More adults should train like sprinters

Agreed.

Do the work you can handle. If you can not handle doing 4x40m + 2x60m from a standing start @ 98%, then don't do it. If you instead do 4x60m + 2x120m @ 92% and that feels much safer, do it. You will still likely gain speed.

You don't have to do Holler's exact drills. If you can't do his big box jump movements, do something easier. If doing 10 drills wears on you too much, do 5 or 6.

As long as you're moving faster, not hurting yourself, and enjoying the workout, it seems like a win to me.

Sounds like you didn't even watch the whole video. After the drills he finished with maxV sprinting. I've watched many of his presentations and have a good grasp of it.

Tony's whole thing is teaching beginners and making it as accessible as possible while prioritizing speed above all else. I do not agree with everything he does and I also agree that he's got some dumb takes. No, this video of drills + 2 sprints does not entirely encapsulate FTC training, it's just one workout that he often has beginners do, drills + some short maxV sprints.

The video description says this, "This video about the Atomic Workout, a speed workout in under 16 minutes. I walk through key concepts around the workout, as well as the drills and technique. My philosophy is: Intensity. Rest. Repeat. Follow this process for your speed workouts and you will see better results. This is a huge part my the Feed the Cats program."

Congrats, you played yourself.

Great post. For general fitness, I find myself gravitating towards more sprinter-style tempo training - longer rep duration, sub-max efforts and shorter recovery (see Sprint 8 reference above). How many 50+ yr old guys want to wait around for 8 min between 10 sec reps for a full recovery lol?

Keep it simple and find a balance where you can reap some of the benefits of sprinting (even when not all-out) while developing/maintaining endurance - perfect for middle age and beyond.

Regarding your comment on definition of "sprint" training - it's also about different mechanics as someone mentioned above and a different mentality. With distance running, I always felt like I was holding back - don't go above zone 2 blah blah. The sprint mentality is much more liberating - just let it rip.

As a side note, I've read quite a few comments from sprinting converts that mention they made the switch from distance running due to chronic injuries. I've always been interested in the notion that your stride becomes more natural and smoother the faster you go. "Easy day" distance running (read plodding) for me always felt unnatural and was a killer on the old joints. Of course, all is well with sprinting until I pull that hammy!

+1,000,000

It doesn't matter the specifics of what you're doing. Hell, in real life it matters less than people here pretend. I've had my doors blown off in a 400m by guys that never run less than 100m in practice. I've also been handily beaten by guys who were 800/1500m runners and I would have stomped them in a shorter race. There's a lot of pathways to success that are dependent on many variable.

Moving fast and being athletic is good for everyone. No need to gatekeep "sprint training" because it's not your romanticized version of a MaxV day because you ran 11.5 at some D3 school.

So what is a typical Sprint 8 day look like? I know they say it's all done within 20 min, but how does it break down?

I would run sets of 300 or 400 repeats X 10 until I hit 60. The feel of running turns hard was invigorating. I think the intervals pushed the heart more and maintained more muscle mass. I just didn't have the knees to keep that up.

Does it really take a month for your skin to heal from an abrasion?

Isn't this all true for hobbyjogging/distance running as well?

Yes. Keep in mind that I'm one of the oldest people on this forum. This is a relatively new occurrence for me, healing seems to be taking much longer than it took just a couple of years ago, but if you look around at senior citizens you can see a lot of abrasions on their lower legs take a long time to heal.

Getting back to the topic at hand. When I first tried feed the cats, I think I had four different injuries within a month. When Holler says that none of his kids get injured, keep in mind that he's working with high school kids who can heal within a couple of days but for us Masters runners that same injury might keep us out for a week or more.

Looking at the topic of this thread brings to mind two quotes…

1) “The leading cause of injuries in older men, is them believing that they are younger men.”

2) “My brain believes that I am still in my twenties. My body thinks that my brain is a f****ng idiot.”

I do think that a bit of faster stuff is worth considering. But…and it’s a big BUT…your limits have to be considered. And you need to approach it SLOWLY and with caution. I echo what many have said on here and I agree with the poster that said that perfect is the enemy of good enough. None of us will be challenging for the Masters 100 metres world title any time soon I suspect. The injury rate among sprinters is higher than distance runners, I suspect even more so among Masters sprinters. I once read somewhere that the main topic of conversation among Masters sprinters is injuries.

So the intensity, frequency and volume need to be on the “just enough” to minimal side.

I also echo what fisky said. I too saw the “logic” in the Feed the Cats program. It makes sense…on paper. I even tried the Atomic workout, as shown, from warm up to execution. My right knee has not been right for two and a half months now…and counting. No running has been done. You can’t improve speed from the sidelines. I speak from experience.

In terms of the speed development required for general fitness and well being, as highlighted by this post, I would imagine that the distance runners staple of 100 metre strides would also suffice.

Start on the 100 metre straight…slowly build up to 50 metres, where you would be at 90 to 95% of your top speed, perhaps trying to emulate a relaxed high knees sprinting form. Hold that for two to three seconds, before decelerating to the end of the straight.

Three or four of these, done twice a week should, in my opinion suffice. For general fitness, I don’t think plyos are necessary. The running action itself is plyo by nature.

Keep relaxed, don’t strain, and focus on form. Over time, the speed may / will come. At our age anyway, it is all about MAINTAINING what speed we have left. Any speed gains are a bonus.

I agree with you about there being a running pace that is too slow and that feels like plodding. Personally, I view very slow running speeds as merely transitional acceleration and deceleration velocities. I would see a Galloway style run / walk regime as being more “natural” for those who cannot maintain a faster pace, then some “forced” slow continuous shuffle / plod.

