Speed Development For HS Runners

Great question - I'm sure you'll get a good variety of input.

At 15, I'd suggest keeping your easy days easy, if you have a CV workout, a tempo run, and a long run every week. Best not to burn out while you're still developing as an athlete.

I believe you could add some easy strides (focusing on good form) and a few accelerations after a tempo run. This should keep you in touch with speed while you (presumably) are building your aerobic base.

No reason to do that year-round ... aren't you going to enter a season at some point? At that time, your coach will likely have a plan for how your training progresses, and this should include all the speed training you need.

Sub-8 Mile wrote:

Great question - I'm sure you'll get a good variety of input.

At 15, I'd suggest keeping your easy days easy, if you have a CV workout, a tempo run, and a long run every week. Best not to burn out while you're still developing as an athlete.

I believe you could add some easy strides (focusing on good form) and a few accelerations after a tempo run. This should keep you in touch with speed while you (presumably) are building your aerobic base.

No reason to do that year-round ... aren't you going to enter a season at some point? At that time, your coach will likely have a plan for how your training progresses, and this should include all the speed training you need.

I agree with all of that.

I believe that speed is highly genetic, and trying to put a lot of resources into maybe slightly improving it is not the most effective way to train for a middle distance or distance runner. Pure speed is a 30-40m fly, all-out. Will you ever be at that speed during a mile or 5k or XC race? Add to that injury risk, especially if you have lots of slow-twitch muscle fibers and not many fast-twitch.

I have a decent amount of FT fibers, and did all-out hill sprints and very fast strides. But felt like they didn't do anything for my fitness, and removed them. My 200m/400m speed stayed the same, even improved slightly due to more aerobic strength.

Think about it that way - with sprint training, you can maybe increase your 100m time by 0.5s. So in the last 200m of a race, you will be 1s faster. How about you try to get really strong aerobically, and become someone who starts his kick 500, 600m out? A long massive kick, like El Guerrouj repeatedly did (the best miler of all time) can destroy all the runners who got superior sprint speed. Let them spend a lot of time on improving their 100m time by 0.5 sec, while you fly by them closing the last 600 in 1:40 while they might be faster in the last 50m but only run 1:50.

Do some strides during your easy days, but focus on FORM and RELAXATION. This will help you at all paces, even 3k and 5k pace!

What should a speed development session look like?/What should the warm up look like?

There are a lot of potential answers to this. Also, speed is something you can and should definitely retain year round, but in different doses. Speed development can be anything from strides, to hill work, to a dedicated session, but I am not a fan of devoting an entire day to a speed session early in the year. At your age, especially when you're on the more developmental side of things, you don't want to be doing that anyway. At this point, you just want to kiss your workouts with a little speed.

Here would be an example two-week rotation:

MO easy + strides

TU: fartlek/CV

WE: easy

TH: midweek + strides

FR: tempo + sprint

SA: easy down day

SU: long run

MO easy + strides

TU: fartlek/CV

WE: easy

TH: midweek + strides

FR: tempo + hill sprint

SA: easy down day

SU: long run

Let me clarify one thing though -- my definition of strides is not a full sprint like a lot of people do. The point is really to practice smooth and efficient form at speed, and just to perk up your legs before a workout. So you'd just do these and focus on looking and feeling good rather than running fast. Naturally "looking good" means you'll run decently fast, but speed is not the goal. It's a drill to work on your mechanics, and sure you'll get some speed adaptation, but I don't consider it "speed work." And you do as many as you need to feel your legs perk up. It might be one or 10. You have to feel it out.

For the sprint work, it's usually a couple short distance reps (under 100m and up to 200 and occasionally 300) with lots of rest, think full recovery, at your best relaxed top-end speed. You should only do a few of them at a time, and generally the rep that you feel you're tightening up a little and stop feeling smooth, that'll be the last one. Relaxed speed is the fastest you can go without straining and pushing and staying chill. In the beginning, if you're kinda out of shape or haven't done speed in a long time, that might be around 800/mile pace, and later will progress to 400/800 pace and potentially faster, which is the goal. But at no point should you be timing these, they're all done on effort and feel. As the year goes on, you might start doing ladder workouts (200/150/100/80/50 or something like that), maybe 30m flys, something like that. But that also comes with experience and year-to-year strength, so you can get away with just touching the speed element.

Hill reps are a little different. I'm a big believer in periodized strength work and hill reps serve the same purpose, so you kind of want to phase them out after the base phase is over, about 10 weeks. So I tend to do short blasts, same pacing strategy as above, up to 15 seconds each with full walk-down rest. Same number of reps, only a couple, and you're done when you lose the smooth feeling. This isn't necessarily so you "get better at running hills" but it's more for the strength adaptation, which in turn makes you faster and stronger.

