Hills vs sled vs sprinting in spikes, which one is better?

I do hill sprints in my spikes pulling a sled loaded with the carcasses of runners who died trying to keep up with me.

Want to race?

I figured the letsrun trolls will come out of the cave

Both hill and sled work are poor training, and neither will make you faster. You should completely ignore genetically gifted sprinters who mistakenly use them. Maybe Bolt and Blaje would not be getting slower every year if they had better coaching.

With wrote:

Both hill and sled work are poor training, and neither will make you faster. You should completely ignore genetically gifted sprinters who mistakenly use them. Maybe Bolt and Blaje would not be getting slower every year if they had better coaching.

Interesting. Would you elaborate more on effective means of sprint training? I don't have any expectations of being a truly competitive and fast sprinter, but I would like to improve my speed just for fun.

beginner sprinter wrote:

Which one is better for improving sprint speeding? In order of effectiveness?

I talked to Arthur Lydiard once about his hill training phase and he explained that the hill phase was necessary to a) strengthen your legs, b) improve sprinting technique and form. I noticed a 3rd c) doing hill strides and springing, your muscles get their timing right particularly your calves and achilles. When I did a smaller hill phase one season, I struggled to peak and had problems with my lower limbs.

However, running with a parachute or sled, does strengthen your finer pelvic muscles and teaches you to run hard and fast with your pelvis pushed forward. So I would say that a bit both is helpful, as a general piece of advice if you don't have to train/run in spikes then don't. Get your self a pair lighter racing flats.

beginner sprinter wrote:

With wrote:

Both hill and sled work are poor training, and neither will make you faster. You should completely ignore genetically gifted sprinters who mistakenly use them. Maybe Bolt and Blaje would not be getting slower every year if they had better coaching.

Interesting. Would you elaborate more on effective means of sprint training? I don't have any expectations of being a truly competitive and fast sprinter, but I would like to improve my speed just for fun.

This is a perfect reason why you should take everything on this site with a grain of salt. If Bolt, Blake, Thompson were not gaining from resisted sprints, don't you think they would try something else?

You can see a discussion of the research here:

Hills work best in general prep IF you have a steep and stable hill available, otherwise use a sled or stadium steps. Later in the periodization, sprints and sleds with very light weight (5-10 pounds only) have been shown to improve maxV. I have a set workout during indoor training which is 4X60 flat sprints + 4X40m hills.

Just for the record

Might want to check out the UK sprinter Joel Fearon who ran sub 10 this year, he is a UK Olympic Bobsledder (Break man)

That means he's pushing a 200kg sled 6 months a year!

don't think resisted sprints work??????

beginner sprinter wrote:

Interesting. Would you elaborate more on effective means of sprint training? I don't have any expectations of being a truly competitive and fast sprinter, but I would like to improve my speed just for fun.

Speed is almost completely genetic and any improvement you are likely to experience is going to be small. The only worthwhile means of sprint training are a simple strength training program and sprinting itself. Another important rule of thumb is to always do the exact opposite of whatever "coach d" says, as he is stupid to the degree of being a nearly perfect contrarian indicator.

"Speed is almost completely genetic and any improvement you are likely to experience is going to be small."

This is true enough for those of us whose best distances are the 1500 or greater, but is it true for the people whose best event is the 100?

For example, both myself and my son ran 13.2 for 100 the first day of track training we ever did. I took it to mean that I was a distance runner and was soon doing lots of miles.

My son had a buddy who had improved from 13.2 to 11.8 as a freshman and ended up as 4th man on the 4 x 100. This buddy ran 11.4 as a sophomore the day my son ran 13.2. My son has tried to duplicate his buddies improvement but has never run faster than 12.9 in two full track seasons.

Now 11.4, isn't great, but a 1.8 second improvement isn't bad. I guess it could have more to do with maturity than training but most of it occurred over about 6 weeks. Not exactly lots of time for maturity to change.

So if you started as kind of average running 12.5 and there was training to get to a 1.8 second improvement, 10.7 isn't bad, even in college. Any other thoughts?