Sprint Training Beneficial?

Or my favorite way to do it is 150m accelerations

50m jog, 50m stride, THEN 50m sprint.

This works both acceleration and top speed in one.

Example: 4-6 x 150m accelerations after an easy run. or before a bigger workout.

fastboy77 wrote:

50m-60m is ideal for short alactic sprints.

For example, I have a workout on Wednesday:

6-8 x 60m w/ full recovery + 14-16 x 200 w/ 30 sec standing rest

They're not hard to do and can be tossed in before a bigger workout.

Correct me if I am mistaken.

I'll amend what I said to be a bit more specific, 7-9 seconds would be a better amount of time to shoot for when working max velocity. So depending on an individual's speed, 50-60m is likely a good ballpark.

Your 150m accelerations wouldn't be max velocity(true speed work).

The 200s afterwards doesn't sound like the worst thing you could do, maybe if V could chime in again. I'm sure he knows more than me. I'm a sprints coach but no expert, I just try to listen to the experts.

The most ideal thing would be doing max velocity, plyos, and some olympic lifts or squat jumps with weight, in that order, as a separate session. Keeping it relatively light and fast, you can do it as a double in the morning with at least 6 hrs between this and another running session.

fastboy77 wrote:

Or my favorite way to do it is 150m accelerations

50m jog, 50m stride, THEN 50m sprint.

This works both acceleration and top speed in one.

Example: 4-6 x 150m accelerations after an easy run. or before a bigger workout.

Doing this on Wednesday and Thursday after easy runs like you said earlier is totally fine. I'm just pointing out it's not max velocity, that's all.

Question for V here...Actually 2.

So I've seen 2 versions of max velocity session that look good. 2 x 4 x 60m and 3 x 3 x 60m, do you think one is better than the other or just preference?

Rest is usually 3' between reps and 5' or 6' between sets. You mentioned distance runners handle speed endurance sessions (100-150m w/ 4-8' rest) better than sprinters, I agree. Also, whereas sprinters need 3-5' rest(which is just too long) doing a heavy strength session (5 x 5 @ RPE 8 or 9) or they drop off big the next set. I've had a distance guy do it with only 60" when we were short on time on day, every set was near failure, he was just very strong aerobically and didn't drop off at all. He did this after the XC coach had him do 10 x 1k with 3' rest then sent him to me for the weight room. Obviously these are extremes I'm citing, but the point I'm illustrating is distance guys seem to recover faster. Therefore, is it possible they could fully recover their ATP-PC system in 2'/4' for their max velocity work whereas sprinters tend to actually need the full 3'/6' rest?

I know I'm playing devil's advocate lol

fastboy77 wrote:

Or my favorite way to do it is 150m accelerations

50m jog, 50m stride, THEN 50m sprint.

This works both acceleration and top speed in one.

Example: 4-6 x 150m accelerations after an easy run. or before a bigger workout.

So far enough build up to deplete ATP, but not fast enough to develop any real speed or work acceleration mechanics... not sure that's a great plan.

It might be a nice bit of fun to work on kicking in an 800 and developing the tactical side of running in a pack if done with others. It's a long way from a true speed session though.

You're definitely right, distance runners recovery faster. When it comes to short sprints I think the biggest difference between sprinters and distance runners in terms of recovery is that a sprinter is powerful enough to tap themselves out with a hard sprint. Distance runners almost aren't strong enough to really put themselves in the hurt locker on reps that are this short. Some of it probably comes from different fuel sources going on, even a 60m sprint can use ATP generated aerobically (either while sprinting or while recovering) if a distance guy had a solid warm-up so that there is a healthy amount of oxidative energy being produced.

Maybe someday I'll do some experimenting with my kids using a FreeLap system having different recoveries and see where the drop-off in velocity happens. I still go by the sprinter numbers for recovery, I just stick on the low side of them and make changes on the fly if it looks like we need it.

As far as those workouts 2 sets 4x60m vs. 3 sets 3x60m, I don't think it's worth getting in the weeds over. We'd do 2 sets of 4x60m if I had to choose, but mostly that's for the sake of the workout not taking that much longer; we'd likely do less.

Once we started timing sprints in practice I've capped our number of reps at 5-6 for these sessions. We seem to get a lot more out of kids when they know they're competing every rep. I've seen kids gassed from 4 reps if it's early in the season and they're gunning to knock of their buddy's time in a 10m fly.

Sounds good to me, Thanks for the reply!