training, on the other hand, targets your anaerobic threshold, which is when blood lactate begins to build up very quickly. Your muscles will quickly fatigue in this state, and even the most highly trained athletes can only hold an anaerobic effort for a few minutes. Endurance athletes use their anaerobic systems during sprints and other high-intensity efforts, but it’s their ability to recover using their aerobic capacity that is more often the determinant of performance.

How to Build an Aerobic Base
As we begin to look at training your aerobic base, we get to the term “Zone 2 training,” which is most often associated with aerobic threshold training because of the matching intensities between power output, heart rate, and blood lactate concentration. In other words, maintaining your power output in Zone 2 will likely put your heart rate in Zone 2 and keep your blood lactate concentration below your aerobic threshold. 

According to Dr. Iñigo San Millán, Ph.D., Director of the Exercise Physiology and Human Performance Lab at the University Of Colorado School Of Medicine, the purpose of Zone 2 endurance training is to improve lactate clearance “by increasing the number of mitochondria to clear lactate mainly in slow twitch muscle fibres as well as by increasing the number of MCT-1 and mLDH [lactate-specific transporters which transport lactate away from muscle fibres].” 

The key point is that lactate is cleared mainly by slow-twitch fibre muscles, and not fast-twitch fibres. So, training at a high intensity will not exactly improve your aerobic threshold or your body’s ability to clear lactate because high-intensity exercise targets fast-twitch muscle fibres. Instead, you need to train your slow-twitch muscle fibres at low intensities (i.e., Zone 2) to improve your aerobic threshold.

The Components of a Good Aerobic Base Training Plan
When constructing an aerobic base training plan, it’s important to maintain a balanced and repeatable schedule that will simultaneously increase your fitness while also giving you the necessary time to recover in between each session. Part of this balance is not to completely forgo high-intensity work—one or two HIIT (high-intensity interval training) sessions per week will help increase your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds, and you can tailor your workouts to target one or the other. Longer tempo intervals will increase your aerobic threshold, and short 40/20s will increase your anaerobic threshold.

Here are the key components that I look for in a base training plan: 

• Weekly volume increases of 5 – 10 per cent
• One or two HIIT sessions
• One or two long endurance sessions (>2 hours)

One rest day

• Rest week every fourth week (decrease weekly volume by ~50 per cent)

These components emphasize the principles of progressive overload and structured rest above all, which will help you increase your fitness without being at great risk of injury or burnout. As opposed to the “build” or race season, the base season is more focused on consistent training and aerobic endurance rides than it is on race-specific HIIT sessions.

This article has been edited for length and reprinted with permission from TrainingPeaks – www.trainingpeaks.com.  

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However, combining running and cycling in your training plan often leads to doubts and questions. Runners often wonder if cycling is actually helping or hindering their running game. Does all that pedaling fatigue your legs?

In this guide, we will explore cycling for runners, examine its benefits, and compare cycling with running.

Can Cycling Make You a Better Runner?
If you’ve been running for some time, you know that cross-training is an essential part of your running plan.

Whether you run for a healthy boost or weight loss or are training for a half marathon, building strength and endurance
is the best way to get the most out of your run.
Dr. Robert Berghorn, a physical therapist at Ascent Physical Therapy, helps runners and other endurance athletes train to compete while preserving their bodies.

He advocates for cross-training in general but also emphasizes cycling for runners as an especially effective method.

“Cross-training, just like in every sport, is a very important aspect of a training schedule for every athlete. Cross-training allows you to get out of the usual cycle of repetitive movements, using different muscles and muscle activation sequences that either complement or enhance primary sports performance when they return.

Cycling for runners is a wonderful way to cross-train, especially if you need to have a good recovery day after a hard training cycle in the off-season or if the runner is injured.

Incorporating cycling as a recovery day during or after a hard training cycle can be used to flush out the legs and reduce soreness while still getting a good cardiovascular training effect at the same time.

Injured runners who cannot tolerate the impact of running but still feel fine cycling can use this as a tool to maintain some level
of fitness and cardiovascular health while recovering.”

What are the benefits of incorporating cycling into a runner’s training routine?
Recovery and cross-training are the two major benefits of cycling for runners, but those advantages run even deeper.

