How does one coach sprints?

Well, you'll be coaching sprintERS, not sprints--so the people you'll be dealing with (jr hi/HS/college? beginners/intermediates/veterans?) will likely influence your training routine greatly.

There are some great resources available nowadays. Look online and on YouTube for warmup, cooldown, and injury-prevention activities, as well as a wealth of training routines (some of which, of course, contradict each other!) and advice on starting/acceleration/top-speed technique.

Something to keep in mind is that if you're going to work on technique stuff e.g. baton passing, starts, specific drills--anything that involves learning a new movement pattern/skill--you should do it *early* in the training session (though after an appropriate warmup). Don't try to teach *after* a conditioning session! Practice your starts and baton passing and form drills early in the workout; the just-running part can come after that.

FWIW I have never seen a sprinter do 10x100m full rest, which presumably would be all-out effort, or close to it, on each rep. (Just looking at that is making my hamstrings tense up.) But who knows, for a given individual maybe that could be a helpful workout: At least s/he would have a very solid feel for the exact distance.

Im no sprint coach, but I'd emphasize evry workout having a specific point. 60-80 meter repeats for pure speed, 20-50 meters for getting out of the blocks, and 100 meters and up being used for speed endurance. try doing some change of speed workouts like 32's (300 and a faster 200) and 21's and you could probbaly even do something like 40,40,40 where you try and emphasize your start, getting top speed, and maintaining it, in each 40. I also know sprinting is dangerous and has a high chance of injury if runners aren't prepared, so look into that.

Thanks for the tips. This is high school. These kids aren't experienced so I'll be focusing on injury prevention and technique.

This is also helpful, thanks.

Lol this is canon

You need to train start and acceleration mechanics, top speed mechanics, and speed endurance. Plyos and weights build power.

For conditioning and speed endurance, 1200-1600m of interval training works well (6x200, or 4x400, for example)

For top end speed, that 10x100m with full recovery you mentioned would work- I like 10x60yds on the football field barefoot.

Sprint form drills are helpful- Loren Seagrave’s videos on YouTube are excellent.

If you go 90%+ on one day, go 75%- on the next day.

Sprinters are “lazy” the way lions are lazy- they go hard and rest otherwise. Don’t confuse their muscles and nervous system with aerobic work.

utbcw wrote:

You need to train start and acceleration mechanics, top speed mechanics, and speed endurance. Plyos and weights build power.

For conditioning and speed endurance, 1200-1600m of interval training works well (6x200, or 4x400, for example)

For top end speed, that 10x100m with full recovery you mentioned would work- I like 10x60yds on the football field barefoot.

Sprint form drills are helpful- Loren Seagrave’s videos on YouTube are excellent.

If you go 90%+ on one day, go 75%- on the next day.

Sprinters are “lazy” the way lions are lazy- they go hard and rest otherwise. Don’t confuse their muscles and nervous system with aerobic work.

Please, please do not ever have your athletes run 10x100m at high speed.

The upper limit on maxV work in a session should be 300m, and that's if they have a couple of years of training. A new sprinter starts getting slower in their reps and risks injury after about 180-200m of top speed work.

Short to Long:

-General strength and fitness, and flexibility of leg muscles. A lot of injuries in new sprinters are caused by range of motion limitations.

-Top speed (things like flying 30s, EFEs, FEFs)

-Acceleration

-Once they have those in place, you can start to add longer reps. I've use workouts like 180/150/120/80 (with essentially full recovery) or 250/180/150/120.

Don't think like a distance runner. You'll just give them too much volume.

Not a coach but some things to consider from a physiological/technical point of view.....

If doing a max effort sprint of 5-10+ sec or 50-100m.....you need to have a good 5min of rest between efforts to recover the systems that are stressed.

Sprinting curves is different than sprinting straights....practice both.

Running is a skill. Drills. Are. Important. Ensure they, and you, learn the skill of running.

