David Rudisha: Training Program

The Sweat Elite team spent April-May 2017 training with St Patrick’s Athletics group in Iten, Kenya – the training group of David Rudisha. 

The Coach of the group is Colm O’Connell, a revolutionary figure in the world of athletics, coaching multiple athletes to Olympic medals and often doing things very differently in training to the norm.

Coach Colm O’Connell loathes the cult of analysis—all the metrics like VO2 max and stride length—that dictates the regimens of most of today’s elite athletes.

“If it works, it works,” he told me. “Why must we analyze everything?”

O’Connell prefers to train his athletes by feel, not by numbers—and it’s hard to argue with the results. Since he began working in Kenya in 1976, 25 world champions and four Olympic gold medalists have come through Colm’s programs, making him, by almost any measure, the most successful running coach in history.

He is a firm believer in listening very carefully to the body, correct form in training (he will sometimes drive with the group on longer runs and remind them of form, even at slower paces).

He believes the hills in Iten are a key to the strength and power of his athletes. Iten is rarely flat and these athletes are used to running hills continuously. Over time, this builds incredible strength.

What surprised us?

Although there have been reports and rumours that the group do fairly low mileage (50-60 miles/week maximum) we weren’t sure what to believe. This does turn out to be true. The 800m guys will run at maximum 55 miles in a week, David included… and often less.

But the overall intensity is on another level.

The longest run he’ll do all year is 12km or about 50mins and the longest repetition ever done on track is 800m… and this is rare. Even the quantity/volume of repetitions on the track is low.

What’s also very interesting is how differently they treat recovery than most. Recovery during workouts and recovery in general. Very rarely will recovery be set and locked in for a workout. It’s normally rough, like 3-4mins. Or “walk 200m”.

It’s drilled into them from a very young age to listen to your body very carefully. If you’re very tired, you don’t do the planned workout. They can always tell the difference between being tired and very tired. Tired is ok. Very tired isn’t.

What else?

They do tons of stretching. Probably an average of 30-40mins per day, sometimes more.

They consume no supplements at all; no sports drinks, no protein supplements, nothing like that. They eat purely non-processed food (this is just what’s available in Kenya) and they eat zero junk food.

Below is a typical week of training for David Rudisha (and training group) in April-May, transitioning from base period to racing period.