Active Recovery
Cycling aids recovery by increasing blood flow to your calves, glutes, hamstrings, and quads—all the muscles you need for running.
Cycling provides a low-impact cardiovascular workout and will build endurance for those who want to give their joints a break from pounding the pavement.

Cycling flushes out lactic acid, which removes stiffness and delayed onset muscle soreness from your muscles. As your muscles burn more energy, they produce lactic acid, which breaks down into hydrogen ions.

The hydrogen ions then lower the pH of your muscles, which slows down the muscles’ efficiency. That’s what creates the burning sensation and keeps you from getting the most out of your muscles during a workout.

Cycling is a good use of injury recovery time. If you are unable to run because of the impact, cycling on a flat surface can keep your muscles and lungs active and ready to get back on track. It is also a good way to prevent overuse injuries.

Cross-training
Cycling helps build up your cardio. Since you often cycle longer than you run, you get that additional boost of cardio training
in your schedule.

Cycling builds strength in complementary muscles. Both sports activate similar muscles, but each one targets the
muscle in a different position. Using both will help build overall strength among those critical muscles used in running.

Cycling improves run time. It develops stamina and endurance without putting a load of stress on your leg muscles.

How often should runners incorporate cycling into their training routine?
If you want to build that additional strength and endurance, riding a few laps around the waterfront will not do you that much good.
The number of times per week you engage in cycling will depend on your goal.

If you are trying to just switch up your routine and run less days during the week to avoid some impact, you can replace one or two of your easy runs with cycling.

If you are injured, you may need to also replace your speed workouts or other running workouts you have planned until you get the go ahead to be able to run again.

How to cycle correctly for runners
Personal trainer and postpartum running coach, Alison Marie, gives advice on how to make sure you’re positioning yourself correctly on the bike.

“When cycling, one should check that the seat height is adjusted correctly to allow for the full range of motion without overextending:
at the straightest, the knees should bend at about 145 degrees (this happens to be around the knee angle of the ideal “triple extension” in running as well).

Clip-in type pedals are ideal because they allow you to truly pedal through the motion instead of simply pushing the pedals down.
When cycling, the range of 80 – 100 RPMs is the sweet spot for cardiovascular endurance. One can also use high-resistance intervals
to simulate something like a hill workout or speed intervals to help work on running cadence.”

So, runners, by blending cycling into your routine, you can improve performance so you are better equipped to go the distance.

This article was edited for length and reprinted with permission from the Marathon Handbook – www.marathonhandbook.com.  

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Let’s take Joanna, a 55-year-old who is training for a marathon: She has trained through many marathon cycles, but this time she feels like she’s working harder even though her paces keep dropping. In frustration, she tries to run more and faster. She begins feeling deep fatigue and watches as her easy pace becomes more difficult to run. As she continues to push harder, she digs herself into a deeper and deeper hole. Her times are slow, her body begins to hurt, her heart rate both at rest and when active rises, she feels irritable, her sleep is a mess, and she feels like she’ll never feel strong again. She wonders: Is this just part of getting old?

Next, we have Joe, a new runner. He’s 58 and has a few pounds to lose, but he’s generally healthy and wants to stay that way. He starts running two miles a day, four to five days a week. He’s vexed because he can’t seem to run any farther or faster, and his shins and knees are starting to hurt. He just doesn’t know what to do next. He wonders: Is it just too late to start running?

The solution for both runners is better, smarter training. Smart training begins with listening to your body. Of course, a good training plan is key, but if you aren’t listening to your body, then you end up injured, exhausted, plateaued, and ready to give up in disgust. Too many people believe you need to beat your body into submission if you want to get fitter, stronger, and faster. You can thank Friedrich Nietzsche—who famously said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”—for encouraging this self-destructive tendency. Maybe this applies to some things, but when you approach training this way all the time, it will certainly leave you a broken mess.

So, what should you be listening to? Let’s take a look.

Resting Heart Rate
To start, you should be monitoring your resting heart rate. Every runner should know what their resting heart rate generally is, within a few points. This is your heart rate when you first wake up, but it’s also good to know where your heart rate typically settles when you’re just sitting and relaxing. If you notice your heart rate is a bit higher for a few days, it will benefit you to take some extra recovery time. This doesn’t necessarily mean complete rest, but you need to back off both volume and effort. If you catch this early, it’s quite easy to resolve. But if it’s been going on for a while, then you’ve dug your hole deeper, and it will take more time to get out.

