Ep. 36 - Fartlek Training: SPICE Things Up

This week's episode of The Sunday Shakeout features the ultimate guide to fartlek training for distance runners. I like to use the analogy of food when talking about fartlek training. Let's say that every single night for dinner you ate chicken, broccoli, and rice. The broccoli is raw, the chicken breast was simply thrown in the pan without any spices, and we the rice is just plain brown rice. From a nutritional perspective, this is a very nutrient-dense dinner. You are getting in high-quality lean protein, whole grain carbohydrates, and many micronutrients from the broccoli. However, who really wants to eat unreason chicken, raw broccoli, and brown rice every night for dinner? I sure don't. Training can often fall into this trap on monotony where we do the same thing every single week. Maybe that training is effective, but if you keep doing the same thing over and over, unless you have perfected a training model (which most people haven't) that is monotonous yet works, like the Ingebrigtsen model, then you are going to plateau. You are going to hit the wall with your gains. What if you spiced up your training, changed your training so that you can keep seeing improvement? People think of training more, training harder, or training differently. These are all great things and I think you should look to improve your training in these ways every cycle. However, fartlek training is another way to spice up your training. It can add some variety, some variation. So spice up that chicken, maybe have salmon one night, or steamed carrots. If you add fartlek training to change things up a bit, you might just see some great improvement in your running, something that we all love. But what even is fartlek training. Today, I address that question, and many more. I hope you enjoy this episode of The Sunday Shakeout!

In this episode, I talk about:

• The versatility of fartlek workouts
• What even are fartlek workouts
• How to structure fartlek workouts
• The two main types of fartleks
• Tips for fartlek workouts

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Contact Nicholas: thesundayshakeout@gmail.com