Neuromuscular Efficiency

Hi Team.  This is part 2 of what I think will end up being a 6 part series on the essential components you need in your training and your lifestyle in order to run at your best.  Remember, I'm doing these in order of which factor takes the longest to develop.  Last week, the topic was cardiovascular development.  Runners spend the most time on cardiovascular development because it is of utmost importance to our sport AND it takes years to fully develop.

The Importance of Neuromuscular efficiency

The next factor that you need in order to fully develop as a runner is Neuromuscular efficiency.  Let's break that word down: Neuro refers to your nervous system and Muscular refers to your muscles.  Put those terms together and add efficiency to them and I hope you can understand that this factor in your performance refers to the ability of your nervous system to control your muscles to move you forward quickly while using as little energy as possible!

I'm sure you can all imagine 2 runners in a race.  Both have the same capacity to use oxygen, both want to win just as bad. But if  Athlete A has to use 2% more energy while running at the same pace as Athlete B, then in the final 800m, Athlete A will be out of gas and Athlete B will still have something left for the kick.

How Do You Develop Neuromuscular Efficiency.  

So, you've decided that you want to be more efficient in your running.  How do you get there?  There are a number of ways.  

1. You know those drills we do?  We do those for a reason.  Those drills are designed to teach a specific neural pattern that your brain will use to control your body so that it is as efficient as possible.  Those drills also have a nice warm up component to them, but mostly when we do them, what I am wanting to see is for all of you to pay attention and do them correctly.  
2. The Principle of Specificity tells us that if you want to run fast, then you need to....well, run fast! Even more important than doing drills is the practice of incorporating low intensity fast running into your workouts on a regular basis.  Most runners do some sort of Striders or Strides throughout the weeks and months of a season.  
3. The third way to become efficient at running at a specific race pace is to practice running at that race pace....Simple, right?  The key when we are trying to develop efficiency is to practice running at that pace when we are not exhausted already.  If we want to know what it feels like to run fast effortlessly, then we need to do some practice running at specific race paces when we are fresh.  Because we want to be fresh for each repetition we do, we will take a fair amount of rest in between each one.  This type of training is commonly known as Repetition Training or Reps for short.  A very basic workout to train neuromuscular efficiency during the summer may be something like

• a light warm up, including neural activation drills
• an easy run of 20-30 minutes
• a set of running drills
• 4 striders with a jog back to the starting line as a recovery
• 8 x 200m at mile goal pace with about 90 seconds of recovery
• 10 minutes of light jogging
• 5 minutes of stretching. 
• Remember, the goal of this type of training is not to exhaust yourself, it is to teach yourself to run fast at a relaxed pace

How Often Should You Do This Type Of Training?

You should work on it a little bit every day.  No, you don't need to run 200s every day and NO, you don't need to run strides every day.  But, just about every day, you should be doing something....either drills, strides, or reps.

A Word Of Caution About Strides

Strides can be as easy or difficult as you make them.  I often see athletes on an "easy day" run 10 x 100m hard sprints with very little recovery in between reps.  In my book, those aren't strides, that is a workout designed to develop speed endurance and developing speed endurance is HARD. Therefore, athletes doing hard strides on an easy day are canceling out the recovery that the easy day should have provided.  Strides shouldn't be hard, they should be relaxed and comfortable.  Remember, you're trying to teach your body to run fast while relaxed.