Sleep Quality and Quantity
Notice the quality and quantity of your sleep. One of the ironies about sleep is that often your sleep becomes poor when you are the most fatigued: you have trouble falling asleep, you wake up often and can’t get back to sleep, and you wake up in the morning still feeling exhausted. Sleep disturbances often arise due to deep systemic fatigue. Often, doing less helps improve your sleep.

Persistent Aches and Pains
Notice how your muscles feel. Some runners erroneously believe they should always feel sore. Many think that if you’re sore all the time, then you’re getting strong. Unfortunately, that’s not how this works. Yes, you will be sore after some runs or strength work. But the key to getting stronger is allowing your body the chance to repair following a stress. If you’re always sore, that’s your body saying you are doing too much of something.

Slowing Paces
If you’re running at the same effort but your paces are inexplicably slowing, that’s your body telling you that you’re doing something wrong. Most runners run just a little too fast too often. This leads to frustrating plateaus and chronic overuse injuries.

As you get older, you need to be even more attentive to your body. You also need to be more vigilant about self-care, both physical and mental. Adding gentle mobility work, restorative bodywork such as massage, purposeful cross-training, or even a good old hot bath can do the body good. When I was much younger, I would try to run through anything. Today when I feel something isn’t quite right, I’ll take an extra easy day, go for a swim, or have a massage. I don’t want to lose time and consistency to an injury and nipping it in the bud is by far the smartest thing to do.

With all this in mind nothing is more important to your running than consistency. You want to stay healthy. Injuries interrupt training. Being in pain all the time, even if you can run, just isn’t fun. What is fun is feeling good and strong and able to do what you want to do.

Older runners may bring a mental advantage to their training and racing. Chances are that you have gained some mental tenacity through the trials and tribulations of life. You see in ultra-long-distance events that older runners fair very well against their younger, faster, and physically stronger competitors, often because they have the mental toughness that these grueling efforts demand.

Running also serves a social function. If you run with people or in a race, you connect with an active community that supports and inspires you. It’s good to be around those with whom you share passions. With more older runners sticking with running and many more joining the ranks, you have even more people to share your passion with.

While running is not the only activity that can bring these benefits, there are certain aspects inherent to running that make them easier to attain: I don’t need a team. I can go at my own pace. I can choose my own goal, be that a 100-metre sprint or a 100-mile endurance run. I can run anywhere—road, trail, treadmill, even a pool. I can run on my schedule. Running is an autonomous activity.

But I believe running is more than an activity, exercise, or a workout. Running can also help you tune into yourself, your environment, your dreams, your pain, your ambitions, your hopes. Running gives you an opportunity to discover and exercise your greatness from where you are right now. 

Extract from Running Past 50 by Caolan MacMahon (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2025). Edited and reprinted with permission
of www.Canada.HumanKinetics.com.

Are Runners Over 50 More Prone to Injury?

The answer is maybe, maybe not. A lot depends on how recovery is balanced with training—and life—stresses. As you age, your bones tend to get smaller and less dense. Why? It’s believed that as you get older, you absorb less calcium and vitamin D, which are crucial to bone health. But the Utah paradigm and Wolff’s law* suggest that it is not just calcium and vitamin D at issue—what matters even before all that is the stress on the bone. What kind of stress? Specifically, it is the stress caused by muscles pulling on opposite ends of the bone. Impact is one thing, but it’s the actual pull of the muscle on the bone that provides the stimulus for calcium uptake. You can consume all the calcium in the world and still have weak bones if you do not stress them. Without the stress calcium
will not go into your bones. Period.

Wolff’s law and the Utah paradigm are both models that explain how bones adapt to mechanical forces.

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Read This Story in Our 2025 Running Issue
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While doubles can be a powerful tool to enhance performance, it’s important to approach them strategically to avoid overtraining or burnout.

Should You Work Out Twice A Day?
In general, doing doubles can be healthy and beneficial for your progress. Still, there are also scenarios in which two-a-days are counterproductive, if not a definitive net negative on your body. The differences lie in the specifics of your workout sessions and overall health and fitness goals.

Benefits of Two-a-Day Workouts
Depending on the type, intensity and duration of your workouts, working out twice a day can double down on many of the positive benefits of exercise.

