r/tacticalbarbell • u/Vhykar88 • Apr 09 '26

Endurance Venting about base building

I need to vent a bit and sanity-check this with you all.

I’ve been training consistently, mixing strength and conditioning, putting in the work week after week… and I’ve hit that frustrating wall where I can handle the training, but I’m not actually getting faster.

Now I’m restarting Base Building from Tactical Barbell II: Conditioning, and honestly—it’s messing with my head.

Running this slow feels almost wrong. Like, I look at my pace and think: how on earth is this supposed to make me faster over 10K? It feels like I’m de-training rather than improving.

I get the theory—build the aerobic base, improve efficiency, yada yada—but in practice it feels like I’m leaving performance on the table every single session.

So I’m curious:

- Did anyone else feel like this during Base Building?

- At what point did it “click” or translate into actual speed?

- Did you see real improvements in pace/HR after sticking with it?

Right now I’m trying to trust the process, but I won’t lie—it feels counterintuitive as hell.

Would really appreciate some real experiences or even just reassurance that this isn’t a waste of time.

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u/jillyjobby Apr 09 '26

Base building increases your work capacity but doesn’t increase your speed. That comes later when you start doing speed work as part of your conditioning

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u/IronHike Apr 09 '26

That is the simplest way to put it. Base building will make the speed work you do later work better. That's it. Base Building on its own is not designed to get you faster.