Speed development periodization for 800/1500

Just bumping this because this is one of the trickier and more fun subjects. I've tried to start threads on it but this message board isn't big on speed development so they don't get too much traction.

Typing on a phone now, but I will add my 2 cents.

I like the idea of doing your speed work on a steep hill for a few weeks really early on. Something like 6x6s hill with full recovery.

For plyos, I do them on my speed days. Basically, I jog for a few miles. Then I do my "regular" running drills: activation stuff, dynamic stretching, walks, marches, skips, etc. I progress from "easy" to "hard" in a sense that the drills get more technical as I get looser. I'm not entirely sure where the line is drawn between regular running drills and plyos though. Certainly doing a-skips is a plyo exercise to an extent? Anyway, after my regular running drills I do some plyo stuff: jump squats, bounds, single leg bounds, etc. THEN I get on the hill or on the track and do my speed development work. Finally I jog a mile or two to cool down.

As far as periodization goes, I think your plan is pretty solid and I agree with it.

Maybe a poster like Rinaldi could chime in?

Onto your periodization:

I think it's solid, but I'll suggest a few tweaks and some things to consider:

The transition period seems like a bit of a step backward, but I like the GP, Pre-comp phases.

If you spent time in gen-prep doing 60m reps or 30m flys then resetting to where all but one rep is 40m or less is a bit of a regression. I'd rather see gen prep be a little more focused on acceleration and the very beginning of speed development (mainly that 40m rep distance)

I think the competition phase can be left that way if there's a lot of races

Normally, I'd want the end of the season to be just speed endurance, but if you know you have a lot of other work to fit in then I think 50's can be a great choice to keep the workout manageable and just remind the body that it still needs to be fast. The 200m rep is a good bridge to keep speed endurance primed and touch on Special Endurance 1 (SE1; where we start to see some glycolytic stress being introduced).

Precomp phase is great, I don't see any issues there.

You can use that time to have some ladders that span the continuum of speed to speed endurance so they are learning to make their speed more functional. I prefer ascending ladders so we aren't starting with accumulating fatigue with a longer rep before doing the shorter ones.

Another consideration is adding hill work especially early on. As much as I want to say speed development is paramount, it's still a relatively one dimensional stimulus on it's own. How much differently is the body developing from 40's vs 30's or 80's vs 60's? Each jump is important, but over a long season (or year), it's going to get very used to what it's been doing. Hills can be a good way to throw a wrinkle into training and revisit acceleration work but over different durations (can be in acceleration mechanics for much longer on a hill than flat ground) and intensities (changing the steepness of the hill). Every couple of months I like to revisit hills even just to change things up and let their body adapt to something new.

The other consideration I'll mention is to always consider that eventually, speed has to be functional. Usually in the later phases of training, I'm okay with dropping speed development in favor of just doing something like:

- 3x200m w/ 10' rest OR;

- 250m, 150m w/ 12' rest OR;

- 2x60m + 200m, 150m w/ 8' rest

It's not true speed development... but there's no points for who sticks to the right training zone the best. There's only points to who runs the fastest in a race. Eventually our speed development always starts looking more like speed endurance or even SE1. That has usually gotten our athletes more ready when we need it. My 800m runners may see enough of this in other ways to not need it as much, but my distance runners eventually get enough from speed development that we need to graduate to the things that translate better to races.

Certainly a-skip and basic drills can be classified as plyometric works, however they have a low impact on the body, which is good, but also they don't make you that much explosive. Of course is different with box jumps, bounds and hurdle jumps. The question here is when to put the so called heavy pliometric work. If you put those exercises before doing sprint work your sprint work will be negative influenced, you won't be that efficient. By doing the exercises after the sprint work one has to be really careful to the body stress. If someone has more experience on this stuff it would be very interesting

So much overcomplication.

1:49/3:44 guy here

My training consists of loads and loads of mileage with just a touch off 400m repeats to keep the speed.

So, 70mpw tempo running with sone repeats and you are golden.

By the way all the guys who ive seen doing 200m repeats, 100m repeats are waay slower then me, so it doesnt work, it sounds cool i agree but it doesnt work against guys like me who run crazy mileage

Hello V, I had the idea to start a new thread about this topic because I loved that 5x60m thread and I find it full of useful infos. If I rememeber correctly you were one of the main sources of these info, so thank you, your presence in the discussion is very useful

Onto my periodization, which of course can improve.

