Track Season 2012: Week 1 of 13

@Scott Coppoc:

Good question. It’s an experiment and something I’ve never specifically taught before. My sprinters tend to have no drive phase (pop up right away) or no transition (horizontal push to vertical in 1-2 steps) so telling them ‘heel recovery should go from low to high during acceleration’ is just words to them. The other day, Tony Veney told me he cues his hurdlers to ‘step over the knee, over the knee, over the calf’ between hurdles. I thought, ‘why not do the same thing with the sprinters?’. So my theory is that if I teach ‘drive phase’ with those cues, they will develop a consistent and efficient pattern quicker than all the other ways I’ve attempted over time because it is more specific, it is simple to understand and try to do.
So, in a nutshell, my goal is to get them ‘up’ (but still pushing) by step 6 because, for my athletes, expecting them to maintain low heel recovery longer than that just isn’t realistic. So ‘step over the ankle’ means step over the support leg ankle with the swing leg heel and then push down and back into the ground for the first two steps. The goal is to initiate that low heel recovery, but prevent them from breaking down mechanically right off the bat. Two steps over the ankle and then 2 steps over the lower part of the calf, which over a set number of steps, transitions them smoothly into the pattern I want to see.
Hope that makes sense.

@Jay C.:

I record times for my top boys group and top girls group which usually consists of the top 5-8 kids, depending on the size of the ‘track’ we are working out on. I tell them to remember the times I yell out as they cross the line, then I yell out their name while they recover and they tell me their time and I record it or have an injured athlete record it. I don’t have the time or resources to get specific enough to record times for boys running 25. in the 200 or girls running 28s. You have to compete your way into getting your practice performances recorded.

@Jon Beyle:

Yes it would be classified as intensive tempo if I did the math, which I did not do. My goal is get my sprinters to develop the capacity to run the types of times in practice that I believe will allow them to run the types of times in meets that are required to score points, individually or as members of the relay, at state level meets. For example, I believe my girls need to be able to run 4:07 in the 4×4 this year, at worst, to be competitive in the post season. If they can’t run 5-6×200 @31-33 then they’re not fast. I’m not going to have them start the season running 36 second 200s because I only have 13 weeks to the State Championship. If they get through 3 of them before crapping the bed, I will supplement their training with circuits and other work capacity training, not have them run a high volume of useless slow intervals. And, to tell the truth, the more I look at 31-33 for my top group (my top 3-4 girls all run around 27.5 for 200m, so it’s a blue collar group) the more I feel that 31-33 is too slow and it should be more like 30-32, especially since most of them played soccer and should be somewhat ‘in shape’.

@Dewayne:

I will do some short (up to 30m) runs with incomplete recovery (<2′) but other than that, no, I do not do standard speed endurance during GPP. Mechanics must be stabilized before introducing heavier doses of speed endurance and that generally does not occur in GPP.

@Nick:

Yeah I knew that’d be in your wheelhouse Nick. I’ll take a look for ‘showcase’ meets. What date range would you be looking at?

@Chris B.:

Wall drill is a wall march working on acceleration mechanics. I’m thinking of filming something since people are asking about it. x3 just means switch legs three times. x7 seconds is the amount of time you can sprint using the ATP-CP energy system.

Scramble Circuit is 10 bodyweight exercises for, say, 20 seconds and then this:

prisoner squat then a somersault then a 10m sprint
pushups then a somersault then a 10m sprint
repeat…

@W.E. Price:

Yes that’s similar to how I do it. Ron is a good friend and a lot of what I do is stolen from him. In fact, he and I ran the sprints section of the clinic I put on this summer and I anticipate he will be back again this year.
The variation to the way we teach the drill now is to keep the heel recovery low as opposed to pulling the active leg up to the support leg knee.
There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way however, it just depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

@margaret o neill:

I don’t have that particular scenario on film, but I plan to record some of this kind of stuff over the next week and post it all on a hidden page for those of you who have Complete Speed Training 2 & Complete Program Design for Sprinters.

That said, how I teach acceleration is covered pretty extensively in Complete Speed Training 2.

@W.E. Price:

I like that way of doing it as well, though for some reason I tend to do it more with my jumpers than sprinters.

Day 1 went OK. We did not do the wall drill because the track was wet and kids started slipping so I saw no reason to take chances.

Only a handful (perhaps 5 of the 65 or so kids who were there) could even comprehend the act of ‘step over the ankle, over the ankle, low calf, low calf, high calf, knee’ so I focused mostly on pushing the hips cue.

Because acceleration was so bad I will add a hurdle push drill we call ‘the bobsled drill’ that I learned from Wheaton College head coach Dave Cusano. Hopefully this helps with punching the knee forward because they mostly devolved into backside mechanics within the first 3-4 steps which made me want to vomit.

Also we did not go in the weight room. I’ll start that on Thursday as that is the next day that is compatible with the weight room. Though I may take a few to teach the clean tomorrow since it will be an easy day.

@W.E. Price:

That’s what I’m banking on!

Excellent to hear. What are the names of the coach and athlete? I will keep an eye out. But man, I better up my game this year because people are going to be beating me with ‘my’ own stuff! I love it!

Great question. And, absolutely. I was just talking about that concept last night. That we have to coach our circumstances even if it takes us off our so called beaten path. My first meso of the season has a lactic tolerance theme, so I was going to do that anyways. Also, I don’t have a track (once it gets cold) only a 30m hallway. So I am very alactic heavy as it is because I have no other options.

I’m better at teaching acceleration than VMax because that’s all we can do for most of the season. I don’t do much extensive tempo because I don’t have the space so we do a ton of circuits. etc. etc.

@Greg:

I’m going to save you a lot of time and effort right now. Ignore volume. Don’t make any attempt to try and achieve a particular amount of volume, whether with speed work or with tempo. Let his/her capacity to run the workout with the prescribed time and rest dictate the volume. If he/she craps the bed after 4×200 R=4′ then that’s his/her volume. If another kid doesn’t crap the bed until 6×200, that’s their volume. If their technique breaks down after 5x30m, that’s the volume. Don’t give extra rest or whatever to try and ‘reach’ for certain volume. So, that said, on a theoretical level, your questions are kind of like asking what happened before the big bang. There is no answer to that question because the question itself is flawed. I say all this in the most respectful of ways. I used to ask myself the same questions, but now I know that the answer finds you, you don’t need to look for the answer. Hope that helps, but if not, ask more questions.

@Mario Gomez:

Just basic exercises from CST2 that you can do in one spot because I have no room when we’re inside. Skipping progressions are the same as CST2. Progressions might be a poor choice of words as it was more a cue for me than something literal on the track. That’s a perfectly valid way of addressing strength needs, particularly if you think the extended wu is fatiguing the kids and taking away from the workout. Glad you are enjoying the jumps stuff. Thank you for your support.

@jack boylan:

I can’t answer that question without knowing the *intent* of the workout.

@jack boylan:

Intensive tempo runs are runs of 80-89% intensity. Extensive tempo runs are runs of 70-79% intensity.

For more information on this type of topic, what workouts to do and when and at what time of season and how fast, I highly recommend Complete Program Design for Sprinters – http://www.completeprogramdesignforsprinters.com