The Day Before a Hard Workout

What is the best thing to do the day before a hard workout? It depends on what the workout is, what your current fitness level is, and what you've been doing the past few days. One of the things I keep in mind as a coach is training does not occur in a vacuum. We always need to keep it in context. In this post I'll go over a few situations and hit on the main things that will generally apply 90% of the time.

Simply put, you want to take it easy. The idea for most hard workouts is to lay down some serious work so that we can get the "quality" of training we're looking for. By quality, what we're saying is we want the stress response from that hard training session to elicit certain adaptations; speed, strength, lactate tolerance, etc. It could be any number of things depending on what you're training for and where you might be in a training cycle. For most athletes, it's best not to go into these sessions in a state of poor recovery. This can lead to lower outputs, injuries and leave you in a bad headspace ( feelings of failure, frustration, not good enough, wasted time...). Ultimately, you won't get the adaptations you were hoping for.

So what is the proper easy day leading into a hard workout? This can vary depending on your age, ability, and where you are in your training cycle and fitness. It's mainly a matter of the way our body responds and it may require some trial and error to find exactly what works for you. For most of the athletes I've coached over the years, I typically give workouts of 30-50 minutes in duration of easy aerobic running. I usually put a heart rate limit or pace zone that I know will be very easy for them, especially if I know they tend to go a little strong. If we're going by rate of perceived exertion (RPE), I want them at a 2-3 on a scale of 0-10. I'll cap those runs off with some short alactic strides of 8-10sec. They're quick and fast, but not full gas, and not long enough to produce lactate to where you are sore or need to recover from them. We want just enough work to produce some muscle tension so that your body is primed to run fast the next day. Ideally, your legs will feel fresh and bouncy the day of your hard workout.

There are times when you might go into a big workout with some fatigue in your legs. I might do this with marathon and ultra-runners the day before a tempo/long run,. Other times you might "stack" workouts where you have two quality workouts in a row. Those will be different circumstances, however, you would still want the preceding easy days leading into those to put you in a state where you can make those workouts effective.

I highly suggest experimenting with different strategies, and I would add that you want to think about the 2-3 days leading into these workouts too. How well you are recovering from previous hard workouts and other runs matters.

I have some athletes that only do short easy days with no strides the day before that hard workout, others might have full rest days, but for the most part we stick with short and easy plus strides. Remember, everyone is a little different and things can change over time. The main goal is to have a great high quality workout when you want it and get the adaptations you're looking for. Take notes on what you do and what gives you the best results. Pay attention to how you feel on both days (your RPE), the easy day and the quality day, and adjust as needed. When you feel great on that hard workout, the legs are bouncy, your energy level is high and you nail your goal for the day, then you did it right!

Feel free to message me with any questions and/or coaching inquiries at fjfish99@gmail.com

Train smart,

FF