Make Your Long, Easy Workouts Even Longer and Easier

For decades I’ve said to make your long, easy workouts even longer and easier and your short, hard workouts shorter and even harder. In other words, train a barbell strategy: heavy on either extreme. Either go easy or go hard. Spend less time in the middle.

A new study tests just how easy you can really go and still get benefits. They took trained recreational runners of both sexes and split them into two groups. One group trained right at the easy/moderate threshold, right up against the point at which they’d switch into moderate/intense. If you’ve heard of Zone 2 training, this group was training right at the upper limit of Zone 2. Any harder, and they’d cross over into the next Zone of intensity.

The second group was in Zone 2 as well, but 10-15% below that borderline. They ran the same amount of mileage, just at a lower intensity. Both groups were in Zone 2. The second group was on the lower side of Zone 2, while the first group was pushing up against the upper limit.

For both groups:

70% of their total training was in the easy zone (either right at Zone 2 threshold or 10-15% below)

17% was in “heavy” intensity: a weekly 45-50 minute run across changing terrain and elevation. Intensity ranged between Zone 3 and “unsustainable” anaerobic intensity.

13% in “severe” intensity: a weekly interval session, that changed based on the individual athlete. A typical session might look something like 3 minute intervals at 5k race pace with 3 minutes easy jog as “rest” lasting 30-40 minutes in total.

Both groups improved about the same. No major differences in outcomes.

Their critical speed (the speed where the running starts feeling “unsustainable”) increased by roughly 3 to 4 percent. So they could go faster before it started getting too hard.

Both groups got faster in a 3,600-meter time trial. The easy group improved by 11 seconds while the even easier group improved by 17 seconds.

They also improved across a surprisingly broad set of neuromuscular tests. The researchers measured countermovement jump, squat jump, drop jump, vertical stiffness, and elastic index.

Countermovement jump height improved by about 10 to 11 percent in both groups. Squat jump improved by about 6 percent. Drop jump (dropping off a box and immediately jumping once you hit the ground while trying to minimize ground contact time) improved by about 9 percent. Vertical stiffness (how much you can resist bending or deforming your body when a rapid load is applied, like landing when jumping or running) increased by about 10 percent, and elastic index, a measure of how effectively the body uses the stretch-shortening cycle and stored elastic energy, also improved in both group, with the “even easier” group improving a bit more.

The one marker that seemed to worsen was D-prime. That’s the finite reserve of hard effort available after your sustainable running pace. It’s how long you can dig deep when things get hard. Both groups got worse on that mark, but the “even easier” group declined slightly more. Now, this may not be a real shift. That “finite reserve” is notoriously hard to directly measure and is instead just approximated with D-prime. It’s not a direct measurement like the other things in this study, so take it with a grain of salt.

However, the “even easier” group reported less stress, less fatigue, and less strain. They were fresher and, presumably, would have more leftover for harder workouts at other times and life in general.

So while there were no performance benefits to “even easier” training, it could leave more in the tank for other pursuits. Plus, “easier” is its own reward.

Lots of easy stuff sprinkled with some very hard stuff. Simple.