January 21st, 2010
Secrets to Developing Short Sprinters (video)
Earlier this month, I spoke at the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches’ annual track and field seminar.
I presented on both 400m training and developing short (55-200m) sprinters. I only got through about 2/3 of my material, so I’ve re-recorded the information and posted that 82 minute video here:
http://www.athletesacceleration.com/stslides
If you missed my presentation on 400m training, you can catch that here:
http://www.athletesacceleration.com/lgslides
If you have questions about either, post them below. Emails will not get answered.
Latif Thomas
Workout Planning for Sprinters
January 21st, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Dear Mr. Thomas,
Thank you for the link and video seminar. I have watched the DVD’s and read the manual purchased with your program. I have started to implement your program, etc. VERY good stuff!
I have availability of high speed treadmill and wanted to know your thoughts on how many times per week and ideas of sample workout that would be beneficial to my cause. I have looked at a Frappier sample (set rep scheme) and it just seems like over training to me in many ways.
Thank you so much again for the links and additional comments. It really helped me “round out” my understanding of your methodology behind the program.
One other question: Do you put on any track camps, etc. that we might be able to attend?
Thank you!
David J. Draminski
Wethersfield H.S.
Kewanee, IL
>>> David
Thank you for the kind words. I hope what I’m about to say does not sour your opinion.
I don’t believe in speed treadmills, nor do I use them, recommend or endorse them. Why?
1. The treadmill is doing all the work. All you’re really doing is balancing yourself above the surface. The key to speed is force application and that is not taking place on a treadmill.
2. Overspeed training just causes athletes to allow footstrike to take place in front of the hips – a cardinal sin. I would only do overspeed in an advanced athlete who needed to break through a training plateau.
I do not put on any track camps anymore because I simply don’t have the time. Buf if I do or if I speak at one, I will be sure to announce it.
Latif
January 21st, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Regarding your 82-minute video, I get no video, only audio.
I have not heard of that problem elsewhere. Try updating your flash player.
LT
January 21st, 2010 at 10:29 pm
Latif,
My boys are 5 and 7 and our primary sport is wrestling. They both are in their 3rd and 2nd years into that sport and we wrestle 7 months out of the year. A small part of their regimen is jogging but my 7 year old is a big dude for his age at 4′ 6″ and 80 pounds. His brain has not caught up with that body and feet. He looks slow when he runs in football, (they both also play football and baseball) but his times are actually pretty decent comapred to the other littler dudes who are actually normal sized for that age range.It also looks painful in the figurative sense when he “sprints.” He is very long betwen the ankle and knee. It just looks very strained and very inefficient…he is wasting a ton of energy and motion but i don’t know how to explain it to him and I don’t know what I’m doing with the running and speed and footwork. What do you recommend for overall endurance and anaerobic speed for off-the-line speed and breakaway speed?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Sincerely,
Scott Wells scott-wells@comcast.net
>>> At that age, I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s too young to make any specific forecast about future athletic performance. Keep it fun and wait until 8 or 9 before really asking kids to have good technique. Right now just let them play.
LT
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:06 am
Latif, excellent videos with much information, thank you for what you do for the sport; regarding the short sprinters video, if you have an athlete who runs an excellent 200 and would like him/her to run on the 4×4 or an occasional open 400, what changes would you make to the weekly workouts for this individual? Perhaps substituting a SE 2 workout (250-350m)on Tuesday?
>>> That sounds like a reasonable substitution. Generally speaking I’d occasionally (weekly or biweekly) replace the SE or VMax workout with an SE I or SE II workout. Sounds like you’re on the right track.
LT
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:07 am
Hi Latif, Good stuff I am training my daughter using your 12 week preseason 400m workout and I think it will give her the head start because in the northwest unless your participate in the indoor meets offered at U.W. you put yourself at a disadvantage
when the outdoor starts in March. I especially like the attitude of the coach really is the key! Bringing some excitement to the practice is essential. Thanks, keep up the good work. Janus
January 26th, 2010 at 1:52 am
Hi Latif
My questions are all about weight training.
What’s the main reason you say don’t do single joint movement like leg extension or hamstring curl & …? Why only squats, deadlifts and Olympic lifts!?
