What do 50+ plus sprinters do for training?

I am by no means a sprinter (I was running marathons when you were blasting out of blocks, and have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100K miles on my 66-year old legs), in fact I am a mere 800 runner dreaming of moving down to the 400 (less pain). Along these lines his last year I shifted decisively to sprint training in order to hopefully overcome with technique what nature didn't give me in terms of fast-twitch (a very tall order).

Looking over a lot of sprint training material (and having coached younger sprinters over the years with success), I have landed on Tony Holler's "Feed the Cats" program, which is very appropriate to older athletes, and prioritizes keeping fresh and sharp over relentless grind.

This has rejuvenated my legs and mind, and I am chomping the bit to hit the track this next summer. I have had to set aside my grinder-dog distance mindset to embrace a "less is indeed more" and "Minimal effective dose" approach. >>Go hard, go fast, rest a LOT!<< As a natural sprinter, you should find this a very comfortable fit.

Just know that great things are possible. You are NOT too old to see how well you can do!

Thanks XY, I have watched Feed the Cats clips, and it makes sense. Good luck with your goals and keep me informed. For the pentathlon, you have to be fit for 1500m but I will focus more on the strength more this Winter

lol i know this is a troll, but when you've seen people who are approaching 40 perform close to their peak in sprinting, i wouldn't necessarily restrict it as a "kid's sport"

Check out the various Facebook Masters T&F pages. Lots of good info to be found there.

will do, cheers

In general, I would say fo whatever DOESN’T get you injured.

I’m 56 now, and last summer was maybe my best year of sprint training, ever. By concentrating on form first, then relaxation, I had a totally injury-free year.

By form, I mean sprints with high knees and little backside action. It starts with proper drills, and ends with footplant and contact time. Holy man was I getting fast.

Just the standard stuff: A’s, B’s, C’s, and D’s, lots of fast tempo in the heat, not too many hard accelerations, and back to very basic weights only: 1/4 to parallel squats, SIT SQUATS WITH FULL RELEASE, power cleans, bench, militaries, pullups, bi curls, etc.

For cross I did swimming and biking, swimming in particular. I stayed entirely off the treadmill, that thing is death for me. Only stretched occasionally. No big bounds or single leg hops.

Felt amazing. Yeah I know my days are numbered, but I was going hard.

SPRINT DRILLS FOCUSING ON FORM, WEIGHTS, AND A RELAXING CROSS-EXERCISE..WHATEVER YOU CAN DO WITHOUT GETTING INJURED, AND ALL DONE IN CONDITIONS YOU ENJOY.

lol I hope the all caps helped😁💪👍

OP, I'm an 800/400 senior citizen, but I dropped down to sprint training a few months ago to improve my speed. I've experimented with Tony Holler's Feed the Cats, X-factor drills, Cody Bidlow's sprint training, and French Contrast Training. These are excellent places to start and I suggest the OP look into all of them, but my personal experience is that FtC, x-factor, and Bidlow's drills have a high injury risk for elder runners.

Holler claims that he has never had an injury in his program, but Holler coaches 15-18 year-olds who can handle high impact drills and pure speed. I got injured a LOT trying to do Feed the Cats and x-factor.

My point is that seniors will need to modify these approaches for a body with half a century more use than Holler's freshman sprinters.

Having said that, the results are... in my case... impressive.

Not a sprinter but I am old and have managed to keep my fast twitch fibers working without getting injured:

Treadmill 10 percent grade 10mph 4 x 30 seconds with 4 minutes recovery.

Effort is close to max def feel failure type fatigue near the end of each 30 second effort

I am 66 and have been doing this for 3 years without any decline or injury.

C'mon man, don't leave us hanging, inspire us by listing some of your best recent training reps!

Thanks for replies.

Yes, I think avoiding injuries is crucial.

Before I turned 50, just one partial cartilage tear. But now, regular minor injuries, probably not helped by poor flexibility which I need to work on.

Sometimes i think doing long jump and javelin are putting a lot of strain on my body, and i would be better off just sprinting in my elder age, but perhaps I need to reduce to train smarter and curt the intensity and work much more on flexibility. .

I am well aware that Tony only coaches kids, but so do all the other high school coaches whose kids are always fighting injuries. I think the main difference is emphasis of recovery vs. "the grind". As a distance guy coming down this is THE critical component IMO.

I don't find anything particularly injurious about his x-factor stuff, except that I am too old and lacking in bounce to do many of them very impressively. What I like is the emphasis of stopping the moment you feel fatigue. For me that is usually 5-8 reps or seconds. Are you doing this? I honestly cover maybe a mile total in my first hour of actual training (I often spin 30 min on a stationary bike earlier). There may or may not be a second hour, especially depending on weather.

What Tony doesn't emphasize that I do diligently is hill work. Hard uphill work is low-impact/high reward, as Charlie points out. I also do some fast-turnover work on a carefully selected hard-packed dirt decline, and even on a smooth section of pavement in super shoes.

I find that wicket drills (I use patches of colored cloth instead of actual wickets) to be especially helpful in cleaning up my technique as a slowpoke geezer.

Also, VERY IMPORTANT, and I neglected to mention in my first post, I incorporate a lot of backwards walking/jogging/sled pushing. I call this my "Backup Training". Every quality session ends with at least 300-400m backwards, even if just walking flat, but usually up and down hills. This sets everything "straight" and keeps my legs feeling bombproof. If I am on a run and my legs start feeling hammered, I stop and do some backups. Works like magic.

