: What should you do between short running series? I am following a training program for a 10 k race with a goal of 40 minutes. It consists on 4 training days during 5 weeks. Weeks are more or less like this: One day for

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To answer your question, you must define what is the objective of the workout you are performing. Depending on the objective, you can define yourself what you should be doing between series.

Active recovery between series helps your body to learn to clear by-products while fatigued. Active recovery means a running pace that allows you to recover to such a point that you can perform all your series at the intended intensity. This supposedly teaches your body to clear by-products more efficiently.

You could also do something that increases the by-products (or at least decreases their rate of clearance) between your series e.g. jump-ropes or putting your body in such a way that it cannot clear by-products so easily e.g. instead of letting your body be "tall" put yourself into a squat position. This will teach your body to handle doing work while under heavy doses of by-products. Those are the worst kind of workout and are typically used for 400-800m.

You could eventually do ... "nothing" between your series for an extended time. The objective would be to allow yourself to perform maximum intensity on each series or repeat. This is typically what sprinters do. Because they don't care about the recovery mechanisms during such workouts. They only care about the intensity they put in each series/repeat. To do that, you need to fully recover.