You often hear the saying, “Train ‘smarter’ not necessarily ‘harder’.”
I’ve coached a lot of athletes and these are the most common mistakes I’ve seen:
1. Doing too many runs at the same pace.
What you are looking to incorporate is at least two harder days into your weekly training. On these days, it’s business time. You really need to be prepared for them, dial in the mind, concentrate and give of your best on these days. A good example of harder days could be a track/interval session, tempo, fartlek, hill sessions or structured workouts within your longer run. On these days you are breaking out of your comfort zone and this is where the magic is made.
However, that means that on the other days you should be taking it easier, allowing the body to recover and the muscle regeneration to take place. Pushing too hard on these easier days will fatigue you ahead of the harder days, restricting you in being able to reach your full potential. It’s important to freshen up on these easier days. These maintenance-running days should make up around 75-80% of your weekly training.
If you do the same runs, at the same pace, you will improve, but at a very slow rate compared to if you add structure to your training. Really snap out of your comfort zone on the harder days and take things easy on the easier days. I wish I had known this in my earlier running years as the rate of improvement would’ve increased.
2. Neglecting Strength and Conditioning.
As runners, what we all love doing is… running. We don’t like the crucial elements that complement running such as strength and conditioning. Maintaining and building muscle is a key element to remaining injury free throughout training. If we just focus on running and neglect giving love to out weakest areas, it’s almost a matter of time before they give in and your training becomes unsustainable. Often it takes an injury for us to realise this. But don’t tempt fate and leave it too late. Rather fit in that strength work, religiously, before it’s too late.
I encourage you to do two weighted strength sessions a week. If you’re really tight for time, try then at least one with lots of body weighted work inbetween. Things like jump squats, jumping lunges and calf raises go a long way when done consistently almost every day. 10 squats a day to keep the niggles away.
3. Ramping up Speed, Quality Volume and Mileage too soon.
In running, it takes a while for the body to adapt - it doesn’t just happen overnight. I’ve seen it happen many times where an athlete will start following structure, see drastic improvements from early on, then ramp things up too quickly, eventually resulting in injury. Getting more speed and running faster times is rewarding when you put the work in, and addictive too. A lot of us runners have addictive personality types, however, we must train smartly and not get carried away. We always look for gradual increases in the running game, but I wouldn’t recommend increasing your volume or quality within your training or your mileage by more than 10% from the week before. This will give you the best chance of remaining productive and reduce the chances of getting injured.
4. Not practising Nutrition and Gels enough within training.
When it comes to race day you never want to try anything new. You also want to be able to train your stomach in such a way that you know it can handle the nutrition and carbs you’re putting into it on race day.
I used to make the mistake of thinking that if I ran a long distance on race day without taking a gel, it would have double the effect when I do take it but this was the incorrect thought process. You actually have a much better training effect when you give your body consistent fuelling throughout.
There’s a lot of training and preparation that we put in prior to a race so it’s crucial to train our stomachs in such a way that we are confident we won’t have tummy issues on race day. I can’t stress how important this is.
We live in a day and age where a lot of the stuff we do naturally goes on social media. It’s easy to get brainwashed into going on Instagram or YouTube, seeing athletes running with an almost perfect form, and letting that demoralise you. Instead of seeing it that way, own your style! We all have different styles and form. In fact, very few of us are happy with our running style. But don’t let that throw you off training hard and being the best you that you possibly can be. It's also easy to fall into the trap of running your easy runs faster, because you’re concerned about what other runners might see on your Strava. You’re better off running with the mindset that the easier you do your recovery runs, the fresher and faster you will be on your harder days which means training will be productive and those results that we train hard for will come!
I’m certainly guilty of making some of these mistakes myself. I hope by sharing these trends with you, you’re able to overcome and correct some of them yourself! Try to do things in a smart way that will provide you with the biggest benefits and smallest chance of getting injured!
Boom Shakalaka!
