Lets get faster! PART 3

But does it work!

Lets look at a common training scenario. The session is 8 x 150m. If you were asked to attempts this, what would your approach be?

Well I have done this work out many a time! But I was a 400m hurdler. I used to ensure that I was capable of doing all eight repetitions.So I would pace myself and try to run all eight as fast as possible. On the face of it a good approach? Well, the problem though is that you will never really hit maximum quality with any of these runs.This will not make you faster.

I note in my travels that this sort of work was regularly done with sprints squads. Now here we have an example of how we worked during my time with The Brisbane Sprint Stable.

We had several top young and junior sprinters and hurdlers all making state/national finals and gaining medals and records in the process.

Denis Otim and Reggie Botchwey were two young sprinters in our stable. They, like all of the stable trained two sessions per week. This meant that with colds, flu, holidays, they averaged just over one session per week.

Reggie and Dennis rarely ran distances over 60m in training. Mostly we ran 2 or 3 60m runs from blocks.Indeed it took Reggie until year three to manage a 3rd 60m!

Reggie and Denis both won regional/national medals. I remember Reggie totally demolishing a regional 200m field. They are on youtube should you wish to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbJ3qaBCuxg

So it works, yet people would always say that they need to do longer distance and more of them. People seem to love this safe haven of working “Hard”, but its working effectively and sustainably which counts.

Next time what does great running sound and feel like?

Lets get faster! PART 4

Movement-how it sounds, looks and feels.

The other fall out from the 150m session outlined in part 3 is that high speed movement skills are compromised as this bears little resemblance to sprinting-working hard bears little resemblance to sprinting! Moving well, quickly and with sound technique should be the aim, rather than “Fitness”.I will address fitness later.

With players from other codes the same approach works well with players from Rugby, Football and Hockey etc. If you move better, you will use less energy and become more effective for the duration of a match.

So, how should a good runner sound? You should only hear the sound of the power through the track, running over the track and not into it, not the sound of heavy feet associated with “fitness” and working “hard”.It should be fast and rhythmic, no straining no head movement. Watch the video of a cheetah and note the head.Remember the cheetah has never done high knee drills!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgQ0cyNJZV4