Smart Training

Coffee often brings out the best in people.
Not the stuff you actually drink, but the convention of sitting down, having a 'coffee', and enjoying the company of friends, family or colleagues.

Hang-on, I may need to retract that statement! I know plenty of people that have to have a coffee (literally) before they can manage anything close to understandable, let alone good, or best...hehe.

I had a 'coffee' with an athlete mid-arvo yesterday. We talked about all sorts of things, and solved most of the world's problems. Coffee is so powerful!

Of course, we talked training. The athlete asked about Smart Training.
Training means different things to different people.

We'd both heard about smart training in terms of goal-setting: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. It's a nice, if not out-dated, acronym.

I added another smart acronym perspective: Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology.

In many ways training is an approach to achieving the aims you seek form your running. Smart training is a more-or-less systematic approach to achieving your outcomes or objectives. Smart training is knowing what you want to achieve, and going about achieving that. It's about consideration, planning, implementation, assessment and reflection. And it's about time, and effort. Some of it is science.

And it's about being flexible and enjoying what you do, and not pushing all the time. It's being human, and intuitive. Some of it is art.

Some of us run (we call it 'training') simply because we enjoy it, and the benefits running brings us when we're diligent. And that, as an end in itself, is cool. Some would see it as training for the sake of training. I doubt it can ever be that simple, as there is always something that attracts the runner to running, and to continue to run: not all of us run (and train) to race, compete or perform.

That said, I could (and will, soon)  make a case that we are all competitors and athletes.

In short, smart training is about understanding the difference between training hard and hard training. Understanding is not simply knowing; it implies consideration, and application. Understanding underpins application to context, a form of wisdom.


Training hard is about training in a manner to achieve given objectives: the outcomes of a particular activity or drill, the outcomes of a given training session or microcycle or phase of training. In this essence, training hard is about directed-training: training that is planned with intent and purpose, and executed or completed with same the same intent.

Smart training in terms of 'training hard' is a form of athletic intelligence, and underpins all good training and athletic development programs.

If an 'easy' session is planned, then training hard dictates that's what you do. If you're session focuses on technique, speed, economy, race-pace, lactate tolerance or is meant to be long then that's what you're (meant) to do. If you're meant to spend 30 minutes completing well designed trunk (or 'core') and leg circuit the...guess what...do it!

Training hard is often the more mentally challenging; it's tougher to do! Easy sessions, and lighter weeks, and a day-off are often 'hard' for many to complete. As are true 'physically hard' sessions.

On the contrary, hard training is the 'soft' option. Hard training has you going out and 'busting your boiler', 'smashing yourself' and 'hitting the track' (or gym) each and every time you train. Sure, there is no shortage of sweat and work and fatigue here. And you may even finish thinking "Yeah man, that was some workout!" Funnily enough you said the same thing after your last workout, and the one before that, and the similar ones you did last week. It's about a hit, a fix, instant gratification.

Anyone, any fool, can work-out and complete sessions that feel hard one after another. Over time, these sessions all tend to be the same in nature: neither truly hard, nor easy, nor moderate. They become a conglomeration of workouts completed one after another.

This is not training, and certainly isn't smart.

It's a form of work, and work and training are not synonymous; they are not the same thing. Of course, run training requires physical work - yes, you've got to put out! It also requires you to invest time, emotion and mental effort.

Smart, directed work over time - true training - is much more than going out and simply exercising regularly, or working out when you feel like it.

It's knowing what you're training for and towards, and directing your time, energy and emotion in doing that.

It often requires patience, and delayed gratification.

Who has patience though when one needs their hit or fix of coffee!