There have been several studies which have tried to examine various running paces and injury potential. In my opinion the one below came up with the best conclusion, in terms of running and longer distances. It concluded that there is a “sweet spot” of running speed, around 11.1kph, not too fast, but not a plod either ( for most), where the peak impact forces of each stride are not too high, but there are also less chronic forces from too many steps per distance ran. The study concludes that an interval (run / walk approach) might be best for those that could not maintain this pace continuously.

Another study examining the same thing concluded that faster running speeds were better than slower ones because you took less steps per distance ran. This didn’t make sense to me, as it completely ignored peak impact forces. For example, you will cause far more damage to a surface if you hit it once with a hammer, with a thousand pounds of force, than you will if you hit it a thousand times, with only one pound of force.

This is a possible issue with sprinting, especially for the older trainee. The peak forces per stride ( or with plyos…especially if too ambitious) are far greater than with slow running / jogging. To answer the OP’s question…this is why so many probably shy away from it. The injury risk is real. As my right knee testifies, a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. And you don’t know how strong that link is, until it breaks. As fisky has rightly said, as older trainees, we recover from injuries and / or harder efforts, much slower than our youthful selves / counterparts. Sometimes also, our brains, flooded with memories of what we used to be able to do, fail to listen to what our current bodies are telling us. IF we are to incorporate such faster training into a weekly regime, I think it is prudent to err on the side of extreme caution, in terms of volume, frequency and probably especially intensity, and do a lot less than we think we are capable of. Always keep a tight hold of those reigns, especially if you are doing this for no competitive aspirations. No one gets faster laid up on the couch.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Cumulative patellofemoral force and stress are lower during faster running compared to slower running in recreational runners - PubMed

Management strategies for patellofemoral pain often involve modifying running distance or speed. However, the optimal modification strategy to manage patellofemoral joint (PFJ) force and stress accumulated during running warr...

Open link

Really good points made in the above post. Aging is REAL, and the limitations that come from age are very very real. You can't just say, "hey you dont want to be old, just do young person things!" time and age just don't work that way.

I will say that after reading through this thread it did inspire me to get back to some faster stuff. I looked up the Sprint 8, while it's great info, what it turned into for me was 8x30 sec hill sprints w/.90 recovery jog, nothing too ground breaking about that. (I chose to run up a hill figuring less chance of injury.)

So yes, please do some fast running, incorporate some drills, but be mindful of your age, your injury history, knee surgeries, etc..

Part of the reason the injury rate is higher is that people lose any and all GPP before they're 25. I think hobby jogging only hastens this decline in many.

Okay….let’s say that the theory that you’ve postulated is true…

I have a question or two. If we also, at the same time make a comparison with our Western sedentary selves, lacking GPP, as you say, and less civilised societies ( eg Hunter gatherers) being the opposite…

1) Do our Hunter gatherer cousins EVER run at truly top sprinting speed? On uneven ground, often unshod, not knowing what might be underfoot. Honestly, really? Even flat African plains aren’t as debris free as a high school running track.

2) If they ever do hit anywhere near max speed how often would that be? They don’t need to run that fast for persistence hunting it seems, and how often do you get chased for your life by something or someone? Once or twice a week? Probably closer to once or twice a lifetime.

3) Why do people in those populations attempt to have fairly large families? Because they recognise that there comes a time when the “hard” activities, the moving fast, heavy lifting etc, need to be passed on to the next generation, as they recognise that they can no longer do what they used to.

This is great advice. I did a modified Sprint 8 yesterday on the track and it was too much for me. I could not recover enough in 90 seconds from an all out effort to do another all out effort. I ended up doing maybe a 95% effort. From my discussions with Phil Campbell, the Sprint 8 guy, it's better to do the reps as hard as possible. I told him that I could handle 8x120m reps in 20 seconds, which is a nearly all out pace and he said that was acceptable.

OTOH, when I do sprint 8 on a very steep hill, I can recover enough in 90 seconds to do another nearly all out effort. (On hills, sometimes I take 2 minutes recovery on the last 2 reps.) I think almost all runners would be better off doing sprint 8 on a hill instead of on a track.

By the way, I would suggest walking back down and not jogging back down. When you're tired and form has broken down, you can get badly injured jogging downhill.

The only problem I have with a sprint 8 approach is the effect that fatigue has on form. As you tire your form degrades, and this is a possible invitation to injury.

If running / sprinting is a skill ( as the “experts” say it is) then you should want to stay away from fatigue, as you shouldn’t practice a skill while fatigued, as it leads to bad motor patterns. This is why distance running is a bit of an oxymoron, if you view running as a skill, as distance runners want to chase fatigue.

Personally I would stick with the 100 metre strides example I outlined above…a handful of reps with plenty of rest between each. Or do something like Holler’s Atomic workout, two or three 40 yard dashes, but probably at 90 to 95% effort rather than 100%. I would focus on form and relaxed speed, rather than times and all out effort for us older folk.
If I were coaching it, my coaching cues would be,

“Smooth, not strained”.

Mostly what I’ve learned from this thread is that LRers have no idea how sprinters train and consider running faster than a jog to be “training like a sprinter.”

I think that you are being a touch disingenuous.

What I get from this thread is that there are some older forum members who would like to keep some “pop” ( speed) in their legs as they age. However they are aware of their structural limitations and how age is a limiting factor. They are just rolling around a few ideas looking for the best way ( for them) to achieve their desired outcome.
They are all aware that they are not “sprinters”. But they are also aware that training like “sprinters” would probably wreck their bodies in short order. This thread is about searching for the best fit compromise for each of us.

”The quickest way to get injured as an older man, is to think that you still have the body of a younger one.”