The general idea is to start with short accelerations and to gradually increase the volume of work up to 500m more or less and to arrive to manage 50 to 60m reps.

Then in the transitional phase the idea is to lower a little bit that volume and to add some speed endurance. One can start from 2x120 to gradually arrive to a 300m rep at the end of the phase. The competition phase here in Italy is not full of races as in the US. We don't have midweek meets or dual meets, the races are usually in the weekend, and while you can do the 1500-800 or the 400-800 double, that won't happen very often. Also we don't compete every weekend because there's a lack of quality races, and the treble 400-800-4x400 over two days is done at max once per season(there are like 2-3 meets where you can do that).

Your idea to insert hill sprinting once every 4 to 6 weeks as a shock to the system is brilliant, I definetely will consider that.

And yes, I really like the three workouts you suggested at the end of the post, I think they are very good to spin the legs of a 1500m runner and make him do the next step.

I have a couple of question for you: how do you implements plyos with these sessions and which exercises do you prefer? And also, do you think treadmill fast,short, steep hills are a good solution when the weather doesn't allow to train outside?

Great thread and I have utilized and endorse many of the concepts and sessions. I will chime in by highly recommending the work of Tony Holler and his "Feed the Cats" approach for speed days. It is more of a conceptual approach which emphasizes fun, loving the sport, regular timed progression of training and in-squad competition (records and posts times for sessions, especially with top speeds attained). It is hard for distance people to drop the "grinder" approach which deplete speed and leads to injuries.

I include plyometrics in all of our lifts. I think they can be fine with a larger sprint session, but we've found a way that works and are happy with it.

If it's part of a larger sprint workout then you have two options. Either do some light priming work before sprinting as part of the warmup or doing it after sprinting and watching closely to make sure it can be done safely. With most movements early in a season it's pretty easy to do after (in-place jumps, rudimentary jumps, etc.). When you start getting into things like hurdle hops or depth jumps you just need to make sure they're not so fatigued that quality drops.

With doing it as a second session within our lift we seems to get enough quality and are a little more fresh.

As for the treadmills, you've got to work with what you've got. In recent years I've been pretty okay with doing speed development after an easy run. That's pretty taboo, but sometimes we can't sacrifice the miles that we need and doing good enough is good enough. I don't think you can get the speeds you need to call it speed development or acceleration work, but it's still a stimulus. You just need to know where it fits in the greater plan.

Yes, that is true especially for ST 1500m guys, such as 1500-5K guys good in XC. They still need speed development, but since they are more effective with an higher mileage, running 40-50 minutes and then doing a lighter acceleration work is good, if you need more miles in that period of the year.

At the end of the day as coaches we can do do two things: develop or mantain. In some phase of the season we need to develop some parts of the running "skills" array and so maintaining the others is a better idea than doing nothing. You don't need much work to maintain good sprint speed, but you need it to improve. And that applies to every part of the training

First off this thread is great.

I'm interested in what the thoughts are on how to combine easy mileage with speed development. I have an athlete focusing on the 5k this season and he's a guy who can't afford to cut mileage. I would really like to have him work on this as he's a young talent and I think in 2-3 years he could really be good.

I've seen programs have athletes do hill sprints or accelerations after a normal easy day or longer easy day run. Is there a better way to implement this?

Ideally, you'd be able to use doubles so that your morning session can be a solid warm-up and cool-down with your speed development in between then have a second run later in the day that can tack on more mileage. Getting 6 miles in the first session then a double isn't hard to fit in a 12 mile day and not have competing stimuli.

The other side of things is that sometimes, good enough, is all we really need. I used to be very against speed dev after a run because you wouldn't be fresh, but it's not nearly as big a deal as I probably made it out to be. The more your event requires high mileage, the less necessary pure speed development sessions are to some degree. So it's somewhat self regulating that athletes that need to run more miles (and potentially make speed dev sessions less effective) also aren't as limited by their top end speed. I really don't mind someone doing 8-10 miles really easy and then needing to sprint after. I'm more inclined to put those sessions on a hill to force some extra muscle recruitment (technically now closer to acceleration work) when they're a little more fatigued.