1. Promotes Overall Health
   Any minutes you accrue being physically active with your daily workouts can contribute to positive benefits such as reduced blood pressure, improved cardiovascular health, lowered blood lipids, regulated blood sugar, and reduced risk of several lifestyle diseases.
2. Enables Increase in Training Volume
   The benefits of two-a-days are likely amplified if you can fit in a 45-minute workout in the morning and a 30-minute workout in the evening rather than just a single 60–minute workout in the morning. This results in a total of 75 minutes of exercise.
3. Improves Strength and Endurance
   Studies have shown that doubles can lead to greater improvements in muscle strength and size due to enhanced muscle protein synthesis, fat oxidation, mitochondrial development, and power output. It can also cause favourable metabolic adaptations that contribute to glycogen sparing, leading to improvements in aerobic endurance. This bodes well for distance runners looking to stave off the dreaded bonk around miles 20 to 24 of the marathon.
4. Boosts Mental Health
   Exercise produces endorphins, which elevate one’s mood and provide a sense of well-being. Low and moderate-intensity exercise also lowers cortisol levels, helping your body and mind feel less stressed. Exercise can also improve your focus and energy, so training twice a day can give you a double boost of feel-good chemicals, reduce pent-up stress, and help your brain feel sharp.
5. Helps You Fit It All In
   Many people have inflexible schedules and don’t have enough time to fit longer sessions in their workout plan. For example, if you want to run five days a week and weight lift three times a week, you need to fit in both on at least one day. You can do your threshold run in the morning then head to the gym for a warm-up and strength training before dinner. Working out twice a day allows for a mental and physical reset before hitting your second workout. Try to leave an ideal six-hour rest window between workouts for maximum results.

Drawbacks of Two-a-Day Workouts
There is the risk of overtraining, injury, and mental and physical burnout, particularly if you are increasing your training volume. Moreover, working out twice a day reduces the time your body has to rest between bouts of physical exertion and stress.

Doubles can also increase cortisol levels, which can suppress the immune system, impact appetite, and disrupt sleep patterns. The greater the intensity and duration of your workouts, the more cortisol they will increase.

Lastly, working out twice a day can be mentally taxing as it takes up more time and energy in the day, whether from the additional minutes of exercising, or commuting to and from a workout location.

Essential Tips for Successfully Working Out Twice a Day
If you want to add doubles to your training plan, the goal needs to be capitalizing on the benefits while mitigating the potential risks.

1. Don’t Do Two-a-Days Every Day
   Limiting the number of days you exercise twice will give your body ample recovery time. Similarly, if you are a beginner and just started to add two workouts in one day, gradually increase the frequency, duration, and intensity of the secondary workouts over time.
   For example, add an easy 15-minute shake-out ride on an indoor cycle in the evening on the days you have a higher intensity threshold run or interval session in the morning, and progress to 30 minutes after a couple of weeks.
2. Pair Smartly
   To reduce the risk of injury and maximize fitness gains, double up with two very different forms of physical activity, such as high-impact cardio with strength or strength with flexibility or speed/power with low-impact cardio. Where possible, try to choose exercises that use different muscle groups. For example, if you cycle in the morning, do upper-body and core-strength training exercises rather than a lower-body workout.
3. Be Mindful of Intensity
   Going full blast for both workouts can be overtaxing, so mix up the intensity of your doubles so that at least one workout is more of an active recovery in terms of modality (yoga, walking, or deep-water walking) or effort level. Two intense workouts in one day may be just too much.
4. Prioritize Your Primary Workout
   Make your harder workout your first workout of the day. If you want to run and lift weights and your running workout is your priority, run in the morning and save the lifting for later in the day to avoid running on tired muscles.
5. Monitor Your Heart Rate
   Your resting heart rate can provide a window into how well you’re recovering from workouts. If you notice your heart rate upon waking to be trending upward, it’s a sign you need to cut back and give your body more recovery time.
6. Keep a Fitness Log
   Record all your workouts, including subjective data on how you feel, to help stay on top of niggles and signs of overtraining.
7. Rest
   Honour the rest day and ensure you get a full rest day weekly or at least every other week.
8. Fuel Like a Pro
   Fuel your body with the same desire for excellence. Focus on whole, unprocessed foods, and ensure your caloric and nutrient needs are met to keep your body healthy. Carbohydrates are key to high-intensity workouts such as running, HIIT, and just about any form of cardio. But be sure to get all your macros in (carbs, proteins, and healthy fats). Also, keep your hydration in check.
9. Listen to Your Body
   Modify your training schedule accordingly. The goal of working out is to improve your health and fitness, not detract from your health or quality of life.

