Diagonals

Diagonals are a staple of Kenyan and Ethiopian training, although much less known or used outside of East Africa. That’s a shame because diagonals offer a flexible, varied and interesting workout that can be as intense or as easy as one likes it to make.

Diagonals are done on grass. Ideally this will be a football pitch, but any sports field or grass patch will do. Grass is a much softer surface than the road and therefore kinder to the legs. Which is good because the idea of diagonals is to enjoy a relaxed and fun, but moderately challenging workout, that leaves us fresh for the next day.

The basic concept of diagonals is this: run from one corner of the field to the opposite corner fast. Then jog (or walk) the goal line and go again from the other corner. It’s that simple.

The fast part should be a relaxed stride. One where the exact pace isn’t as important as is the focus on running form, quick turnover and relaxation.

With that in mind, the beauty is the variety of ways diagonals can be incorporated into a training schedule: as a standalone session or as part of a bigger workout – either way diagonals are incredibly worthwhile.

Anything from 15 to 45 minutes in duration is desirable in my view. Less than that and it becomes more of a warm up than an actual workout. Longer than that would result in quite a lot of 100 metre repeats.

This shouldn’t feel like a hard, strenuous workout. But It could become one if you ramp up the intensity of the diagonals and recovery pace. So, doing it as a form of endurance building interval session is possible as well.

Personally, I do diagonals regularly on maintenance days. Usually when I want to bridge the days between recovery and stressful workouts. I always enjoy doing them because they build a bit of speed, promote good form but aren’t overly hard on the legs.

It’s also a good option to do a combined workout of 20 minutes tempo run, then 20 minutes diagonals; with warm up and cool down this is a proper one.

Diagonals can work as a sharpening session in preparation for a race as well. Because of the fast diagonals, the easy recovery and all of the running on grass, there is little impact on the body and system while it keeps the legs moving and with the aim on “running well”.