An Ode to Stability

In the bestselling book Outlive by Peter Attia, Chapter 13 is titled “The Gospel of Stability – Relearning How to Move to Prevent Injury”. Attia defines ‘stability’ as “the subconscious ability to harness, decelerate or stop force”. Although his focus is on longevity rather than performance the chapter struck a bell!

He makes a nice analogy about one of his passions – motor racing, where he goes to a car track day in his own 460 horsepower BMW M3 and tests it out before swapping to the car he had hired for the session which was a track prepped BMW 325i with only 165 horsepower.

He found his laps were significantly faster in the less powerful car, the reason being that it was able to transmit more of the force into the road. The track car was faster because it had better “stability” (tighter suspension, sticker tires…). Without stability, the M3’s superior power was not much use. This got me thinking.

If you read my post https://fwdmotionsthlm.blog/need-for-speed/ you’ll know I’m an advocate of speed first but I liked this analogy for driving home (no pun intended) why aerobic capacity on its own can only get you so far. That capacity has to be built on top of a mechanical capacity. You may already have more horsepower than you can use, so focusing on increasing it further is not an efficient use of precious training time.

So how do we bring out the full potential of your aerobic fitness? Let’s discuss metabolic power and mechanical power.

Someone who has trained a large aerobic base with layered threshold and VO2 Max work is likely to have high metabolic power, but unless they have specifically trained for it, it is also likely that the mechanical power is lacking to fully capitalize on this fitness potential.

For most of us, slowing in the last quarter of an endurance distance race is much more likely to be due to a lack of mechanical power rather than aerobic fitness.

Pivoting a little of your training time to focus on the mechanical function of the body and in particular the legs; muscle fiber recruitment, strength, and stability you’ll be figuratively and practically able to apply more force to the road.

If you’ve come to running later in life, your performance progression is likely to be mainly driven by volume. You’ll have done a lot of aerobic base training. It’s a fact that many recreational distance runners will never run faster than a 5k pace in training. In terms of race performance, you may have been able to “fitness” your way through performances that your legs aren’t capable of. Believe me, I knew that feeling very well!

I want you now to change your mindset to thinking about how you can put everything you have to use. To do this we need to start from a base of speed. And when I say speed and mean SPEED!

One key principle is learning to run fast in a non-aerobically stressful environment. This is easier than trying to learn to run fast when we are already aerobically tired. In practical terms, this means short intervals with long rests. 

I recently ran a series of sessions at the indoor 200m track at Bosön in Stockholm and I can report that my COROS wasn’t overly impressed with the Training Effect of the sessions. My STRYD power meter, on the other hand, felt I was a beast with the power numbers I was putting out! Unfortunately, I think our brains are more in tune with our watches. It has to “feel hard” to give us the feedback that it was productive.

The goal isn’t to become a great 800m or 1500m runner (although that might happen) the key is what is happening on a physiological level whilst improving that capacity. We are unlocking additional distance race potential through developing running form, efficiency, strength, and Attia’s all-so-important stability.

One possible confusion would be to think of this as VO2 Max training. It is not. These are at faster paces (force production) than Zone 5 VO2 Max training intervals would be. This isn’t in the wheelhouse of your standard watches’ 5-Zone intensity model. Most distance runners so rarely touch these run paces that it doesn’t have a name in the vernacular of distance running and can’t be gauged by heart rate.

This is Zone 6 and Zone 7 anaerobic capacity and neuromuscular power (ergo why my COROS wasn’t happy). In terms of pace; all-out micro sprints and short intervals (up to 400m) at 800m and 1500m pace with long rests. These are not necessarily aerobically taxing; the focus here is on power development and full recruitment.

For many runners, Zone 5 is considered “speed” work. Running sessions might look like 400m repeats at 5K pace, which is maybe 110% of threshold, and not even touching on the upper end of zone 5.  Which at around 115 to 120% of threshold pace we’re still only talking about intensities that represent an all-out effort for 5 minutes.

If I told a competitive 10km distance swimmer that their speed work would be done at a maximum of 400m race pace they would think I was crazy! If you told a cyclist that their 60-second power or 1 minute, or 3-minute power did not need to be trained they would be equally skeptical. 

You could argue that the nature of marathon swims or cycling road races has a higher requirement on those energy systems than a foot race, and that is true. But what you are missing is that the high-end piece is an important part of low-end aerobic speed in any discipline.

This is important for you to understand. No effort is truly aerobic. At any pace, if you run long enough you will get fully fatigued and this is where the neuromuscular system must be activated to allow more muscle fibers to come into play to allow you to sustain that pace. Your current beliefs aren’t completely wrong, your training principles work, but they will work better when built on top of high-end capacity.

Another explanation for why we don’t train these systems would be the dumbing down of recreational plans to the 80:20 Zone 2 and Zone 5. Synergistically this might be a fine way to apply the Pareto Principle (roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes) to your training. If completion and general fitness, rather than performance is your mission, stick with it. But for the elites and any amateur that wants to explore the other 80% of “causes” (even if the returns are diminishing) this isn’t the answer.

Now I don’t expect to modify your beliefs after reading this. But please consider that a belief is something you “hold to be true”. So please keep an open mind. If you’ve been failing to achieve a goal, let’s say a sub-40-minute 10k,  sub-90-minute half, or a sub-3-hour marathon (these are fairly typical of my training buddies), then maybe your beliefs are holding you back.

A very important enabler of this mechanical capacity is your range of motion and strength, this is a requirement for this needed “stability”. If you lack ankle flexibility or any other postural enabler then your “race car chassis” will be compromised. First, find your feet, and I mean literally. Stability starts with strong functional feet. If you haven’t discovered the benefits of reconnecting your feet with the natural world that’s a good place to start. Also, try deep squatting whilst holding good form, this is a simple way to assess your mobility limiters <link>.

Then as you get closer to an event and you start layering back in the Zone 4 and Zone 3 work as you get more specific to the demands of your race, you may well find you can reach new levels of capitalization on your metabolic power with this new mechanically powered speed reserve in the bag. 

As I’ve said before – to Become a Faster Runner, Start by Running Faster!