If you are going to give those doubles a try have someone help you organize your training sessions, like a coach or personal trainer, to make sure you are being safe and maximizing your gains. 

This article is edited for length and reprinted with permission from Marathon Handbook – www.marathonhandbook.com.

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IMPACT Magazine Running Issue 2025 featuring some incredible Canadian women ultrarunners who are on the rise on the world trail stage. Run your way around the world to earn your six star Abbott World Marathon Majors commemorative medal. Train for 10 km right up to a marathon – plus a 50 km trail run and 70.3 program. Strength workouts for runners, carb load with these pasta recipes and so much more.

When you work out, especially at high intensities, several physiological processes take place that increased blood flow can help remedy (see chart).

For athletes who are training more than 50 miles per week or practicing multiple sports, like triathletes, a recovery run can be a great way to flush the major movers and jump-start the recovery process.

How Are Recovery Runs Different From Easy Runs?
There isn’t a distinct difference between an easy aerobic run and a recovery run other than the intention of the workout. Your day-to-day aerobic run that’s solely focused on maintaining a Zone 1 or Zone 2 heart rate meets the definition of a recovery run. However, an aerobic run and recovery run begin to look different when they are completed.

Recovery runs—which generally consist of 20-30 minutes of aerobic running—are intended to follow a hard effort to remove waste. Runs longer than 30 minutes begin to produce metabolic waste and, depending on your fitness level, can take you longer than 8-12 hours to recover from. These types of runs certainly don’t qualify as recovery runs!

Active Versus Passive Recovery
There are two types of recovery: active recovery and passive recovery. Going out for a recovery run, completing an easy spin
on your bike, or doing 20-30 minutes of yoga are examples of active recovery. Using a percussion massager or compression boots, taking a nap, or getting a massage would be considered passive recovery.

The biggest differentiation is that active recovery increases heart rate and blood pressure, resulting in vasodilation (i.e., the dilation
of blood vessels) and the transportation of metabolic waste.

Which is Right for Me?
How you choose to approach your recovery should always come down to understanding your body and where you’re going to get the most value. If you’re physically beat up from your last run, an easy run may not provide recovery and instead could increase your recovery time. The variables to consider are numerous, and it will take some experience to determine if a recovery run is the best solution to optimize your recovery.

If you’re injury prone or currently run less than 24 miles per week, a 20–30-minute recovery run might actually put you in a worse position. If your body has a tough time recovering from high-impact sports like running, you might want to consider an easy ride or yoga session as a recovery option. Conversely, if you’re training between 40 and 60 miles per week, a 20–30-minute run later in the day after a difficult workout might be the right fit to help you increase mileage, recover, and get an additional training benefit.

Gender can also influence recovery. A recent study compared a population of men and women after a half-marathon to assess muscular function, power development, and the influence of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). The greatest finding was that the women, on average, showed earlier functional recovery than the men. This is potentially because women have lower muscle mass, force, and power output than men at the same relative intensity and therefore fatigue less. This may also be due to the direct and indirect influence of sex hormones (i.e., estrogen versus testosterone), which in women produce a lower amount of metabolites and metabolic waste. The study showed that estrogen might lower the impact of exercise-induced skeletal muscle damage, therefore reducing the impact of DOMS as compared to men.

One of the greatest influences on recovery for female athletes is where they are in their menstruation cycle, as fatigue is higher during menstruation. Menstruation also plays a role in metabolic demands during recovery. One study showed that menstruation raises basal metabolic rate by more than six per cent, which will have a significant impact on glycogen stores, recovery, and overall perception of fatigue. This increase in caloric demand occurs over a period of three to five days as women move through their menstrual cycle, which can complicate fuelling procedures leading into and during a race.

