Does anyone implement alactic sprints (less than 10 seconds) into their base phase to help maintain speed? If so do you do them before workouts of after? And if not what do you do to maintain your speed through the base phase?
Does anyone implement alactic sprints (less than 10 seconds) into their base phase to help maintain speed? If so do you do them before workouts of after? And if not what do you do to maintain your speed through the base phase?
I am a high school coach and we do them once a week. We do a pretty extensive warm-up that day, we might do some bounding, and then we'll do sprints of about 50-60m. This time of year we are sprinting uphill, so it is not truly max velocity. We take long recovery, so even though the amount of volume in the workout is small, the time requirement is large. If you don't take the long recovery though, you are working more than just the CP system by the end of the workout. Our athletes generally just run easy following the sprints, but they do lift afterwards. The nice thing is that if you execute this workout correctly, athletes can do a harder workout the next day. During the summer, we typically do this kind of workout and follow it with either a tempo run or a fartlek the next day. During the season, we will do this type of workout before or most intense workout of the week or even the day before a race, but in the regular season we move the sprints to a flat surface and are focused purely on speed.
50 meters or 10 seconds is not totally alactic for distance runners. Pure sprinters may do workouts like 6X60 with long rest (but even here Donovan Bailey did 3X60) in less than 8 seconds, but distance runners aren't strong enough to do this, so the workout becomes a lot more glycolytic than you might think.
For sprinters, a 5 second maximum sprint is 33% glycolytic. You reach 90% of max velocity in 4 seconds. In his 9.58 WR, the IAAF biomechanics project measured Bolt's absolute max velocity at 48 meters.
Glycolytic is not necessarily bad. Clyde Hart has people sprinting a 150 meter hill in Waco HARD most of the year. But make sure you are getting what you think you are getting out of the workout. Distance people aren't strong enough to accelerate far enough to need 50-60 meters to reach maxV. You only need 30-40, which will produce less lactate.
Also, full rest for sprints means 1 minute for each 10 meters sprinted.
So would you reccomend doing these on easy or hard days? Will doing 5x30m with 3 minute rest before a fartlek be a good way to maintain speed?
Renato Canova wrote:
In the case of the basic Lydiard system, probably there was confusion about the increase of speed, because the athletes used very short sprint and exercises of strength endurance during all the season, and for that reason they were able to maintain a high level of speed, of sure not because their long run.
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=5460433&page=9#ixzz3h28s1MwD
If you do 30-40 meters all-out, then 3-4 minutes rest is what you do. But, this is still a hard effort, so you might be better off following it with an easy run rather than a fartlek. It does hit your CNS, so might not be able to maintain the same training effort in a fartlek.
Thanks for introducing that thread, and for your input! If I do a session such as 5x30m with 3 mins rest follwed by easy running, should I be recovered enough for an aerobic fartlek/workout the next day?
I can say that our team has found success doing sprints the day before hard workouts and we are typically going 50m with 4:00 rest. I think that 5x30m with 3:00 rest would be safe.
A couple of other anecdotal things to add. To get what you want out of the sprints (and this sounds simple, but still something to watch for), you have to make sure that they are really attempting to reach max velocity. So much of what distance runners do is scaled back so that they can do it over a long period of time that actually trying to go as hard as they can is almost unnatural at first, but doing 5x30m at 85% with 3:00 rest is not going to accomplish much. Also, while your athletes are resting, make sure that they are really resting. Distance runners are not accustomed to long periods of rest after short reps. They are accustomed to being really tired after a rep and using their time to gear up for the next thing. Your kids are going to be raring to go after about a minute even though their bodies aren't ready to repeat the work. First, you have to make them wait. That's easy. Second, you have to make sure that they aren't running around while they are waiting. If they do, they won't recover. When we first started doing these workouts a few years ago, it took a few weeks of restarting the recovery watch for them to figure that out. Every year I still have to do that a couple times, but so far this summer, I haven't had to. Lastly, be ready to be questioned on this workout and have answers for why you are doing it the way you are doing it. Even now, my athletes don't really like it. They don't want to be sprinters, it doesn't hurt enough to do anything, and blah blah blah.
5kss wrote:
If I do a session such as 5x30m with 3 mins rest follwed by easy running, should I be recovered enough for an aerobic fartlek/workout the next day?
Different things work for different people, but for most the answer would be "yes."
Ozzie wrote:
First, you have to make them wait. That's easy. Second, you have to make sure that they aren't running around while they are waiting. If they do, they won't recover.
Thanks for the input! Sorry for so many questions, but I figure it's better to ask to many than not be sure. Do you usually do standing rests? I was assuming the rest would be jogging but I'm not sure.
I give them standing rest so that their CP system is fully recovered when it's time for the next rep.
...Although Coach D is suggesting that I'm not giving them enough rest to fully recover anyway. Full recovery has always been the intention though. I'll have to go back and reevaluate.