Understand the Jack Daniels Running Formula in 15mins
Jack Daniels’s entire book is shaped by what he calls “Training Essentials”.
There are 6 training essentials:
1. Training Focus
The idea of training focus is centered on the “physiology of performance,” and the key ideas are the seven “principles of training.” The principles are:
1. The body reacts to stress
2. Specificity of training
3. Rate of achievement
4. Personal limits
5. Diminishing return
6. Accelerating setbacks
7. Ease of maintenance
The importance of these principles is to “understand why you’re doing what you’re doing” (Daniels 8).
Only when a firm grasp of these concepts is achieved can the runner get the most out of their training.
The seven principles are explained in more detail in the rest of this section.
The first principle, “The body reacts to stress,” is quite simple and is explained by Daniels succinctly.
When the body is stressed (exercise), there are two reactions, acute and training effect.
The acute response is the immediate reaction by your body of pumping more blood, breathing faster, etc.
Training effect is seen when the body adapts to the stress of a particular exercise, allowing you to perform that exercise upon repeated attempts.
“Specificity of training” is based on the “principle of specificity.”
The concept is simple: if you want to be able to shoot free throws, you should practice free throws, and if you want to be a better runner, you should run.
That is, when a specific system of the body is stressed, that system will most see the training effect (Principle 1).
Also contained within this principle is specificity of overtraining and specific stress produces a specific result.
Specificity of overtraining just says that too much running may overstress the body’s systems used to run.
The only remedy is to stop of reduce the stress on that system.
The “Rate of achievement” principle is fairly straight forward and says that, in regards to time, for a specific new stress, the body will reach the new fitness level at a slowing rate.
Principle four is the “Principle of personal limits.”
This largely comes down to inherent ability and capability.
There will come a point where increasing training stress will no longer produce an increase in fitness level. This would be considered the peak of fitness.
The next principle, “Diminishing return,” says that the gains obtained at higher training levels will be less than those obtained at lower training levels.
If training is doubled from 20 to 40 miles per week, percent of potential (peak ability) is increased from about 50% to about 75%; whereas doubling training from 40 to 80 miles per week only increases the percent of potential from 75% to about 90%.
The doubling of training at the lower level resulted in an increase of 25% of potential, but the doubling of training at the higher level only saw an increase of 15% of potential.
“Accelerating setbacks” is the sixth principle of training and it states that as training volume is increased, so is the risk of setback due to acute injury or over training.
These seven training principles form the bedrock of Daniels’ Running Formula.
Everything that follows is either based on or directly follows these principles. Sometimes there is a balance game that must be played between conflicting principles.
A good example of this is principle three and six. Within principle three, a basis for increasing 20 fitness level the fastest is shown, but that same training stress that produces great fitness improvements also increases risk of setback.
2. Physiology of Training Intensities
In order to design the best programs for distance runners, Daniels had to decide what was most important, physiologically, for these runners.
Daniels came up with six basic systems:
1. cardiovascular system
2. muscular system
3. lactate threshold
4. aerobic capacity
5. speed
6. running economy
Strength in these six areas equates to a high performance in distance running.
Systems one and two are the only real systems in the normal sense of the word, but for Daniels’ purpose, each of these are systems.
The cardiovascular system is broken into 21 the following areas: cardiac output (flow rate), oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood and hemodynamics.
Cardiac output is how much blood your heart pumps, measured in volume per time unit. Oxygen-carrying capacity is how much oxygen your blood can hold per unit volume.
Hemodynamics is a little harder to evaluate, but is essentially the response and ability of your blood vessels to deliver blood when and where it is needed.
The muscular system is just that, your muscles. The ability of your muscles to utilize oxygen, remove waste, store glycogen, and support your body are all important functions.
Lactate threshold is most simply defined as the acute intensity at which lactic acid production and removal are at an equilibrium concentration of four millimoles per liter of blood.
The four millimole value is an average and is better defined for an individual as the 20-30 minute accumulation of blood lactate when running at a race pace that can be maintained for an hour (Daniels 23). Similar to this “system” is the aerobic capacity “system.”
Aerobic capacity defined as the maximal amount of oxygen your body can take in and use during vigorous exercise.
Also referred to as VO2max, it is the amount of oxygen (by volume) per unit time your body can use. The final two “systems” important to distance runners are speed and running economy. Speed is simply how fast you are and running economy is how efficient you are at running.