Using Metrics to Assess Recovery
Assessing the quality of your recovery requires experimentation and introspection; there is no specific metric that can truly determine your ability to perform. However, using a metric like Training Stress Balance (TSB) can give you a guesstimate of how you’ll feel in your next workout and ultimately give you a gauge of how ready you are to perform at race-level effort. The closer your TSB is to a score of 0, the more recovered you are. On the other hand, a score of -20 or -30 indicates that you need to take a few easy days to recover your body.

At the end of the day, performance can only improve by applying stress to the body and then recovering adequately. Increased adaptation to training stimuli leads to improved fitness as well as the ability to manage greater fatigue. The fitter you get, the less time you need to recover.

So, it can reasonably be said that a true recovery run can exist, meaning you can simultaneously apply a small stress load, increase blood flow to muscles, and recover. Simply put, recovery runs are a straightforward way to get real performance benefits. 

This article is edited for length and reprinted with permission by TrainingPeaks – www.trainingpeaks.com.

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The Yasso 800’s are a great speed workout for runners of all abilities not just marathoners. Besides the physical benefits of speed work, they offer something that is hard to find in training—simplicity. Once you learn how to do Yasso 800’s, you can do them anytime and use them as a tool to improve your running speed and endurance.

History of Yasso 800’s
The Yasso 800’s workout is named after its creator, Bart Yasso, a former chief running officer at Runner’s World. He had been doing the 800’s workout for years helping him predict his marathon times. At the height of his running career Yasso was regularly running sub-three-hour marathons. At the time he said: “If I can get my 800’s down to 2 minutes 50 seconds, I’m in 2:50 marathon shape. If I can get down to 2:40 (minutes), I can run a 2:40 marathon.”

Benefits of Yasso 800’s
Yasso 800’s will improve your endurance, running efficiency, speed and race pace. Running 800-metre intervals for 10 repeats is no easy task, but they will help improve your marathon pace and may help you hit your marathon goal time. They also train your body to perform well even when you are fatigued, boosting your stamina for long-distance races.Yasso 800’s workouts also offer the benefit of simplicity. This is an easy speed workout to remember, which makes all the difference when you’re training. You can also program the workout into your Garmin watch for easy access on the run.

How to Do Yasso 800’s
The original Yasso 800’s workout included 10 repeats of 800 metres (two laps around a standard track), with running recovery laps for an equal amount of time as your fast intervals. For example, if you run your 800-metre intervals in 4:00, then you do a recovery run for four minutes between each interval. As with all interval training, you want to aim for consistency in your times. The first few repeats may not feel very difficult, but it will be challenging to maintain the same pace for 10 intervals.

You can also run a Yasso 800’s workout on the treadmill or outside on roads using a GPS watch or running app to measure 800 metres.

Setting Your Distance
If you are training for a shorter race than a marathon, or if you are just beginning your Yasso 800’s workouts, run four intervals to start. For marathon runners, add an interval each week until you reach 10 x 800’s. Do not add an interval until you meet your time goals in a workout. So, e.g. if your goal is 3:30 and you run four repeats of 800 metres, do not add an 800 for the next week until you can do all four repeats in 3:30 or less.

As with all speed training, you should do a 5- to 10-minute warm-up and cool down run at a relaxed pace before and after
your workout. Do not forget also to stretch. I recommend doing the Yasso 800’s workout once a week when you are in training mode.

Sample Yasso 800’s Workout
Here is a sample workout you can use to start your own speed training. Do this speed workout once a week until your race and add in some time to taper if you are marathon training.
Warm-up: Run for 10 minutes at a relaxed, easy pace. Do dynamic stretches.
Intervals: Run 800 metres (half of a mile or two laps on a standard running track) at your goal pace. For marathon runners, this will be your goal race time in minutes. (For a 4-hour marathon, run your 800’s in four minutes). Do 10 intervals.
Recovery: Jog for the same amount of time as your interval but at a relaxed, recovery pace.
Do a recovery jog between each 800-metre interval.
Cool down: Run for 10 minutes at a relaxed, easy pace. Stretch.

Yasso 800’s Workout Modifications
If you are training for a shorter race than a marathon, you can adapt the Yasso 800’s workout to your distance goals. For a half-marathon, I recommend doing at least five 800’s, and for a 5-kilometre or 10-kilometre race, run at least four 800’s.

