Hi Oldsub4,
In one of the best threads on letsrun, the "Sub 1:50 800m" thread, you talked about doing drills in the winter to aid the form. Also, how in basketball you improved your vertical leap and that led you to be more explosive and subsequently drop time. Could you tell me the form drills you did And the weights you used to improve vertical for the 800m and the 1500m?
Thank you (abd any other posters) in advance
bump
I'm also curious. Will this have more or less of an effect on a mile/800m runner as opposed to a 400m/800m runner?
Drills and weights....
Basic set of sprint drills include 4*50m of high knees, butt-kicks, bounding, kick outs (high knee then kick out leg straight in front of you), then backwards running.
Drills more important for 400 person...I saw jerermy warriner do like 200m straight of kickouts....amazing shape. No wonder he never loses his form in the stretch.
Weights....best thing is just jumping repeats ( box jumps) or just trying to max vert 25-30 times. If lifting , I was a fan of power cleans since you had to explode...not s fan of squats for mid distance runners....more resistive strength than anything else.
Is it fair to say there's an element of muscular endurance in both drills and jumps...you're trying to hold on longer and do more reps each time you do the drills?
in terms of the squats you might benefit from something similar that many top jumpers do...heavy squats in pre-season but once competition starts, you cut to jump squats at approx 30% body weight. It keeps the elastic abilities of a jumper active for competition where deep squats can inhibit them...might work similarly for a mid d athlete in terms of keeping them explosive.