Taking a look back this week at an article published by Running Times Magazine in 2005. Four years later, many of the same principles for success are still found within targeted training. The general idea remains the same — “Everything Matters”.
By Jonathan Beverly
As featured in the September 2005 issue of Running Times Magazine
Training the Brad Hudson way is both simple and complex
Simple, because he categorizes all training into only two types:
“Specific training for the goal event, and training to get the athlete to the point where he or she can do the specific training.” All of this is aimed at a clear goal, which is “to change how long you can go at goal pace.”
Complex, because Hudson is adamant that the details of training are different for every person, and different for each person at different times. “One thing I want to make sure I’m clear on is that there are no absolutes,” he states. “The one thing you do know is that everyone is different. The biggest mistake is to stick to a formula, or a schedule.” He repeatedly stresses that the training he gives all his athletes is “very individual . . . I try to see what the athletes need, rather than follow a schedule.”
Hudson often reviles training schedules (thus you won’t find one in this article). “I don’t really believe in writing schedules,” he says. “It never really works; it never comes out.” He criticizes the trend toward simplifying training to fit everyone: “Coaches are too much into science and periods, [They] try to come up with a magic formula.” He would even object to the phrase “training the Brad Hudson way” in the opening line of this article. “Too many people follow the system of one person,” he believes. “They say, ‘this guy had great results, let’s follow him,’ but it could be completely incorrect for you. The truth is, I believe in nothing. I believe in everything and nothing. Because you realize it all criss-crosses over into everything—you have to have everything.”
Despite his dislike of being codified, and the difficulty in doing so due to the diversity of his ideas, a number of themes emerge from his advice that provide, if not a plan, a “direction for training,” in his terminology.
All of Hudson’s training is targeted toward a goal: “We’re always conscious of what we’re trying to do: to run goal pace. Too many people just run hard, not smart. They don’t see the connection between what the demands of their event are and what their actual training is. At the end, we’re trying to get a goal, not just run a lot. You need to run a lot, but that shouldn’t be the goal.”
Hudson’s goal is to get athletes to the point where they can do race specific workouts during the last four weeks leading to an event. In this specific period, he questions those who do untargeted workouts. As an example: “Marathoners go to the track to run qua
rters. Maybe 10 quarters in 68, 65, even 75—and they’re like a three-hour marathoner. Their [race] pace is 6:53. Any-thing faster than 10 percent off your goal pace has no specific endurance for that event.” Or another example: “Say someone can run 100 miles a week and can do a 20-mile run at 5:30 pace. That’s great, and that will get you closer—all training is good — but you can’t say you’re ready to run a 13 minute 5K, or ready to run 27 for the 10K. It’s not close enough in endurance, it doesn’t tell you anything. What tells you something is if you know the guy can do, say, five 2Ks just slower than race pace; that’s endurance for the 5K.”
One key to his philosophy is to only train each system enough to accomplish a specific goal—not just build blindly. When training at a threshold, for example, “it is not about building the threshold as high as possible, it is about building it as high as you can get it to support the specific work you’re trying to do.”
READ ON...
By Jonathan Beverly
As featured in the September 2005 issue of Running Times Magazine
Training the Brad Hudson way is both simple and complex
Simple, because he categorizes all training into only two types:
“Specific training for the goal event, and training to get the athlete to the point where he or she can do the specific training.” All of this is aimed at a clear goal, which is “to change how long you can go at goal pace.”
Complex, because Hudson is adamant that the details of training are different for every person, and different for each person at different times. “One thing I want to make sure I’m clear on is that there are no absolutes,” he states. “The one thing you do know is that everyone is different. The biggest mistake is to stick to a formula, or a schedule.” He repeatedly stresses that the training he gives all his athletes is “very individual . . . I try to see what the athletes need, rather than follow a schedule.”
Hudson often reviles training schedules (thus you won’t find one in this article). “I don’t really believe in writing schedules,” he says. “It never really works; it never comes out.” He criticizes the trend toward simplifying training to fit everyone: “Coaches are too much into science and periods, [They] try to come up with a magic formula.” He would even object to the phrase “training the Brad Hudson way” in the opening line of this article. “Too many people follow the system of one person,” he believes. “They say, ‘this guy had great results, let’s follow him,’ but it could be completely incorrect for you. The truth is, I believe in nothing. I believe in everything and nothing. Because you realize it all criss-crosses over into everything—you have to have everything.”
Despite his dislike of being codified, and the difficulty in doing so due to the diversity of his ideas, a number of themes emerge from his advice that provide, if not a plan, a “direction for training,” in his terminology.
All of Hudson’s training is targeted toward a goal: “We’re always conscious of what we’re trying to do: to run goal pace. Too many people just run hard, not smart. They don’t see the connection between what the demands of their event are and what their actual training is. At the end, we’re trying to get a goal, not just run a lot. You need to run a lot, but that shouldn’t be the goal.”
Hudson’s goal is to get athletes to the point where they can do race specific workouts during the last four weeks leading to an event. In this specific period, he questions those who do untargeted workouts. As an example: “Marathoners go to the track to run qua
rters. Maybe 10 quarters in 68, 65, even 75—and they’re like a three-hour marathoner. Their [race] pace is 6:53. Any-thing faster than 10 percent off your goal pace has no specific endurance for that event.” Or another example: “Say someone can run 100 miles a week and can do a 20-mile run at 5:30 pace. That’s great, and that will get you closer—all training is good — but you can’t say you’re ready to run a 13 minute 5K, or ready to run 27 for the 10K. It’s not close enough in endurance, it doesn’t tell you anything. What tells you something is if you know the guy can do, say, five 2Ks just slower than race pace; that’s endurance for the 5K.”One key to his philosophy is to only train each system enough to accomplish a specific goal—not just build blindly. When training at a threshold, for example, “it is not about building the threshold as high as possible, it is about building it as high as you can get it to support the specific work you’re trying to do.”
READ ON...
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