The 10% Rule of Conditioning
Building endurance is a physical characteristic that is achieved by gradually exposing the body to intense efforts or long efforts of exertion.
Progress is attained by slowly adding more distance, more reps, or decreasing the time it takes to complete a distance.
Whether it’s “gassers”, the Beep Test, 110’s, 300 Yard Shuttle, or a myriad of track distance workouts, we’ve all done conditioning as athletes in some form. If you’re like me, you enjoyed the challenge. If you didn’t, I hope you at least gave it your best every time.
As a coach, or an athlete training on your own, how do you guarantee someone is giving their best? This is CRUCIAL, but that is a topic for another day. I’m here to talk about maintaining the quality of your conditioning workouts.
Building endurance is a physical characteristic that is achieved by gradually exposing the body to intense efforts or long efforts of exertion. Progress is attained by slowly adding more distance, more reps, or decreasing the time it takes to complete a distance. We do this in sports to develop qualities that are necessary for athletes to be successful. Go further faster, to score more points.
For the sake of this post, let’s only concern ourselves with training reps that are less than 400 meters. My coaching experience has never been to program beyond that because sports that require those distances…well, that’s their sport and their practice involves coaches periodizing the training for them.
In successful training, you need two things. These are non-negotiables:
INTENT - full effort, to the max!
Quality control - a way to ensure that training results are being achieved and preserved.
Let’s assume we have full intent in check. How do we manage the quality of the session?
The first way is to determine what our goal is for conditioning. Is it for results that are in the anaerobic realm (shorter duration, fast speed)? If so, our work-to-rest ratio should be at least 1:3 or higher. For example: if our ratio is 1:4 and our run time is 4 seconds, our rest time should be 16 seconds. This type of conditioning is important for power and speed-based sports that happen both as single events or dispersed in many instances between lower-intensity play. Intermittent sports like basketball or tennis would be a good example.
Suppose our goal is more aerobic training, less intense but longer duration. In that case, our work-to-rest ratio can be anywhere from 1:3 to 1:1. This would be important for recovery between bouts of sprints in intermittent sports, or for general conditioning.
10% RULE
Go max effort for your first rep. Record the time it took you to complete it. During your rest time, calculate your next time to make by adding 10% of the time onto what you just completed.
Example: You’re running 110’s. Your first rep is 10 seconds. Your next rep should be under 11 seconds. If it is, keep going! If you don’t make it in 11 seconds, your training session is done. Go get some recovery. Your body has not recovered from your last session or isn’t primed enough to continue. You won’t get the results that you want from that session.
Important note: Your 10% goes from rep to rep. It isn’t just taken from the first rep.
From my earlier example, let’s say you make it in 11 seconds. Your next rep would be under 12.1 seconds. The next rep then would be under 13.3 seconds, and so on. If you make it in less time than calculated, you will readjust the next rep.
The main focus is to compete with yourself and push towards positive performance results.
- Zack Wallace
ACES Nation Athletic Performance Specialist
Give this a try in your next conditioning session. Connect with us via social media or email and let us know how it goes. We are happy to help answer your questions or tell you more about what we provide to enhance your physical training, nutrition, and mental performance skills.