Running economy is measured as the volume of oxygen per kg body weight per unit time. In this case a lower running economy value is better than a higher value.
Out the recognition and identification of the systems of importance for distance runners follows the goals of training for improving these components.
The goals are:
1. improve the body’s ability to transport blood and oxygen
2. increase the ability of the running muscles to effectively use their available oxygen (to convert carbohydrate and fat fuel into useful energy)
3. shift lactate threshold to correspond to a faster running speed
4. increase aerobic capacity (VO2max)
5. improve speed
6. lower the energy demand of running (improve economy)
These six training goals are now the direct purpose behind the training elements presented later in the Formula.
As Daniels explains: “one of my goals… [is] to associate types of workouts with desired benefits of the workout in question” (Daniels 33). These workouts, what they do, and what they target will be described next.
3. Training Zones
For distance running, Daniels introduces five specific training zones that serve as the basis for his workouts and training formula. The zones are
Easy pace running
Easy pace running (E) is described as “free from trouble or pain” and makes up the bulk of training time-wise.
Warming up and cooling down before and after another workout would fall into this category, as well as recovery and “long” runs.
This zone is physiologically described as a pace that elicits a percent VO2max between 59% and 74% or, equivalently, a percent HRmax (heart rate maximum) of 65-79%.
The purpose of the E zone is to encourage changes at the cellular level and strengthen the cardiovascular and muscular systems.
Runs of this sort can range from a 10 minute warm-up to 150 minutes, but should not be of a distance greater than 25% of the week’s total distance.
Marathon pace running
The next zone, which is similar in target to the E zone, is marathon-pace running (M).
This zone should occur less frequently that E running and generally takes the place of a long run at E pace, becoming a long run at M pace.
The intensity based on VO2max and 24 HRmax should be 75-84% and 80-90%, respectively.
Workouts for this zone should not last more than 90 minutes or 16 miles on long days, but are usually of shorter duration.
The main purpose here is to get the body accustomed to the pace at which it will run the marathon.
Threshold training
Daniels describes threshold training (T) as running done at a “comfortably hard” pace for about 20-60 minutes.
Runs of this sort should not last longer because they are done at a pace at which blood lactate is building up in the body.
As far as VO2 and HR, the pace is 83-88% and 88-92% of maximum, respectively.
The key purpose of this workout is to build endurance by encouraging a positive shift in the lactate threshold of the runner.
If this is done, the runner will be able to run at a greater intensity without blood lactate accumulating in the body.
Interval training
The fourth training zone is interval training (I). This zone is unlike the other zones in that is performed in relatively short intervals, hence the name. The intensity level of this zone is most important. The pace should be at 95-100% of VO2max or 98-100% of HRmax. It is important that the 100% threshold is not passed because the purpose of the workout is to stress and improve the aerobic capacity, but not put undue stress on the body. Workouts for this zone can vary in overall length, but are broken into sections of no more than five minutes without an equal time of E zone between them.
Repetition training.
The final training zone presented in the Formula is repetition training (R). Very similar to interval training, repetition training is generally faster and shorter in duration.
The 25 distinction, however, is the purpose. The R zone is aimed at improving both speed and running economy.
There is no associated heart rate zone for repetition training because the heart is limited at 100% of its capacity, but the pace is slightly faster than the pace at maximum heart rate.
Total distance should not exceed five miles and each repetition should not last longer than two minutes because of the extreme stress on the body.
4. Training Points
Measuring how much stress a training routine puts on the body is an important aspect of any training plan.
The standard means of doing this is to plan and log how many miles the runner covers for each workout.
In the Formula, Daniels introduces the idea of training points as a secondary way of measuring training stress.
Doing this allows for a normalization of the training plan to both expert and novice runners.
This new means of looking at the training stress of a program is essentially the same as just examining mileage, but is more accurate.
If you break mileage down, you get time and speed, the product of which is the distance, since time (hr) x speed (mi/hr) is equal to distance (miles).
To the body, speed is simply exercise intensity. Using this, the stress experienced by the runner becomes the product of time and intensity.
Daniels assigns “point factors” (Table below) based off of maximal aerobic capacity and heart rate as a measure of intensity.
Multiplying the total minutes of each workout by corresponding point factors results in training points, Daniels’ new measure of training stress.
