Think a Training Plan Will Get You Faster? Here’s Why It Might Not

Here’s the bad news: training plans just don’t work very well. Even really good ones you paid for. Probably even “customized” plans created specifically for you. In my experience, they’re one of the biggest drivers of injury among runners.

I’ve been asked hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times why I don’t sell training plans on my site in addition to coaching. The truth is, even the best plan is nowhere near as effective as coaching, and I don’t believe in them. I’ll only offer something I believe has the power to change an athlete’s life. Based on everything I’ve seen (and plenty of science), individualized coaching is far more powerful.

However you should note that just because something is called 'coaching' doesn't mean it is. Real coaching involves six core components, and a lot of programs out there aren’t actually coaching.

But don’t worry, I have good news too! There are ways to make training plans work at least a bit better for you. It’ll take a little work and knowledge, but it can be done!

Update Fall 2025: Predictably, running tech companies are now offering “AI coaches.” I dig into why that’s disingenuous here. TL;DR: they might be a little better than a static plan, but only if you apply a critical eye and keep questioning them.

Why Don't They Work Well?

There are five main reasons: they’re designed backward, they tend to be linear, they aren’t adaptive, they aren’t specific to you as an individual, and they don’t account for long-term fitness growth.

Backwards Design Isn't Effective Training

Training plans usually work backward from your target race. It makes intuitive sense, doesn’t it?

If you want to be running x:xx marathon pace by race day, then you should hit that pace in workouts a few months out. Or if you want to finish a 50-miler, you should be running XX miles well before the event.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work that way.

Effective training is based on where you are today — not where you want to be.

Training is about giving your body specific physiological stressors that lead to adaptation. If you base training solely on a percentage of your goal pace, you’re not aligning with your actual physiology. You also risk injury or overtraining, which is one reason runners using training plans tend to get hurt more often.

Imagine that I decided I wanted to break the marathon world record and immediately started a training plan designed with that in mind. I’d implode on day two. (At least, I tell myself I’d make it until day two…) That’s an extreme example, but it holds true regardless of the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

To make safe forward progress, your training needs to match your current fitness—not your goal fitness. That doesn’t mean ignoring your goals or upcoming race, but the details of training should always be determined by your physiology so that you actually make progress.

This concept works in reverse, too. Prospective clients often ask me, “How many weeks do I need to train for a 50K?” My answer is always, “However many weeks you have.”

Why delay improving your fitness? Or expect to start a training plan doing less than what you were doing before? The more time you have, the fitter you'll be!

Training is a process of improving fitness, not just preparing for a race. If that race gets canceled, if it’s 120°F on race day, or you catch Covid the week of—your hard-earned fitness doesn’t disappear. So don’t train with that one-day mindset. The old adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” holds true physiologically, though athletes often struggle with the mental side of it.

I’m not saying specific race training isn’t helpful — it absolutely is. But it’s not the most important part of success for most athletes, and it still benefits you even if the race doesn’t happen. Even that specific training should always be based on your current physiology.

Training and Progressions are Non-Linear

Both training and progress are non-linear. You can’t simply draw a straight line between where you are and where you want to be — that’s not how the body adapts. A true training progression curves, fluctuates, and requires both ups and downs.

Most runners know this as having “down weeks,” sometimes called cutback weeks. These are crucial for recovery and allow space for your body to adapt to training.

What many don’t realize is that those adaptations take time—often several weeks. When you see a bump in fitness, you’re seeing the results of training you did roughly a month ago. Each type of workout adapts on its own timeline, and that timeline varies from one runner to another. There are short-term gains too, particularly in running economy, but most benefits take time to show up.

Training happens in cycles. Volume, stress, intensity, recovery—all of it ebbs and flows. Those cycles interact with each other: training days combine into weeks (microcycles), weeks form mesocycles, and those mesocycles build the macrocycle of a full training block.

Notice I said interact, not just build on. While it’s true that you accumulate fatigue and adaptations over time, the relationships are far more complex than simple stacking.

Your body can also only adapt to one primary stimulus for so long—usually four to six weeks. Keep doing the same thing, and your gains taper off. One training mesocycle might focus on higher-volume easy running; another might emphasize more intense workouts and long runs. Simply scaling volume or pace in a straight line from where you are to where you want to be isn’t effective training.

Training Plans Aren't Adaptive

A pre-determined training plan assumes you know how a training block will unfold before it even begins. That's simply impossible, and research shows that pre-determined training plans aren't as effective as adaptive training. They also carry a much higher risk of injury.

The fact is...

The specifics of your training plan shouldn't be decided more than a week or so in advance.

A week?! Yes — a week. For training to be effective, it has to align with your body, not just your fitness, but also your life stress, health, and schedule. You can make predictions a little further out, but they’ll almost always need adjustment. In the study I mentioned earlier, training was modified multiple times per week.

Effective training adapts not only to your fitness and recovery level, but also to the other stressors in your life — and to new insights about your strengths and weaknesses. It doesn’t view life as a barrier to good training. It adapts around life to make the best use of it.

So what does adaptive training mean?

