Speed training: In high school I ran a personal best 15.7 in the 110 hurdles, which didn’t even make my conference finals. I ran a 41.2 in the 300 hurdles, but I never quite figured out the plan for that race and probably didn’t train well enough to be as fast as I should have been. so I once ran the open 200 because I had a hip flexor problem and didn’t want to do the hurdles and I ran the 24 on the flat. but I split 52 in the 4×400. he ran a 4.7 in the 40 on a stopwatch held by a notoriously fast-fingered coach. I was a solid athlete, but I wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I was much faster then than I am now.
Once I got my hands on the Freelap timing system, it was game on. I dug out my old high school spikes and hit the track to see what I was made of. Every day since then has been a learning experience, and today I’m here to share nine lessons I’ve learned with you all.
Housesprotection | homesfact | houserenovant | lifemediaid | kinglyhealth | purehealthkng | healthzenpro | activevitalz | vactiontrips | travellingfreaks
-
Proper warm-up is more important than ever
In high school, I warmed up like I’d just made a fashionable appearance at a backyard barbecue: after hanging out in the practice room, hit the track, go through the motions, and jump into practice. On meet days, I would sleep in my lawn chair for about 15 minutes before the event, do a few obstacle exercises, then line up and go. I’ve won or been in contention for the win in a lot of the races I’ve run, so I’ve never bothered to change. Looking back, I probably didn’t really enjoy speed training.
Today, I can’t imagine trying to sprint without preparing my body. I perform an extensive list of high-intensity sprint workouts with maximum intent, a much more disciplined and focused approach than I ever used in my younger years. However, I find that it takes my body an insane amount of time to prepare for a sprint. For example, even after a set of focused ignitions and some accelerations or surges, my first timed sprint is almost always a waste. Sometimes my second one too. I regularly run my fastest time of the day on the third or fourth try.
A few weeks ago, I ran my slowest times in five reps from the 10-yard fly, only to turn around and PR twice in a row on the 20-yard fly. There could be many reasons, but one thing is certain: After 16 years off, it takes a long time for this body to wake up to explosive movements.
-
Regeneration between speed training sessions does not take place quickly
I was sore for three days after my first top speed sprint workout. This despite the fact that I was very careful (or so I thought) not to do too much. I did a full menu of sprint drills and clocked three attempts at 40 yards on the track with a best time of 5.14 seconds. It’s not a big volume, but my body wasn’t used to such demanding activities and it took me a long time to recover.
Now that I’ve been at it for about six weeks, I’m not physically sore the next day, but it still takes at least three days for my body to handle another top speed workout again. The timing is the proof: If I try to sprint two days in a row, or even after a single day off, there’s no way I can go fast again. In fact, if I don’t wait long enough, I’ll be quite a bit slower. That’s the thing about sprinting: 120 yards of total volume doesn’t seem like it should take a person that much, but if you’re really sprinting with maximum intent, it is.
From a coaching perspective, this is really important to keep in mind. High school kids are made of rubber. They bounce back faster than I do and may not feel tired or sore day after day of high demand CNS sprints. But performance will definitely suffer. If you don’t measure and track data, how can you know what athletes’ bodies can really handle? Great competitors will almost always tell their coaches that they’re ready to rock, no matter how their bodies feel. As coaches, we need to know what our speed trainingdemands from kids and make sure we don’t overload them with so much sprint work and so little recovery that their bodies start to break down.
-
Time your rest as well
Likewise, if I want my reps to be fast, I need to rest longer than I think. A classic rule of thumb for sprint coaches is that athletes should take about one minute of rest for every 10 meters they sprint. Forty meters of sprint, four minutes of rest. That’s all well and good, but I’m here to tell you two things: At 34, I need more than the prescribed amount of rest if I want to go fast on my next rep; and if you don’t time your rest, you will almost certainly make a mistake.
Let’s say you decide you need five minutes of rest between reps. Five minutes is a long time to stand. And if you’re like me and were raised to think that standing too long somehow reduces the effectiveness of exercise, you’ll find yourself going a little crazy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought “that feels like five minutes” only to check the stopwatch and find it was only two and a ha