Or you could literally Google it:

https://www.ncacoach.org/uploads/BingleTrainingIdeasHSSprinters.pdf

https://speedendurance.com/2009/04/19/a-total-sprint-training-program-for-maximum-strength-power-sprint-speed-core-strength/

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

Don't think like a distance runner. You'll just give them too much volume.

Not a coach but some things to consider from a physiological/technical point of view.....

If doing a max effort sprint of 5-10+ sec or 50-100m.....you need to have a good 5min of rest between efforts to recover the systems that are stressed.

Sprinting curves is different than sprinting straights....practice both.

Running is a skill. Drills. Are. Important. Ensure they, and you, learn the skill of running.

Alan

This.

Warm up and drills are essential. Warm up is not a 2-mile jog... you'll wear out your sprinters before the workout even starts! It's drills, drills, and more drills. You can find them on YouTube. At least 15-20 minutes should be spent on warm-up drills before every workout.

No static stretching. All stretching should be drills that emphasize range of motion and dynamic stretching. If a student asks, tell them that the drills are dynamic stretching.

In distance running, you just run. Sometimes intervals a bit faster, but there's not a lot of technique involved. It's overwhelmingly about endurance.

Sprinting needs to be broken down into separate parts and each of those parts is trained differently and separately.

For speed, you might do 4-6 flying 30s or flying 40s. A couple of minutes to walk back between reps.

Block starts should be no more than 30m... 15m is enough.

Block starts are NOT necessarily how the pros do it or how they're shown on YouTube. Most of your sprinters will lack the strength to do a block start so you will have to modify the leg position for each sprinter to keep them from popping up and other block start mistakes.

10x100m is an odd workout. It doesn't work for pure speed. It doesn't work for speed endurance.

After reading my own post, block start practice should be no more than 10m. Going to 30m is a different drill. You want them to get enough volume to practice the first few steps out of the block and going 30m is going to tire them out too much.

Form is critical for sprinters so pay attention to shoulders, arm swing, hand motion, excessive shoulder rotation or torso rotation, sway of back, forward lean, etc.

You received good advice here. Let me add that you should watch videos of good sprinters so you know what good form looks like. Learn what a good "set" position looks like and what driving out of the blocks or just from the start without blocks should look like. Teaching sprinting (even to non sprinters) is fun.

I think one of the most difficult things to grasp as a distance runner is how much what we are used to doing at practice is completely turned on it's head when it comes to sprinters.

Distance runners will take any workout and turn it into an endurance focused bout. Send us to the weight room and we're doing sets and sets of squats and lunges, step ups, etc.. Technique drills we do set after set. Put us on the track for a day of "speed work" and we're doing big gobs of 200s, 150 flys,

"When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

You have to be OK with a day that looks like this: warm up, drills, 3x300 full effort w/100% recovery. Cool down. Done.

First thing to remember is their no distance runners so sending them out for 30min easy runs etc is a waste of time. Lots of good stuff on the internet. Try Coach Boo to start. Went to one of his clinics before i coached sprinters and he was great.

If you have a bit of money to spend on PD for yourself, take the Altis training course or buy the Sprinter's Compendium. Those were the most comprehensive resources I've found. The Feed the Cats program from Tony Holler is good too. I find Tony Holler's stuff easiest to implement immediately, but it has some limitations for upper level athletes (especially in the longer sprints). If I were starting from scratch, I would start with Holler's stuff for a year or two to build some enthusiasm and teach fundamentals and then start branching out from there based on the needs of your group.

When in doubt, under prescribe volume and over prescribe rest. You'd rather keep kids healthy and undertrained than overtrained and hurt.

10x100 all out would lead to 100% of the team quitting, getting injured, or jogging by rep 4.

Gotta feed the cats

http://assets.ngin.com/attachments/document/0115/9822/24_Pages_of_Speaker_Notes_and_____Extras_Coach_Tony_Holler_2017.pdf

Successful for 100 & 200. Unclear about 400 maybe you would need a hybrid of this and Clyde Hart.

http://oldserver.usatf.org/groups/Coaches/library/2007/Sprint%20Training/Clyde_Hart3.pdf