For half-marathon time goals, aim for your 10-kilometre race pace for the 800’s. So, e.g. if you run 10 kilometres at an 8-minute mile pace, run your 800’s at the same pace, in 4 minutes. If you are training for a 5-kilometre or 10-kilometre race, run your 800’s 30 seconds slower than your goal 5-kilometre pace.

The simplest way to run your Yasso 800’s workout is at a track. Then you will know that running two laps equals 800 meters, which is easy to measure. 

This article is edited for length and reprinted with permission from Marnie Kunz – www.runstreet.com.

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The plan operates on a four-week cycle meaning there will be three weeks of progressive training load followed by an easier/adaptation week. The last four-week cycle (weeks 9-12) will see 2.5 weeks of progressive load followed by a 10-day recovery/taper phase.

Many of the workouts in this training plan are repetitive and progressive. This is by design. The goal is to establish a routine that
you can be consistent with. Often simplicity is the best course of action.

This training plan has been built using Rate of Perceive Exertion or RPE for short. The RPE scale is 1-10 whereby 1 is very easy and 10 is best effort. When designated for a workout, RPE ratings apply to the main set—please do warm-ups and cool downs easy. RPE 3-5 activation sets in the warm-up should be done with higher RPE to warm up for the set that is coming. A RPE of 8-8.5 can be roughly correlated to your Functional Threshold Power or FTP on the bike and your running threshold effort or pace.

The workouts, with some higher intensity on the bike and run, are designated to be done on hilly terrain. If you don’t have access to hills, the workouts can be done on flat terrain using the same RPE scale.

Where there are two workouts a day, these can be done at opposite ends of the day. The Saturday bike/run is a brick workout—do the run immediately after the bike. The easy swim on Saturday can be done either immediately after the brick or a little later.

On the Saturday before race day there are two options for the swim—one done in your normal setting/pool and the other is an open water option should you wish to use the race venue.

12 Week Training Program

Photography credit: Harmony IRONMAN 70.3 Calgary

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Training Goals:

• Our primary goal is to get sufficient running volume in. This means most of the plan has easy or long runs. We use an effort scale of 0-10 and an easy or long run should be around a 4/10. This is a conversational pace and requires an athlete to consciously go slower than often feels most pleasurable.

• Tuesdays are intensity workouts. These are higher RPE ranges from 6 which is kind of “fun hard” to 8 which is really just “hard hard.” Your one-mile efforts at a RPE of 9 aren’t flat out but should feel like quite fast running. Your goal should be to maintain a consistent effort through these sessions without significantly slowing down throughout the workout. All intensity sessions should start with a ~15 min warm-up and finish with a similar cool down. Recovery time between the intervals is listed in brackets with the intervals and can be very slow jogging or walking. Intensity sessions should be primarily on runnable trail terrain. These can be relatively flat or rolling. Hill sessions should be uphill—running or power hiking (or a mix).
• Look ahead to what your race has for vertical and terrain. Your runs should be on trails that ideally match the expected terrain in your race. If you’re doing a mountain race, get on trails with lots of vertical. If you’re doing a flatter and faster race, get on those buff, single-track routes. Use your long runs to test your gear and your nutrition ahead of race day. This is one of your single most useful tools—make sure those foods are palatable at the end of a long run and that your shoes/vest/whatever doesn’t chafe you.

Maintain Consistency:

Maintaining structure and consistency is critical. Try not to stack your sessions all in one part of the week. If you miss a workout, sometimes it just makes sense to leave it behind rather than try
to make it up. Monitor for excessive fatigue and small injuries that could get worse. Remember the process is supposed to be fun—enjoy your training and good luck at your race.

50 km Trail Race Training Program

Photography: Ty Holtan

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A Key Training Component – Threshold Training
Threshold training is a key piece to all sound training plans. Threshold training is designed to increase aerobic capacity and allows you to sustain efforts without the breakdown. One of the more subtle benefits of threshold training is that it can promote gains while minimizing risk of overtraining.

Your aerobic threshold is roughly the effort that you could sustain for about an hour. For some people, this is about a 10 km effort. For the fastest distance runners in the world, it’s closer to road half-marathon effort.