You can do these any time that works best for you, but I like directly after a workout. If not, replacing post-run strides with hills or longer sprints are totally fine. Very rarely would you do it before a run or long run, I've seen it done, but I don't like it because your legs aren't always totally warmed up.

You can definitely do it year round, you can do it every week or every 10 days or whatever, but at a certain point when you're ready to race at peak performance, you'll want to either cut them completely or run fewer reps just to maintain the speed element. So when you're peaking and you're racing a lot on low mileage, this is time where speed workouts come down in volume or go the wayside.

Think about it that way - with sprint training, you can maybe increase your 100m time by 0.5s.

Yeah, by this logic Usain Bolt used to run 10.18s before starting to train.

CRAZY, bro!

*10.08

A lifetime of training for just 0.5s wrote:

Think about it that way - with sprint training, you can maybe increase your 100m time by 0.5s.

Yeah, by this logic Usain Bolt used to run 10.18s before starting to train.

CRAZY, bro!

First, an untrained Bolt would still be BLAZING fast. Please trust me when I tell you he is a genetic FREAK. He has lots of FT fibers in his legs. Bolt was not a 12 sec guy running 9.58, he was always fast! He ran 21.7 as 14-YEAR OLD!!! Aging alone would have made him considerably faster.

Second we talk here about a middle/long distance runner. They tend to run lots of mileage, which is counterproductive to speed development. Also they don't go to the weight room often enough or lift heavy enough to become really powerful.

Sure, you can improve speed by much more. But then you need to drop mileage, train more like a sprinter, do completely different workouts, and spend a lot more time in the weight room. Will that really help his 1500/5k time?

A little goes a long way when it comes down to pure speed/sprints for a middle/distance runner.

Agree with both

SamH,

Please see the "5x60m w/ full recovery" thread from 11/05/2016:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7836514

You seem to be a very knowledgeable young athlete, but I have seen thread after thread of you speaking very authoritatively about training. It never seems that someone else's ideas are good enough for you; especially if they aren't identical to your own... or Tom's.

Admittedly, I'm just another fool out there who doesn't have all the answers. You've got some good ideas and a solid grasp of training, but it's hard to learn if you're the loudest person in the room.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

Think about it that way - with sprint training, you can maybe increase your 100m time by 0.5s. So in the last 200m of a race, you will be 1s faster. How about you try to get really strong aerobically, and become someone who starts his kick 500, 600m out? A long massive kick, like El Guerrouj repeatedly did (the best miler of all time) can destroy all the runners who got superior sprint speed. Let them spend a lot of time on improving their 100m time by 0.5 sec, while you fly by them closing the last 600 in 1:40 while they might be faster in the last 50m but only run 1:50.

I think this is faulty logic. Increasing your max speed isn't for increasing your speed of your kick at the end of a race, but to increase your potential to run fast times in middle distance events. For example, take an endurance based runner with a 58s 400m and 2:06s pr. If that athlete had amazing endurance, but was limited by speed, improving their 400m time by 2 or more seconds would effectively be what allows them to break 2:00 in the 800m.

V wrote:

You seem to be a very knowledgeable young athlete, but I have seen thread after thread of you speaking very authoritatively about training. It never seems that someone else's ideas are good enough for you; especially if they aren't identical to your own... or Tom's.

Admittedly, I'm just another fool out there who doesn't have all the answers. You've got some good ideas and a solid grasp of training, but it's hard to learn if you're the loudest person in the room.

First, great ideas in the thread Iggy posted. Do a nice read through of that and you should have better grasp on sprint training.

Second I want to respond to the LateRunnerPhil thing. I've disagreed with you in the past on sprint training and my point still stands. We have been doing this in the sport for decades and it has worked extremely well and is proven to work extremely well, so why wouldn't we do it once a week? It's not that big of an ask, especially for a middle-distance runner who loves to do the sprint work anyway.

Another point on long-distance runners doing speed. I still maintain that it's a necessary component of any race distance on the track. You need, at the very least, pure 400 speed to compete at any level, not only for the neuromuscular benefits of training at that pace but also for the fact that you're training another gear to use in a race. If you find based on calculators or whatever you use that you can't get down to your "theoretical" 400 pace, then sprint and strength work will help. It takes time to work on it. A year of trying it and deciding it doesn't work for you and your "muscle fibers" is not enough to decide against years of successful coaching -- you often need another few years after college to really develop and be competitive.