What about One-Legged Cable Kickback, all cable work for leg and Step Up and exercises like them?
I’m 100 & 200m sprinter and my program includes: 1 day chest,1 day shoulder and 2days leg.
Tanx for reply
Good luck man
>>> I answered your single joint movement question in your post above or below this one. Leg extensions and hamstring curls have no specific value to running fast. Tell me where in sprinting you go through the range of motion in a leg extension or hamstring curl. I’ll answer that for you, you don’t. 1 leg cable kickback – don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t sound like a single joint movement. Step up is not a single joint movement. As a sprinter, why would you commit an entire day to chest and another entire day to shoulders? That’s not efficient. You, my friend, are on an old school 1970s style bodybuilding breakdown and, with all due respect, based on the little info you’ve provided, you appear to be on an inefficient and outdated system of developing strength. Sorry.
LT
January 26th, 2010 at 2:42 am
Myth: “Single-joint movements are useless for athletes.”
If I asked you this — “Can weakness in a single muscle decrease performance?” — you’d say “yes.” We all know this. And yet, the idea of using single-joint movements to strengthen specific muscles is widely disparaged.
That said, it’s not always obvious where the weakness is, or the best way to fix it once we find it. That’s why physical therapists, chiropractors, strength coaches, and other rehab specialists have jobs.
My point is that we have hundreds of exercises to select from when we design training programs. We shouldn’t eliminate an entire category of exercises — you never know when they’ll come in handy
>>> I’m going to have to call you out on this one. As I have said on countless, countless occasions – the only real value of a single joint movement is for bodybuilding or rehab. With a finite amount of time to address strength training, no single joint movements would make my list of exercises that are either specific enough or give enough bang for your buck to be worth adding to the program.
I appreciate your point, but nothing you said validates single joint movements as effective exercises in the normal sports training/athletic development strength training setting where the goal is to develop specific strength and power.
Outside of the rehab or bodybuilding setting, tell me a single joint movement you would advocate as part of a standard strength training program. While we’re on the topic, tell me a movement in sports that only involvues a single joint.
January 26th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Hey Latif, quick question about this video i’ve just watched. When your talking about how to work out what speed 75% is, you say that you should multiply a persons pb for that distance by 100 then divide. Should you not be multiplying that persons target pb for that distance by 100,then dividing. If you have athletes running at 75% pace of their current pb how are they going to get faster?? Ive heard you speak about this before in a video, and in that video you said use target pb’s.
Maybe I heard wrong in that clip, if i have please let me know.
>>> Good question. And I suppose you could argue for that. I don’t remember, off hand, if I contradicted myself in one video versus another. If so, it was a speaking error. I do know that I always base these recovery day times on current best. Reason being that I’m not trying to make speed/Personal Best based improvements in my tempo runs. I want it to be recovery work from their speed work. So if a kid runs 11.3 in the 100m, but I base the tempo work off of a goal time of 10.8, now they’re running faster in that tempo work than their current speed says they should go. Now what was an aerobic workout (extensive tempo) has become a mixed aerobic/anaerobic workout (intensive tempo) and that’s not what I want. So I base tempo work on their current best times because we’re doing more than enough quality work on our ‘workout’ days to generate faster top speeds and new personal bests. Hope that makes sense.
LT
January 27th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Latif, I coach 7th and 8th grade track athletes, most of them have never really trained or been exposed to track and field. I would almost think that training these kids on the 55-200m model would be better than the 400m, even if some of them might be running the 400m in meets. My thinking is that in the short to long program, we need to develop speed first, if most of these kids have never really worked on speed, then that is what needs to be developed first. However, if I find a kid that seems to be suited for the 400m I could work some 400m work in on them. I guess what I am asking is, is it better to work new track kids at the 55-200m model than it is the 400m?
>>> Most great 400m runners at the elite level are former 100/200 runners. I develop my middle schoolers the same way you speak of – short to long and focusing on developing flat out speed. Your plan is exactly how I would do it.
LT
February 1st, 2010 at 8:57 am
Latif by chance are you still in good shape? I saw Willie Gault run in an indoor meet this past weekend and he looked like he was 25 years old. Great shape for a 49 year old. I hope you you are still disciplined regarding keeping yourself and don’t look like Charles Barkley in a speedsuit.
