2 weekends ago - tweaked a hamstring in the final 10m of a 110m sprint!! Missed a race last week and will probably rest up for another one this weekend. Oh well, things were going well.
This year I've plunged myself into master athletic sprints.
These recent sprints were grass and handicapped, based on my 60m indoor time and age. Good fun sprinting against a sub 11 second 22 year old whippet, I can tell you! The result: a tweaked hamstring and a reminder that sprinting is very hard on the old body.....which is why it is so good for you, haha.
Dunno your age but age is significant looking at sprint training. Since being on the circuit and meeting with some experienced master sprinters there are many views on what is the right approach, if such a thing exists.
For a start, taking age out of the equation, there are many views on sprinting....firstly sprinting for conditioning/sport performance (football, rugby etc), fat loss, general fitness and speed and power development. Or track sprinting. The approaches often get muddled.
So chuck out all over fitness approaches, let's talk sprinting. Proper full on max effort sprinting.
It's bloody hard. Plenty of opportunity for injury. That's about the only thing that anyone can agree on.
Most competitive track sprinters I have met favour a long to short training block....
Competitive experienced master athletes in the 50s and 60s and onwards train this way partly because they've always trained that way and it works. It is, and I'm guessing, maybe easier on the body.
The opposite is short to long, a Charlie Francis model. It works too.
My own feeling is they both work, one may favour the other due to an athletes physical state, genetics and training opportunities.
So long to short, build up lower intensity sprint volume, overtime, gradually introduce greater intensities at less volume to peak and then compete.
In some ways, similar to a snatch test....
Leaving aside training frequency for a minute, and move over to short to long.....build speed and technique first, develop neuro-muscular co-ordination for max speed from that, increase distance and use tempo sprints - not tempo runs - for recovery days. In some ways, to run fast you need to run fast, if you don't have speed what is there to endure?
So they are both good - what is best? No idea. Personally I favour short to long but I'm doing a long to short program written for me for a winter sprint this year, so I may have a better comparison for a personal test but as a philosophy, in general, I dunno. Pick one, do it....did you win? Better times? Guess that'll be the test....(by the way, there's more to each, just an overview). That programme begins in August for a race on new years day. It's twice a week.
And anyway, the most significant thing is recovery. My recent tweak is very minor and picked up in a race, not training, so excusable, in a sense! And, of course, strength. Short alactic sprints - as in a short to long - have to be monitored. Max effort, here. Acceleration? Again, max effort. A 60m block start, max effort requires at least 6 minutes recovery. I go for 10. I do that once a week, well a speed session once a week anyway. Closer to competition I run speed endurance 150s at 90% and only do a couple of full 100s at max two weeks out and back off. So any strength stuff with sprinting has to be on the low cns scale. Perfect for S&S. And sprint drills as warm ups and sometimes as a standalone thing out walking my dog, even walking drills. Drills can be tough on their own mind. My training is usually about an hour.....probably average 200m of speed. Not much, really. But very intense.
So for me.....5 day week, 2 total off days. Made up as 1 speed day, 2/3 swings and get ups, 1 or 2, movement play days.
2 months from competition it is 1 speed, 1 speed endurance (slow increase volume and intensity, as intensity increase knock back volume on speed day), 3 days of lighter swings and get ups and recovery. That's very general. You could argue my sprinting is short to long, my strength is long to short. I've merged both and saw a big improvement last year to fully immerse myself into competitive sprinting.
I know athletes who do strength training, back off and do 3 days a week sprinting. Some do 2 days a week sprinting with 2 massage days and nothing else.
The approach I've adopted is very flexible to fit with chaotic pain in the arse work stuff and family co-ordination. It's hard looking at training just as training, it has to fit with a lifestyle and we are all different.
If you are not a good sprinter in the sense that you don't know what if feels like to run fast then how do you know what it feels like to run fast? Speed should be effortless. Yet to be fast you have to work at your maximum power output. A conundrum to get your head around if ever there was one. The only thing I know for sure to improve at sprinting you need to sprint. Some athletes respond well to increasing strength gains, others don't, they get slower. It's a skill. Sprinting is strength training.
A training programme for a 25 year old elite sprinter is not the programme for a 50 year sprinter of any level. Any tweaks anywhere, do not sprint. You will just run slow and accrue more injuries.
Another add-on to the short to long approach is micro-dosing, essentially gtg sprints.....short, sprints or drills, done often when fresh to build speed volume focusing on technique and the skill of sprinting....I kind of, sort of do that out with my dog but it is sporadic and random. Somedays I just can't be arsed. It has to be factored in with other training, of course. Just watch the intensity monitor....
Hope that may help a little. Hoping for some other opinions too.....
