Articles by Jason Koop
Over a year ago, I wrote about the high-performance teams that we were building around athletes. It began as a practical solution to a very specific problem: how to help already successful athletes continue to improve. I...
Every year, I get the same question from athletes: “What should I do in the off-season?” Here’s the truth: there is no off-season. There’s only a transition phase. As training for ultrarunning is a chronic, not an acute...
My morning coaching routine starts bright and early by checking a monitoring app called HRV4Training. It’s a daily protocol I use for the elite athletes I work with that gives me an indication of their readiness for the...
If the experiences of ultrarunners are demarcated by races, perhaps there is no more consistent one than the race against Father Time. In this event, there are no tailwinds, the climbs get steeper with each passing mile...
When it comes to training for ultras, volume is king. While I’m an advocate of smart and periodized intensity training, there’s no substitute for big weekly volume and time-consuming long runs. But how much is too much a...
While trail and ultrarunning will certainly go through some bumps and bruises as this patchworked anti-doping system comes to light, let me make one thing clear: the ultimate responsibility is on the athlete and there are no excuses.
In February of this year, Stian Angermund revealed that he failed an in-competition doping control following his win at the 2023 OCC (UTMB). If haven’t heard Stian’s name before, he is the two-time, reigning short course...
TAs my coaching career has progressed over the years, I’ve begun to have more appreciation for coaches who are Jacks (and Jills) of all trades, yet masters of none. We know (or at least should know) just enough about phy...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming to trail and ultrarunning and when it does, it will be here to stay. Regardless of your initial impression of the technology, if you are a power user of Chat-GPT, have interfaced wi...
As athletes gear up and recalibrate their training during the fall and winter months, it’s a good time to use physiological testing as a window into your strengths and weaknesses to help make training decisions.
We have a fantastic physiology lab at our home office in Colorado Springs, CO. It’s been privy to hosting over 1,000 physiological tests on all different levels of runners, cyclists and triathletes. It’s also a venue for...
Several years ago, the Coconino Cowboys took the ultrarunning world by storm. The training group, named for the county where the runners resided and trained, consisted of Jim Walmsley, Jared Hazen, Eric Senseman, Tim Fre...
Ultrarunning involves a lot of unknowns. As much as you train, dial in your equipment, rework your nutrition, scout the course and read all the race reports, it’s nearly impossible to turn over...
Scott Rokis I’ve always contended that ultrarunning is comprised of four separate sports that require specific preparation: flat level running, uphill running, hiking and downhill running. Muc...
In road running, running economy matters—a lot. So much so, that marathoners will do anything to optimize it. This was epitomized by Eluid Kipchoge’s two attempts at breaking the 2-hour marathon mark. During those att...
There is a strong correlation between purpose and success that I have been privy to witness throughout my coaching career. Those athletes motivated by an internal fire, rather than shiny belt buckles, are ironically more...
Many of you are likely deep in the throes of finding various ways to improve your ultramarathon performance. Certainly, the pages of this magazine (including the one you are currently on) are filled with all ma...
Training for ultras can be a serious business. That does not mean that you can’t deviate from the plan every now and again. Adventure can fuel your goals, physically and emotionally. So, when these opportunities arise, regardless of if they are meticulous or haphazardly planned, take advantage of them.
While summer is gone and the days are getting shorter, it’s never a bad time to think about your next ultra adventure run. After all, you are an endurance athlete. And I bet more than a few nickels tha...
This month’s issue is filled with racing opportunities galore. Stories of the triumphant elite and gritty, everyday athletes combined with majestic imagery of our outdoor playground makes for a potent elixir intoxicating...
There is much debate about young runners and how much running one should do before puberty. There are many sides of the fence in this deliberation. So, as we deliberate and arbitrate for an ultimate decision, let’s offer up some philosophical points of view on athlete and human development based on the most common questions I get from parents.
I ran my first marathon when I was 13. At the time, I thought it was somewhat of a novelty. I knew few people my age that would run such a feat. And like all teenagers, I succumbed to the scope of my own neighborhood...
Sometimes just finding where to run can be a chore. The mental ping-pong game between doing something easy or designing an elaborate route can derail even the best intended ultrarunners. Over the course of my running life, I’ve learned that dividing the runs I do into three discrete buckets helps me with the chore of deciding where to go and what to do.
Sometimes just finding where to run can be a chore. The mental ping-pong game between doing something easy or designing an elaborate route can derail even the best intended ultrarunners. Over the course of my running...
As a coach, I have an unlimited number of ways I can manipulate workouts. The volume of time, number of miles, vertical gain, surface of the trail, workout frequency, training mode (running vs. cycling...
When I look back at a year’s worth of training and racing for any athlete, inevitably, one common theme emerges. The athletes who reaped the most success during the year were also the athletes that planned out their t...
One of the inherent problems of being a coach to both normal and elite athletes is that the former group always wants to copy the latter. Particularly in today’s world of Strava and publicly available training informa...
Ultrarunning is at a crossroads. We continue to see growth in participation, race size and format, new players entering the space and more elite runners competing at the biggest races. This growth and development are pri...
If we’ve seen anything from the spring this year, it’s clear that races are returning. Runners are waiting and race directors are busy making all manners of virtual race briefings, socially distanced check-ins and con...
As summer heats up and the pandemic winds down, many ultrarunners are eager to put in some big miles of training in preparation for the backlog of events. We will stack up big training weekends, cajole our trainin...
Let’s face it, as everyday runners we love the prospect of living like an elite athlete. They have all day to train and endless amounts of time to explore the outdoors. With seemingly no responsibilities other than ru...
Ultrarunners are motivated athletes. We meticulously track miles, time, intensity, amount of vertical gain, calories consumed on the run and a host of other variables that we find meaningful to performance. Most of th...
In part one of this series, we started with a home-based strength and coordination program to lay the platform for a stronger and more capable runner. In part two, we incorporated outdoor movements and drills to further refine the process. Part three pulls all of these components together and moves them to become efficient and economical trail running.
Outdoor drills are an important bridge between the work you completed in a gym or strength training setting, and your actual running mechanics on the road or trail. The movements in the drills described below leverage the coordination, neuromuscular adaptation and strength you recently developed.
The first in a series of three monthly articles on how to make changes in your running mechanics.