>>> I’m not in college shape, but I weigh the same, if not slightly less. Of course, if Willie Gault lived in the Northeast, I doubt he’d look or run like a 25 year old. I would certainly still compete if it wasn’t so cold out here. I’m entertaining the idea of running this summer because I think I can still throw down, especially at the Masters level.
LT
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I am curious why are you doing two high days back to back on Mon and Tue? Would it be more efficient to perform Acc on Mon, SE on Wed, and MaxV on Friday so the high intensity elements can be spread move evenly throughout the week.
>>>Yes, if I had no meets.
LT
February 4th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Latif you say you don’t like single joint movements for athletes. What exercises do you recommend instead?
>>>This is covered, in detail, in the video.
LT
February 25th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Latif,
Great stuff, but what can you do if you have to be outside and for several weeks the weather does not get above 32 degrees? You really can’t run fast in that stuff. Thanks
>> No you can’t. So you either have to run inside or run a higher volume, lower intensity program. It sucks, but those are your options. This is the reason why people in warm weather climates run so much faster – they don’t have this problem. A kid running a 21.50 200m in Texas would not be running a 21.50 if they lived in Vermont.
LT
March 4th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Coach- If you were my coach I would be running in the low 21’s right now, wow your program is amazing. Basically, my head coach is a distance freak and got our sprinter coach to leave because he was never allowed to assemble his own relays. We have 3 amazing 800 runners 2 sub 1:55 and one around 1:58. Understandably, he tried to make me the 4th leg on this my senior year, this year. I would have none of it and basically half assed the workouts to make me look slow and then I realized I was only wasting my valuable time. Coming off football I ran a 6.77 with no speed work and then did not realize I would have 0 speed work the rest of this season and still split 22.89 on our indoor national qualifying SMR. I am trying to figure out what to do because I am the fastest on the team 55/100/200 but I am working solely with the middle distance and distance guys. Should I come in early before school and follow your speed program and then do about half the workout he gives me or what? I am always lifting heavy since I have a football background and have that “skating” stride you talk about. I’m really trying to open my hips but sorry for the extremely long passage but your info is great.
>>>Owen, that’s a tough call. In theory, coming in early and getting a partial speed workout or a lift in would a good compromise. My concern is simply overtraining. If you’re fatigued after your speed work, even half a workout, and then you have to go do a high volume of low intensity training, I’m concerned you’ll end up burning out and getting an overuse injury like a hamstring, adductor or hip flexor strain.
If you only do half of your coach’s workout, that could cause problems because your coach does not appear willing to update his philosophy and will get upset if he sees you half assing his workouts and gets wind of you training on your own in the AM.
I don’t like to endorse going around your coach’s training, but I get this question all the time and there is no good answer because you can’t get fast by running slow. So, while my answer is unsettling to a degree, I would say that if you do want to get faster, you will have to get some speed work in a couple days per week on your own in the AM.
Just make sure you are not doing AM speed work the day after a lactic acid workout with the distance/mid distance group because that will compromise the quality of your speed work.
If you’re ’skating’, much of the problem is lack of hip mobility. I would focus on doing more hurdle mobility drills and a longer warm down and stretch. A foam roller wouldn’t hurt either.
LT
March 16th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Thank you! We ended up getting 3rd in the SMR at National Scholastic Indoor Championships so I can say I’m an all american. We lost the national championship by .49 seconds. I was the leadoff leg and split a 23.19..This is frustrating because this is actually the exact same time I split the first week of the season. If I had found this website earlier I would’ve easily gotten that down to 22.5 but oh well I can only get better from here. Thank you again. I read this website religiously now.
If any of your athletes have inflexibilities or posture problems, like me with my lordosis due to my tight hammy’s and week glutes, then this site can be another reference for you if you do not already know all of this.
http://exrx.net/Kinesiology/Inflexibilities.html
http://exrx.net/Kinesiology/Posture.html
http://exrx.net/Kinesiology/Weaknesses.html
Thanks again.
>>> Congratulations! All American is All American, now just focus on improving your skill as a sprinter. Thanks for the links.
LT