Ahh intervals, one of the most hated/loved/feared/misunderstood topics in our world. It’s complicated. But it’s not. There are a LOT of ways to do intervals. I like to think of a training plan as a recipe and intervals are the spices. Some spices you don’t want to add to the pot until later, and some you don’t want to add at all. Not because they’re bad, but because they don’t work with the big picture of what you’re trying to do.
Here are some basic guidelines for how we use intervals.
- Unless you’re training very specifically for mental toughness, HARD isn’t the goal of intervals. FAST is the goal of intervals. Which means that, if it’s HARD, but you aren’t going FAST, then you should go home and rest! The rest of these tips are based on achieving FAST intervals. NOTE: We mean fast compared to you, not fast compared to your brother/cousin/friend/frenemy/bff/aliens/that Instagram influencer/etc.
- Be recovered from prior training! The most common way to not do intervals well is to be too tired from the previous days.
- Warm up really well. Warming up is one of the biggest factors contributing to the success of your workout.
- If you get to the end of the warmup and you feel terrible, go home. Again, our goal is FAST, not hard. It’s almost impossible to go fast if you feel like shit.
- Unless you’re training very specifically for starting a race super hard, the first few intervals should still be considered part of the warmup, and done perhaps a little slower than the average. Your intervals should almost always be paced so that you’re faster at the end.
- Don’t be a slave to heart rate (HR). We mostly don’t care what your HR actually is during the intervals. Most of the time we care about the pace/speed of the intervals more. Intervals should be done based on pace/effort, and HR should be used (when appropriate) to calibrate the perceived effort.
- Ignore the heart rate completely for the rest. You should walk, stand, jog back downhill, or whatever you need to do between intervals in order to recover as much as you need to to be FAST in the next interval.
- Most intervals should NOT be done “to the well,” meaning going so hard you couldn’t possibly have gone another step at that speed. You should finish most sets feeling like you could have done between a half to a whole additional rep at the prescribed speed.
- INTERVALS ARE A SKILL! It may take a while before you can NAIL most of your interval sets. The expectation is NOT that you will be perfect at these right off the bat, but that you will learn and get better over time!
- If you find yourself blown apart before all the prescribed intervals are done, YOU are done. Again, the goal is fast, and if you can’t go fast, you’re done. Don’t bullshit yourself. Only YOU will know if you could have done more quality work. NOTE: Don’t second guess yourself afterwards. Our heads are hardwired to forget how hard something was, so 15 minutes later you’ll probably have this feeling of “Shit, I totally could have done another.” But you should trust the person who was sucking air and didn’t think they could do another moments ago.