And lastly, we're talking about a 15-year-old kid who calls themselves a middle-distance runner. He has to be doing speed if that's the event group he wants to explore. Strides are not going to cut it. And when he gets to college and all of a sudden his coach is having him do 30m flys or 150 accels, he's going to be cursing LateRunnerPhil for steering him wrong. Sprint training is one of the defining factors of true middle-distance training. The point is that you can sprint like a decent 400m runner and also hang on long runs with the marathoners. You're not going to compete at any big stage, whether it's states or the Olympics, without sprinting.

SamH wrote:

Dear LRC,

I’m a 15 year old middle distance runner and I am really interested on improving my top end speed , ideally I can incorporate this into my base phase , on an easy day. This will be in addition to a CV session, a tempo run, and a long run each week.

What should a speed development session look like?

What should the warm up look like?

Does running a long cold down afterwards take away the benefit of the short speed?

How should this progress throughout the season and annually?

I it necessary to do this type of work every week?

How should it fit in to a training week?

Can it be done year round?

Thanks

Sam

Those are really good questions and approach that will help you maximise your potential over middle and/or long distances as well.

The warm up should consist of warm up run, drills, several accelerations/strides. Warm down length depends on what your body is accustomed to. It might be 2k for wu and wd, might be 6k for each, probably something in between depending on your milleage. Generally, I would suggest adding speed development session on the day before your endurance session (threshold, tempo, CV that kind of work) and when you are pretty fresh. That might be start of the week, that might be middle of the week, depends on your schedule.

Early in the season, especially if you are only introducing this kind of work, do hills instead of flat sprints to minimize injury risk. Once you get accustomed, gradually transfer into flat work. Progression could be something like starting with 4x6-10sec hills with full recovery (at least 2 minutes). Then you can do some flat, some hill sprints, say 3x60m flat + 3x6-10sec hills,then transfer fully to flats with sessions like 30m flys (where you accelerate 30m, sprint relaxed at max speed for 30m and then deccelarate, 60 meter sprints (someone linked to really solid thread above), 80m, 70m, 60m, 50m, 40m cuttdowns. Coming from general preparation period, I would suggest adding 1-2 longer sprints in addition to short ones, to get some feeling on what it feels like to hold close to your max speed. These should be not all out, but really fast, again full 3-5+ min recovery. So session would look like 4x30m flys + 2x150m. Those longer sprints could be anywhere from 100m to 200.

Few notes, hills are more if introduction as you improve your body’s ability to recruit muscle fibers, but it does not work on specific speed mechanics and recruitment patterns as you are doing it at slope. Again, principle of specificity. Secondly, running start is better than standing start, it will decrease chances of any achiles or other injuries and again as middle distance runner, the acceleration phase is of less importance to you then sprinter.

This should be done year round, every week or every two weeks or whatever your microcycle is. I personally prefer every week. From my experience keeping in touch with your max speed also decreases injury risk as well.

To comment on some of the comments that it is not beneficial. From theoretical numbers standpoint using the ones provided by LateRunnerPhil who is a 30 something person and started running few years ago, so credibility is in question there. If you improve 100m by 0.5s say from 12.5 to 12, then your 200 will go from something like 24.5 to 23.75 and your potential for 400 will improve from 52-53 to 50-51. Those are approximations for middle/long distance type runner but one can see the trend.

For inspiration, suggest checking Justin Rinaldi (fast8tc) on instagram or his posts on letsrun. His group is specializing on 800 with less emphasis on milleage, but the sprint work/sessions should be similar regardless of focus.

V wrote:

You seem to be a very knowledgeable young athlete, but I have seen thread after thread of you speaking very authoritatively about training. It never seems that someone else's ideas are good enough for you; especially if they aren't identical to your own... or Tom's.

Admittedly, I'm just another fool out there who doesn't have all the answers. You've got some good ideas and a solid grasp of training, but it's hard to learn if you're the loudest person in the room.

Is V talking about me ?

V-

The information you provided on the 5x60m thread is brilliant. I am definitely going to implement the sprint progression into my training. My question is : how long should you stay at each stage of the progression for?

and : Are the sprints all at maximum effort?

V, you are a D1 coach. With lots of experience.

If you prescribe your athletes all-out sprints, YOU (or a sprint coach or someone who is an expert about sprinting form and mechancis) is watching your athletes do them, actively coaching them, and correcting form/mistakes.

You may prescribe these intense sprint workouts to your D1 athletes, done with supervision (at least in the beginning), but prescribing it to a 15-year old kid, or a "recreational" middle/long distance runner is playing with fire.

How much have you worked with non D1-runners? A lot of distance runner might start doing your workouts (which are proven to work on D1 level), force the speed, form breaks down, they are straining and if done multiple weeks in a row get injured. I would never trust myself to do your workouts except the hill sprints which I consider a lot safer and I've done before, although I don't think they helped nearly as much as slightly longer hills of 20s-40s at 800-1500 pace which build immense leg strength (and don't make me dizzy like 6-8x8s all out hills).