5. Fitness & Intensity Benchmarks
In the Formula, determining current fitness levels is important because of the connection between fitness and exercise intensity.
Matching these two factors is the key to getting the most out of each workout.
Daniels uses tabulated VO2max values as the basis for determining fitness, which is then used to determine an individual’s training intensities.
Daniels uses race times under ideal conditions as the normalizing factor for determining a runner’s fitness (ability).
Using race times is a good determinant of ability because it sets equal slow speed matched with a strong running economy, a high speed matched with a poor running economy, or an average speed and with an average economy.
Daniels also claims that since this is determined in a race setting, psychological toughness is also factored in.
The variability in these factors that determine a single ability is referred to as a pseudoVO2max, or VDOT. Race times over multiple distances and their associated VDOT (running ability) values are shown in table below.
Once the current VDOT has been determined for a runner, the next step is to determine the exercise intensities for the five training zones.
Daniels’ compilation of this information is shown in the table below. The intensities for all five zones (E, M, T, I, R) are shown in time per distance (pace) for given VDOT values.
These paces give the ideal exercise intensities for the runner. At this point, the exercises, their respective intensities, and how to measure them has been shown.
The remaining topic left to address is how to structure the training program.
6. The Season Plan
The Formula refers to the overall training program as the season plan.
The season plan is ultimately what the whole training plan comes down to, so its construction and formulation is very important.
Daniels breaks the formulation of the season plan into five steps:
Map season
Step one of the season plan is to map the overall season.
This can vary by situation, but in this case the overall season is the amount of time available to train for the marathon.
The season could even attempt to include multiple marathons, but the goal here is to just train for and run a single marathon.
Break program into phases
The second step of the season plan is to break the program into phases.
Daniels presents four phases, the number and length of which are determined by the overall season length determined in step one.
The ideal program will involve the foundation and injury prevention (FI) phase, the early quality (EQ), transition quality (TQ), and final quality (FQ) phases.
The phases are to occur in this order, but the order of importance of the phases is FI, FQ, TQ, and finally EQ.
The characteristics of the foundation and injury prevention phase are steady, easy runs while gradually increasing mileage.
The main idea here is to just get into the running mode and prevent any acute injuries from the introduction of training into the runner’s daily routine.
The early quality phase is mostly used to introduce faster workouts and prepare the runner for the next two phases.
The transition quality phase is the most stressful and is designed to optimize the components specific to the event being trained for, in this case the marathon.
The last phase, final quality, is to be most like the event (marathon) of interest.
The expected race conditions should be attempted to be matched and the strengths of the runner should be emphasized.
Determine how much quality training
The third step in the season plan is to determine how much quality training will be done each week.
Daniels recommends two to three days of quality running per week with one day of primary emphasis (Q1), one day of secondary emphasis (Q2), and sometimes one day of maintenance emphasis (Q3).
The types of workout for these two to three days of emphasis can vary week to week and phase to phase. A table of recommended workouts for marathon runners is shown in the table below.
Plot a weekly schedule
Plotting a weekly schedule is the fourth step to developing the season plan. The quality days – selected in step three – should be laid out over the course of the week and are to be interspersed by easy days (E).
It is important to note that even though long runs may be at easy pace, the length of the run makes them a “quality” day.
Daniels recommends Q1 workouts early in the week, but the exact placement is largely up to the runner.
Even though the type of quality workout may change phase to phase, the placement within the week can remain the same.
Considerations for weekend races can be made by placing quality days back-to-back in the middle of the week.
Planned breaks
The final step in developing the season plan is to include planned breaks.
These breaks can last a few weeks and Daniels feels are vital to overall health.
He justifies these breaks by saying “a break gives both the body and the mind some time to regroup from what might have been a pretty strenuous period of training and competition” (Daniels 82).
Daniels offers a few guidelines and tables on how to adjust training when coming back from a planned (or unplanned) break.
The key points to remember when coming back from a break are to reduce both the intensity of workouts and their duration.
Once these five steps are completed, the season plan is complete. The Formula takes a target running goal (marathon) and shapes a training plan to target and develop specific areas of emphasis.
Daniels uses seven principles of training, matched with training intensities, and combines them into zones that can be measured by points.
Fitness benchmarks serve as the basis for developing a season plan that incorporates available time, phases of emphasis, and exercises of emphasis.
Sources: Jack Daniels Running Formula Book, Ryan Weismann-Yee – University of Oregon.