Modification for Trail Runners
Even when transitioning from roads to trails, threshold training is still a key component of training. However, measuring threshold through pacing isn’t practical. Heart rate measurements can be unreliable and misleading when you add unpredictable terrain. “Rate of Perceived Exertion” or “RPE” is a reliable alternative to pace and heart rate. RPE is a way of measuring effort on a scale of 1-10 where one is “complete rest” and 10 is maximal effort. Moderate effort and threshold effort should be 7/10 for a 60-minute trial. This effort is cumulative, so if the terrain is uphill, you will likely slow down, and it may even include hiking, but your heart rate will increase. However, as you crest the hilltop and start cruising downhill, your heart rate will lower and your pace may even be faster than it would be on a flat road, but RPE remains at 7/10.

Trail Running Threshold Workouts
There are three main categories that trail runners could utilize that target different levels of threshold workouts: Ventilatory Threshold (“Steady State” runs), Threshold running, and Critical Velocity running. Steady State running is a somewhat more conservative effort that ensures one stays in the aerobic zones, while Threshold running targets stamina and progresses the aerobic threshold capabilities. Critical Velocity workouts increase speed and address stamina, which can progress into anaerobic thresholds as well.

By focusing on these three target areas, trail runners gain insights into optimizing their efforts, honing trail-specific terrain skills, and enhancing durability for greater success on the trails. Additionally, this approach allows runners to maintain proper effort levels, improve stamina, and mitigate the risk of overtraining or injury. It’s essential for athletes to avoid pushing their easy runs or threshold runs too aggressively, as this can lead to performance plateaus. By managing effort levels effectively, athletes can optimize recovery and push into new speed and sprint zones without accumulating excessive fatigue from recovery running and threshold training.

Steady State Example
This is a long run (2-2.5 hours) that includes a warm-up and a cool down, with a “steady state” focus during the long run. It is often recommended this be on terrain similar to your upcoming race, but it can be ideal for rolling terrain with shorter, variable uphill and downhill terrain, or technical features that may be encountered on race day. This effort is generally at a 6/10 but could be broken into various segments with minimal recovery separating segments.

Threshold Example
This could be designed for a prolonged uphill segment with a sustained 7/10 RPE. The idea of this workout is to have approximately an hour at the 7/10 RPE. An example could be a 15-minute warm-up, sustained effort at 7/10 RPE on moderate grade uphill (i.e. 3-6% incline) for 30-45 minutes with an immediate turnaround, and sustained 7/10 RPE on the downhill for 20-30 minutes. This workout promotes sustained duration at a threshold effort, which builds greater stamina at this effort and progression of the aerobic threshold. It also builds muscular endurance and focuses on form, specifically improving skill and confidence for uphill running.

Critical Velocity Example
To target your Critical Velocity, you could focus on shorter uphill and downhill segments. One way to design this workout would be as a fartlek run where you push shorter segments (such as 8/10 RPE on the uphills, 5/10 RPE on flat sections, and 8/10 RPE on the downhills). The time duration at intensity for this workout would be shorter than the previously mentioned workouts, as it would be 30-45 minutes.

A second way to design a workout would be with a more specific structure. An example of this would be an “Up-Down” workout. For example, a 15-minute warm-up, 6-8 reps of 1–2-minute uphill ascents at 8/10 RPE, with descents at 6/10 RPE. This could be done at a slightly steeper incline of up to 10%. With both of these designs done on trails or gravel roads, an athlete would be working on footing, and quick feet on more technical descents while targeting threshold training, with this section pushing into anaerobic threshold training. 

AEROBIC VS ANAEROBIC THRESHOLD TRAINING

The difference between anaerobic and aerobic threshold training lies in the intensity at which each occurs, and the metabolic processes involved.

Aerobic threshold training focuses on exercising at an intensity just below the point where the body shifts primarily to anaerobic metabolism. This intensity allows the body to efficiently utilize oxygen to produce energy, improving aerobic endurance and efficiency over time.

In contrast, anaerobic threshold training involves exercising at intensities that push the body to rely more on anaerobic metabolism, where energy is produced without the presence of oxygen. This type of training aims to increase the body’s tolerance to high levels of lactate and delay the onset of fatigue during intense efforts.

While both types of training have their benefits, aerobic threshold training is typically more sustainable for longer durations and is often utilized for building a strong aerobic base, while anaerobic threshold training is geared towards improving performance in high-intensity, shorter duration activities.

Photography by Steven Peterson

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