In short, it means adjusting your plan weekly—or even more often—based on recovery, work and life stress, sleep, HRV, and other factors. Going on an epic ski trip in Colorado? You’re not likely to sustain normal running volume, so build that into your training rather than treating it as an unplanned interruption.

Or maybe your most stressful work period lands right before your “peak” training week. Should you still push through? Almost never. It’s far better to adjust. Not only does training then fit your life better—it is better training.

The key is whenever possible, aim to be proactive, not reactive. Don’t wait until you can’t complete your training to make adjustments. Let your training evolve continuously so it always reflects what’s most effective for you in that moment. (That’s the goal, at least!)

When I coach an athlete, subjective feedback is vital. I want to know how their day went — if their kid is sick, if they slept poorly, if their legs felt heavy. That context matters far more than whether they completed the workout or how fast they ran it.

That’s what drives my decisions: is it time to build? Take a down week? Shift focus? Emphasize mid-week workouts because weekends are stressful? These adjustments happen on pretty short time scales — typically weekly, but sometimes mid-week as well.

This kind of adaptive training is the key to achieving maximum benefits out of your training, limiting injury risk and achieving maximum enjoyment of the process!

In my experience, adaptability is the single biggest factor in avoiding injury—more than strength work, mobility, or even recovery habits. Adaptive training can compensate for weaknesses in those areas, at least in the short term. Of course, it often means training less and adjusting more, but it does keep you healthy.

For best results, train adaptively and support it with good strength, mobility, and recovery — especially sleep. But all the special sauce in the world won’t fix a meal if you’re starting with the wrong ingredients.

Training Plans Aren't Specific to YOU

Physiologically speaking, your body doesn’t care about pace or distance.

Effective training is based on time and effort, not miles and minutes per mile. That’s not to say your plan can’t include distance, just that whoever designs it should be thinking in terms of how long the run takes you, not how far it goes.

It also shouldn't be dictated by pace – you can read why here.

Some training plans get part of this right, prescribing runs in minutes or hours instead of miles. That’s great... until you look at the workouts. Many still use distance-based intervals like 6×1000m or 10×800m.

But that’s a completely different workout for different runners. I often hear these called “speedwork.” For high-level athletes running 1000m repeats in three minutes, it may be. For a four-hour marathoner running them in nearly five minutes, it’s absolutely not!

You can’t take a plan designed for one person, plug it into an equation to reduce the volume, and expect it to work properly.

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I highly recommend reading more about this in my article "Is Your Speedwork Really Helping Your Speed?"

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The solution, of course, is time-based intervals, and some training plans do use these! After all, 10×2 minutes fast with 60 seconds easy recovery is the same workout whether you’re covering half a mile or a quarter mile in each repeat. A more experienced, higher-volume athlete might handle more of them, but the workout itself is functionally the same and produces the same benefits.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean those workouts are the right choice for every runner. A training plan doesn’t consider your athletic history, strengths, or weaknesses. Remember, training is about applying specific physiological stress to create adaptation, not just “practicing a pace” to prepare for a race. Even if a workout is calibrated to your fitness, it still might not be what your body needs at that time.

Adapting training to the individual—their physiology, background, and life—is far beyond the scope of an internet article. For that, I’d highly recommend working with a coach.

Training Plans Don't Plan for True Fitness Growth

True fitness improvements happen over years, not within a single training block. Regardless of what race is next on your schedule, you can (and should!) always be working on improving your overall fitness through consistent, science-based training.

Running is running. Specificity absolutely matters for certain races, but if you constantly prioritize it over long-term fitness, you’ll never reach your full potential as an athlete.

If you’re always jumping from one training plan to the next, you may be missing out on huge opportunities for long-term growth.

Remember the concept of micro, meso, and macrocycles from the Non-Linear Progression section? Your macrocycles also interact—not just within a season, but across your entire running career. Look at professional marathoners: almost none started out running marathons exclusively. Most began as track or cross-country runners, then gradually moved up in distance. Many still dedicate full seasons to shorter races to improve their efficiency and speed before returning to the marathon.

There are plenty of reasons for this, but the takeaway is simple: if you keep doing the same thing, you’ll eventually max out your body’s ability to adapt to that stress. Adding “more” isn’t a sustainable solution.

Instead, vary your training intelligently and consistently. When you do, you’ll likely discover potential far beyond what you thought possible.

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How to (Maybe) Improve Them

Now that I’ve thoroughly badmouthed training plans, let’s talk about how to move beyond them, or at least make them work a little better for you. I’ll start with the most effective options and work downward.

Scrap the Training Plan, and Get a Coach

I know, I know — you think I’m biased. And you’re right.

But my own coach completely changed my life—not just my training—and I’ve seen the same thing happen to thousands of others, including hundreds of athletes I’ve worked with personally. I simply haven’t seen that kind of transformation from people following training plans. In fact, plans often cause more stress than they relieve, because you’re constantly wondering whether you’re doing the right thing in that situation.

I also see far higher injury rates among athletes using static plans — especially long-term injuries that last a month or more.

Having a coach takes that mental load off your plate. You no longer have to second-guess whether you’re doing too much or too little, or how to adapt training around your body and your life. That’s your coach’s problem now.