If a sizeable percentage of your training isn't promoting antagonist muscle/CNS work, you don't get to complain about aches and pains!

At moment, with pentahlon comp Feb. 26, just trying to maintain fitness and hold body together.

Tomorrow will run a 1500m on track and light strides after.

Other track session for week will be either 5x 60-100m or 5x100m at 90% with 3 minutes rest. This session is followed by 5x20m single leg hops and/or 5-6 sets of fast push sled with no weight added.

Just two upper body sessions per week, mainly pushups and pullups with a few weigh exercises.

To be honest, i barely recover from two track sessions a week.

I also do easy runs and bike rides on other days.

Train javelin and discus once per week.

For example, yesterday 3.5km at just 8km/h with pulse around 130 (max is 184)

Sure. On Jan 1st, I ran 20x50m, 5x80m, and ended with 100m in 15.38. That would have been 25th best in the world in my age group in 2022. That's pretty good considering that I don't race the 100. I think the x-factor drills have really helped my speed. The problem is that these high impact drills exacerbate some pre-existing chronic injuries. When I can't do the drills, I'll go home and try the next day.

Obviously, I do a lot more volume than Holler's FtC, but my events are the 400 and 800.

At the gym, I'm doing more Contrast Training... that's more Bidlow's philosophy. Holler leaves the gym stuff to other coaches.

A typical Contrast workout would be a strength set of exercise followed by a power set of a similar exercise, and then a power/speed set using the same muscle group. An example would be heavy DB (dumbbell) step ups for strength, lighter DB step hops starting with a hard stomp onto the box and ending with a hop into the air. And finally, a series of quick double leg hops onto a box, off the box, on to another box, and so on as fast as I can until I can't maintain the pace. That's maybe 20 hops.

Early 50's sprinter here - was once a middle / distance guy and have spent far too long on these boards over the years.

I've been back training a year or so after a long layoff. Lots of useful stuff posted above.

First thing I did (first session) was injure a hamstring and I realised that I had to build some basic fitness as I had none at all. I started jogging shortish distances and added some basic drills (learnt off another, very accomplished masters athlete) and slowly started to feel more athletic. Unfortunately I suffered further problems and had to restrict my workouts to drills and some not very intense workouts. This lasted several months.

I managed to 'race' 100m through the summer, slowly introducing some faster work in training but still spending a lot of time doing form drills. I improved in every race apart from the second one (caution over an earlier pull) and even managed a few 200s. A bit sobering that, by end of season, I had only just managed to run 200m at my 20y/o's 800m pace.

Like the majority of the northern hemisphere's athletics community, I am now into winter training. The entertaining bit here (and through the summer) has been trying to work out how to structure a training program. I have spent a long time reading the various online resources, textbooks, watching YouTube channels and browsing r/sprinting. I can't find anything structured that is masters specific. Fortunately I quite enjoy this.

Early winter I scheduled in a lot of tempo work. I have some health issues that cause me to limit the distances I run, so tempo distances were short but with a reasonable number of efforts. I found these be really easy to do I suspect due to decades of earlier distance training / running.

Tempos have been a good way of practicing form and building leg "resilience" without overtaxing the system.

I know from experience that I have to be careful scheduling really intense work as I don't always recover quickly. This is improving but is a lot to do with why I don't just train with the club's sprint group. Accelerations don't cause much grief now but high intensity flying 20's (for example) can keep me sore for longer than the wait for the next track session.

I have introduced some easy plyos to my training and try to include some in every track session. These appear to be having a massive effect on my basic speed (I'm not timing but the improvements are pretty obvious)

One thing the distance runner in me has had to let go of is the urge to keep increasing the number of efforts. More is often less in sprinting, it would appear. I might be compensating by doing loads of drills in warmup but I need a good 35-40 mins before attempting anything quick otherwise I hurt myself. I tell myself that more drills can't hurt too much.

I'm probably not best placed to offer any advice but I do suggest that all changes to training are gradual, as is the introduction of any new methods.

Re: flexibility.

I have always been very flexible, things like full splits no problem for me.

BUT last year I stopped meaningfully stretching for the first season ever. Result? No injuries, and fast, lean, long, and powerful. The only stretching I did was light warmdown stuff.

Sorry to provide the counter-example, but there it is.

Also, I hit it whenever I can. If I’m in a long hallway and feeling it, I put my head down and accelerate for 3 steps. Going to the car in the underground parking, I lay it out. At the beach, I jav-throw rocks far. I do one-armed pushups in the elevator between floors. I take stairs 3-4 at a time. I drink my own piss.

Oh, wait…

Maybe the takeaway is that I have (unintentionally) stayed away from jumps and bounds.

sprintgezer, yes i think too much flexibility is not needed, but I am very inflexible. for example, my right quad - cannot touch my heel on glute and my thoracic spine flexibility is non existent. If i lie on a bench, there is no gap at all between my back and bench.

Even if that 15.38 was fresh, rolling start, with a pacer, it would be, when coupled with your obvious strength, a clear indicator of mid-60s for the 400. I don't have to tell you how good that is for 70+.

What were the recoveries on those reps?

Have you noticed that on your long speed rep sessions that despite feeling fatigue as the session goes, you run remarkably faster in the latter reps? I have had some head-scratchers where I was reluctant to run another 100, but then drop my best time on #12 or 14. Used to be, I always ran my fastest #3-5.