Want to improve speed and efficiency: plyos, weights, or both?

Speed endurance is what you need to improve. Your maximum speed will stay the same even with weights.

You're right. Nobody has ever increased their sprinting speed from birth until death. Bolt was born running 9.58 and will die with the same ability. Training is irrelevant.

Seppo Kaitenen wrote:

You're right. Nobody has ever increased their sprinting speed from birth until death. Bolt was born running 9.58 and will die with the same ability. Training is irrelevant.

You don't understand the term speed endurance.

Plyos, weights, hills, sprinting, mileage will all help efficiency and help you get faster.

Seppo Kaitenen wrote:

I'm a miler with subpar speed. From my understanding weights can increase your power, while plyos can make you make you more efficient. Is this true? What should I focus on as I train for MD?

Let's step away from terms like "power" or "efficiency" for a minute. Too many people use them to mean different things.

First, if you want to get faster you need to sprint. full stop.

If you're training plan aims to improve your max speed and doesn't have sprinting listed as item 1 way above everything else you're not going to see the adaptations that you're looking for. This dives into that heavily:

Getting into lifting and plyo's, you can think of both as being different branches of the same tree. Lifting tends to be more "static" where the lift is slow but generally requires a ton of force development. Plyo's are more "dynamic" or "ballistic" and are generally much faster and more specific to the movements we see in running; even sprinting can be considered a plyometric activity since we are loading and unloading rapidly using our body weight and the speed of the event to apply resistance. Plyo's also have the added benefit of stretch-shortening cycles that are a key part of why they generate so much force without needing an external load.

Instead of getting bogged down by which is better, why not ask why you can't do both? My program (and plans written by people a lot smarter than me) often times have both in their training. French Contrast training is also one that has both within a session; Ashton Eaton has a video that showed some of his training and it relied heavily on this.

Most people should start with lifting (after they've already had sprinting in their training program of course) if only because it's safe, low-hanging fruit. Start with a weight you can handle, and pick a few key lifts to cycle through: Squats, RDLs, hip thrust, Bulgaria split squats, lunges, etc.

Early on, most of the adaptations you'll get are neural, meaning it isn't so much the muscles themselves getting stronger, it's your nervous system learning how to turn muscles on and off more efficiently so they can produce more force.

Plyometrics take the "efficiency" part further. You still produce a lot of force (and a lot of impact) but you're also having to turn muscle on and off at much faster rates in order to complete the movement fluidly.

Lifting is generally safer since the loads can be controlled more easily, and the adaptations to muscle and connective tissue happen more gradually. Going straight into something like depth jumps is a recipe for disaster.

You can easily have both incorporated, just keep sprinting as the main focus and build from there. Most distance runners are very novice in the weight room, you don't necessarily need a ton of time to feel the new stimulus. As another small note, don't aim for tons of reps. We're trying to apply something new, light weight with high rep is exactly what we do on a run, let the weight room be something that teaches you to adapt to something new. To do that we eventually need to be lifting reasonably heavy.

Weight training helps your plyos.

Sprinting is a plyo.

Plyos make you faster.

Sprint speed is helpful in a mile.

Oh and research Seb Coe training. He was doing both.

Just to help your understanding, weight training improves strength. Power is a function of strength and speed, for example lifting a weight fast takes more power than lifting the weight slowly. Plyos help convert strength to power, for example doing a lunge takes strength, but jumping from a lunging position, switching legs in the air, and landing in a lunging position with the opposite leg forward takes power.

This is a bit oversimplified, but generally, you will see more improvement in running speed by doing plyos instead of lifting weights, however, if you start lifting weights first, then convert that added strength to even more power by doing plyos, you will be able to sprint even faster than through doing plyos alone.

Start plyos early on. You don't start with high level plyos but low level skipping and mini hops are fine. Prepare your body for the demands of bounds and depth jumps. I think it's a mistake to wait until after some form of strength phase and then introduce them. Often people skip the baby steps and attempt high level jumps and get hurt.

Seppo Kaitenen wrote:

You're right. Nobody has ever increased their sprinting speed from birth until death. Bolt was born running 9.58 and will die with the same ability. Training is irrelevant.

An incorrect post.

Sprinting would be more effective than both (although you could argue technically it is a plyometric activity, but I doubt that's what you meant when you suggested them). I'd build some sprints to 40/50 off full recovery (at least 1min for every 10m) or some flying 30s (again, full rest) before you start worrying about the other bits.