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Do you have a training bias?

Bias: everyone has one, but is it affecting your training?

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Bias is shaped by your past experiences, and every one of us has an innate bias that is based on what we already know, what we’ve done in the past and what we’ve experienced. This, of course, extends to pretty much every realm of your life, but have you ever considered how it might be affecting your running? Almost all of us have a training bias, and while this isn’t always a bad thing, it can have a negative effect on your performance if you let it influence your training too much.

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Training bias can manifest itself in a couple of ways. The first is a knowledge- or experience-based bias, in which you continue to follow a certain training model without variation because it worked for you in the past. Alternatively, you may be avoiding certain modalities because you tried them before and they didn’t give you the result you wanted.

For example, perhaps while training for your goal race years ago, you decided to significantly increase your mileage because you heard about another runner who had done it and had great success. In doing so, you over-trained and arrived on the start line of your race tired and injured, which resulted in a less-than-stellar performance. You decided in that moment that you’re not a high-mileage runner, and vowed never to increase your mileage ever again.

The bias in the above example (which is to only do lower-mileage training plans) is not misplaced and not necessarily bad, but there is still a problem with it: it puts you at risk for falling into a training rut, which eventually stagnates performance. If you’ve been following essentially the same style program for multiple training cycles, you’re likely not getting the same benefit from it as you were the first couple times around.

If this sounds familiar to you, it might be time to switch things up and try something different. Talk to your coach (if you already have one) about ways that you can safely change up your training, and if you don’t have a coach, now might be a good time to get one. Talk to them about what you’ve done in the past and what did and didn’t work, and ask them for help to develop a plan that will work well for you.

The second form of training bias is based on personal preference. We all have types of runs or workouts that we enjoy and others that we don’t, and it’s very easy to only pick and choose the ones we like while avoiding anything else. For example, maybe you love doing shorter track intervals, but hate doing long, sustained tempos. While track work has a tonne of benefits and can help you improve your running by leaps and bounds, long tempos (and other types of runs and workouts) provide a different training effect that also has value. When you don’t do them, you’re missing an opportunity to improve your running even more.

Having a coach is an easy way to avoid falling into the trap of the personal preference bias. Your coach won’t be swayed by your preferences, and will design a training plan that includes a variety of workouts — whether they’re your favourite or not. If getting a coach is not an option for you, it’s important to regularly evaluate your training and ask yourself if there are things you’re avoiding simply because you don’t like them. Have you been shortening your long runs? Avoiding the gym? Slacking on your self-care and injury-prevention work?  If you’re serious about improvement, you won’t let your personal bias influence your training.

As we said, bias isn’t always bad, and changing your training based on past experiences is a good idea. Just be aware of where your biases lie, and don’t let them hold you back from reaching your full potential.

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