Whatever speed you end up doing, do it *early* in your training session (following a suitable warmup, of course).
Working on speed *after* a distance run is for the birds. If you want to develop the neuromuscular skill of fast efficient running, you need to treat it like any other neuromuscular skill: work on it when you're fresh, not after a lot of other activity.
However, *following* speed with moderate mileage works okay for a lot of people.
My workouts do everything that 2x's workouts do except mine won't leave the runner with an early, mistimed peak and possibly an injury.
dial it up wrote:
My workouts do everything that 2x's workouts do except mine won't leave the runner with an early, mistimed peak and possibly an injury.
In high school in the winter off-season I did like 10-15x30-second repeats up hills and I didn't peak in an untimely fashion. Granted, they weren't all-out efforts. More like 800-pace efforts. The recovery was to jog back down the hill, and half-way through the workout we had about a 4 minute, standing recovery.
In actuality, the hill was 200m long, and we would consistently run them in 33-34, with the last few being 31-32.
Work on your posture, especially while sitting in class and walking around. You have to learn how to use your bones, tendons, ligaments, and fascia in such a manner that your muscles are doing less work at your current max speeds.
What is your height (to the nearest 1/4") and weight when you wake up in the morning?
If you are extremely light it could be your limited by mass, but more than likely it's your movement patterns that are limiting you. It's unlikely that any workout is going to be the silver bullet you are looking for. You have to learn how to use your body better, essentially, become more athletic by moving as the rest of the universe (atomic or celestial) does.
I'm 6'1" 145, but I doubt that my lack of speed is really die to my posture, more likely it's because our program never does any speed workouts. Thanks everyone for the ideas, I'll try some 200 workouts at 800 pace and some hill sprints/ shorter sprints and see what works
Here's the deal, people who are fast are fast before they do "speed workouts". Running at 800 pace is unlikely to do anything for you, other than make you better at running that pace.
If you are 6'1" 145lbs at 10% BF I would guess you could run about a 25.75 200.
If you are 6'1" 145lbs at 12% BF I would guess you could run about a 26.75 200 or about a 57.40 400.
So, it's probably a matter of posture/movement patterns if your body fat is extremely low, or you have too much body fat at your weight. Everyone likes to think they are 5-7% body fat, but unless you see veins all over your torso that is unlikely.
Clean up your diet, lose 5lbs of fat, voila.
cbenson4 wrote:
dial it up wrote:My workouts do everything that 2x's workouts do except mine won't leave the runner with an early, mistimed peak and possibly an injury.
In high school in the winter off-season I did like 10-15x30-second repeats up hills and I didn't peak in an untimely fashion. Granted, they weren't all-out efforts. More like 800-pace efforts. The recovery was to jog back down the hill, and half-way through the workout we had about a 4 minute, standing recovery.
In actuality, the hill was 200m long, and we would consistently run them in 33-34, with the last few being 31-32.
So you did a completely different workout that was designed to do something completely different from what I am talking about? Cool story bro.
posture is king wrote:
Here's the deal, people who are fast are fast before they do "speed workouts". Running at 800 pace is unlikely to do anything for you, other than make you better at running that pace.
If you are 6'1" 145lbs at 10% BF I would guess you could run about a 25.75 200.
If you are 6'1" 145lbs at 12% BF I would guess you could run about a 26.75 200 or about a 57.40 400.
So, it's probably a matter of posture/movement patterns if your body fat is extremely low, or you have too much body fat at your weight. Everyone likes to think they are 5-7% body fat, but unless you see veins all over your torso that is unlikely.
Clean up your diet, lose 5lbs of fat, voila.
So sitting up straight in class makes you fast? Damn, wish I would have known. Sure I agree, efficiency in his movements are important. As someone who sprinted relatively fast with a pretty weak back squat max I can get on board with that. However, sitting with good posture isn't the way to achieve that.