No 15-year old in the world, has a maxed out aerobic system. That's still the main generator of energy and performance, and training that might lead to injuries needs to be extremely carefully introduced, to not lead to injuries which would interfere with the development of the aerobic system.

And my last point is still the same - sprinting and max speed is highly genetic. Some have it, some don't. Many of your athletes who have natural speed will be faster without any sprint training than the non-speed athletes could ever be with lots of sprint training, yet in a 1500m race they could both be competitive and even win depending on the circumstances.

I'm not saying that these short all-out sprints don't have a time and place, like you said they have been proven to work for decades. But there is a difference in coaching elite runners or D1 runners with supervision and instant feedback and prescribing a hard, all-out weekly sprint effort to a kid in a local running club or a self-training recreational runner (which most are).

Don't want to keep fanning the flames because I think OP knows where to go from here, but...

You have a point that I semi-agreed with, (don't slam a young athlete, focus on aerobic development and "playing track") but having done these workouts myself, they're not that intense nor do you need extra supervision. Heck, I did them in high school too, sometimes barefoot, and I bet thousands of other high schoolers did them with similar success. You literally just tack them on to the end of a workout, it's never the primary workout (unless we're talking last four-ish weeks of the season) and if it starts to go poorly you cut it. Nothing wrong with "fastest relaxed top-end speed" as I think Joe Rubio puts it. He prescribes 150 accels every week for his athletes in SLO, that goes for both MD and LD/26.2, which even though they're an elite development club, those 150s are pretty easy to implement without getting injured. You don't force the speed just like you wouldn't force the pace on an easy run.

Not for nothing, and this is not (I hope) an ad-hominem stab, but you always seem to be regurgitating Tinman's work. And not that he's not a decent coach, but I don't think he's got all the answers (even though, honestly, I think he believes he does...), or at the very least, he has an approach that works better for 3K+ athletes. There's a vast world of coaching philosophy out there and Tinman barely scratches the surface. Sure there's multiple ways to skin a cat but...

I agree with Zante. So sick of people telling kids with a 58 sec 400m PR (not the OP) that "aerobic development will produce the biggest gains." Yes that's true, but what if that kid is a super-responder to sprint training, gets down to 52, and runs a 4:08 mile. That would never have happened if he listened to the people in this thread. And guess what, having a 4:08 mile PR will make him a faster 5k/10k runner in the long run. This is an extreme example, but why leave any stone unturned? As runners we want to maximize performance. Youth is the most important time to develop "skills" and neuromuscular coordination, which sprinting requires.

The point that we are all making is that sprint speed can be improved, and it can be done in conjunction with traditional aerobic development for runners. And the injury risk for a high school kid sprinting up a hill for a few seconds or 40 meters with 3 minute recovery is actually much lower than making him grind out 60 mile weeks. (Not that high schoolers shouldn't run that much if they have built up to it). Sprinting, in many ways, can help reduce the risk of injury as it improves mechanics and strengthens muscles and tendons in ways that even running as fast as 5k race pace cannot.

By far best advice on this thread was linking to V's response here ...

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7836514#7849298

Agree that runners that are new to this kind of speed development need to be careful. For SamH, I would just caution to not go at these with 100% effort. If you have someone available to help coach your form, that will improve your odds of success and decreases odds of injury.

Other point to be emphasized is that these workouts should be done when you are fresh. They are taxing, so recovery is important - both during the workout and in days following.

SamH wrote:

V-

The information you provided on the 5x60m thread is brilliant. I am definitely going to implement the sprint progression into my training. My question is : how long should you stay at each stage of the progression for?

and : Are the sprints all at maximum effort?

Hey Sam,

I wasn't referring to you in my response before about being too authoritative.

I'm glad you found the information in that thread helpful. I would set up the progression based on the season. Eventually most of the speed development work will shift into more function sessions that extend toward speed endurance or more glycolytic sessions (150m or more). If you're in HS then you may block off each season and plan your progressions around that. I usually treat cross as one block and track (indoor and outdoor) as the other. For cross we progress very slowly and barely get into anything more than speed endurance so each step (hills, flat, flys, etc) would usually be around 4 weeks). With the longer summer due to COVID I'm being more patient.

All of our sessions are maximum effort. There are plenty of other sessions to run sub-maximally through workouts or strides. These, to be effective, need to be all-out in order to translate. I've never had an athlete get hurt from doing this kind of work. Just warm-up well, make sure they're technically sound and the rest falls into place.