The hard-easy principle
Coach Bernard looks at the 'hard-easy principle' and how it can fit into your training.
The hard-easy principle – or should it be the other way around?
I mentioned the hard-easy principle in a previous article on the place of low-intensity training. Since writing that article, I’ve come across a book published in the mid-1980s by the American Olympian and renowned coach Ron Daws (Running your best – the committed runner’s guide to training and racing. The Stephen Greene Press (1985)).
Daws was a disciple of the New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard and draws heavily on his own experience as a marathon runner and coach.
Although some parts of this book are now a bit out of date, there is much common sense that is just as applicable today. The hard-easy principle features highly, as we might expect, but Daws makes what at first is perhaps a surprising comment: “the hard days are easy to run and the easy days are hard”.
Coincidentally, some of our athletes have been taking a cold hard look at their training diaries recently, and have been making sure that their easy days are indeed easy. However, for now, at least they are finding what they think should be an easy pace is actually quite hard work. So let’s think about this a bit further and use our group sessions as an example.
Mentally up
If your hard day is preceded by an easier one, then physically you should be relatively fresh. Daws also uses the phrase ”mentally up” – well OK definitely not wound up as for a race, but everyone in the group arrives knowing that they’ll be putting in some hard work. And they do – they finish the session pretty stuffed but hopefully satisfied with what they’ve achieved, “uplifted” to quote Daws. I doubt if anyone would describe our typical sessions as “easy” but this feeling of satisfaction might just make them feel a bit less hard than they actually are. What’s more, by working together distance runners get a lot more out of themselves than they would by training on their own.
You’re going to feel this tomorrow
On to the next day and supposedly an easy or recovery run and reality strikes – the uplift from last night has gone and it’s a real struggle to set out on your relaxed few miles. I’ve said after many a group session “you’re going to feel this tomorrow”. So an easy run actually feels a lot harder than you expect it to – at least early on until you get into it. Time to forget any preconceptions about pace, ignore any wristbound technology and work on perceived effort.
Ron Daws goes through this same argument and he’s right, but it’s not contradicting the hard-easy principle, it’s all relative – hard sessions might seem a bit less hard than they actually are, and at least until we adapt to our current workload the start of our easy sessions feels a bit harder than we’d like.
There is another side to this, which is going home after a great session with that “I could do this anytime” feeling that does in fact persist into the following day’s training. It’s then all too easy to start hammering things all over again, and what frequently happens is that the wheels soon come off big time. It’s not a pretty sight, but many of us have been through it and hopefully, we learn from bitter experience. Self-control is needed here, simple to say but often difficult to implement.
Recovery
The true test of fitness is recovery and if you are in good shape and you let yourself get gently into an easy run you should find that by the end you are feeling much better for it. It’s quite possible in fact to knock in your weekly long run (which is low intensity) the day after a race or one of our demanding Saturday morning cross country sessions. I have heard however of people who reckon they can barely walk for 2 or 3 days after a hard session. If that really is the case then my view is that the hard session is too hard for them at that point – a balanced programme means that today’s session, whether it’s meant to be hard or easy, takes account of what you did yesterday and what you are doing tomorrow.