There’s a reason most coaches have their own coaches! We all need external eyes, objectivity, and someone who will tell us when to back off, push harder, or avoid a really bad decision.

Coaching, done right, solves all five of the problems I outlined in the first section.

Scrap the Training Plan, and Explore Self - Coaching

If you’re someone who loves learning new things and enjoys digging into the science behind training, you might try self-coaching.

There’s one obvious limitation: you don’t have “external eyes”—someone to keep you from doing anything dumb, help with motivation, or provide objective feedback. But maybe you have a friend or partner who can call you out when needed!

That aside, with enough research, time and attention, you can self-coach nearly as effectively as working with a coach.

It does take work, though. You’ll need to read—a lot. Depending on your level, that may include staying current with training science and research. Even the reasonably priced coaching certification courses don’t provide enough depth to coach meaningfully, whether it’s for yourself or others. They’re a great introduction, but they’re still just Training 101.

There’s a reason so many different training methodologies exist: Canova, Lydiard, Daniels, the recently popularized Norwegian approach, and many more. A lot of different things work—for different reasons, at different times, for different people.

Whether you decide to buy a few books (I’d avoid most internet articles at the start — you want depth, not bite-sized advice) or take a course, be ready to keep reading and learning throughout your journey.

If that sounds exciting, great—this could work well for you. And even if it doesn’t give you the results you seek, the knowledge you gain will help you make sense of, and modify, the plans below. Or even help you understand and converse with a future coach.

Self-coaching addresses all five of the problems I outlined earlier. The main limitation is the lack of objectivity that comes with not having an outside perspective. But I can’t overstate how much work and learning will be required to do it well. You will need to spend nearly as much time researching and thinking about your training as you do running it!

Get a Custom Training Plan with Modifications Offered

Some training plan writers offer custom plans that include a set number of modifications. While this doesn’t come close to the adaptability of true coaching (though the cost often does), it can still be a step in the right direction. You’ll know that if you get sick or face a stressful stretch of life, your plan will be re-written to account for it.

If you go this route, it’s vital that the plan is created after a real, in-depth conversation with you—and built from the ground up. If someone simply takes a stock plan and tweaks it to match your pace or weekly mileage range, that’s not helpful, and it’s definitely not worth paying for.

A good customized plan should also include scheduled check-ins and adjustments, ideally every few weeks. Otherwise, you’ll need to handle those modifications yourself.

Depending on who writes it and how well they adapt it over time, this approach can solve anywhere from one to three of the problems I outlined earlier.

Learn to Modify and Adapt on Your Own

An alternative to the above is learning to modify and adapt a training plan yourself. This doesn’t require quite as much knowledge as full self-coaching, since you’re starting with a plan, but it’s still a long-term investment of time and attention.

Be prepared to invest some effort upfront. Analyze the plan, make adjustments where needed, and keep a detailed training log—not just Strava activities. Note how you felt, how you slept, other life stressors, weather conditions, and any aches or pains. The more detail, the better. That information is far more important than how fast you ran.

Before you start training, look closely at the plan’s key elements: interval workouts, long-run structure, and overall weekly volume—including how often down weeks appear. Does it clearly avoid a linear build all the way to the taper? (If not, run away!)

Does the overall structure make sense for you? Do you understand the rationale behind each run, week, and mesocycle? Are the mesocycles and workouts right for your fitness, background, and goals? Adjust what you can now to create a reasonable starting point.

Once training begins, review your log regularly—ideally weekly, or more often if you feel suspiciously good or scarily bad. How’s your recovery? Are you ready for the next build week? Do you need a down week? Do you have vacations, work stress, or family commitments coming up that need to be accounted for? Do you feel like your training is stressing you enough, but not too much?

Remember, it’s far better to make frequent small adjustments than to stubbornly follow a plan until you implode.

Keep in mind that this approach only fixes one of the five problems I outlined earlier, but it’s still a step in the right direction.

Just Use the Training Plan

If you’re just getting started with running or struggle to stay consistent, a very light training plan can work well. I don’t mean a “Couch to Marathon” plan, but rather a slow-building, low-pressure plan focused on helping you run regularly and build habits.

Once consistency is no longer your main challenge and you’re focusing on building volume, improving fitness, or preparing for a race, it’s time to move beyond a stock plan and try one of the options above.

Summary

Training plans aren’t the devil, they’re just limited. Even if they look personalized, they're almost never truly built around you. More importantly, they can’t listen, adjust, or understand what’s happening in your life. Real progress comes when your training actually fits you—your fitness, your schedule, your stress, your long-term goals—instead of forcing you to fit the plan.

Whether that means working with a coach, learning to self-coach, or simply adapting things as you go, the goal is the same: train smarter, stay healthy, and keep moving forward year after year.

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Training plans don't adapt. I do.

If you want to qualify for Boston or smash a PR, you need a coach who actually coaches—not someone just handing you a custom training plan based on race date and pace.

Custom, adaptive coaching works better than any pre-written plan—because it’s built around you, in real time!

A coach who’s all-in on you has helped hundreds of runners improve their training, stay consistent, find balance, and go farther than they thought possible.

Are you next? Learn more here!

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