Best Practice Sprint Training Recommendations

It’s goes without saying, my whole season is shot.

I’ve been training a whole year (Feb 2019 to Feb 2020), with an “annual” plan, basically broken down into “hard” days and “easy/recovery” days.

My plan was quite simple. Break down the physiological elements based on energy demands, which has a direct correlation to distance covered (i.e. Acceleration, Max Velocity, Speed Endurance, Specific Endurance, and Special Endurance)

As a Master’s Athlete, I always allowed 2 or 3 days between the ‘hard days’, and ‘easy days’ were often ‘active recovery’.

SEE: UKA Michael Khmel & Tony Lester’s CLASSIFYING SPRINT TRAINING METHODS (PDF file, 1Mb), Table 1 on Page 24.
And UKA Exercise Classification Hierarchy (v1.0) (125kb)

Once you have list, then it’s like a going into your kitchen cabinet and reviewing your “Training Inventory” for workout ideas. (i.e. the Betty Crocker Recipes)

Of course, it all comes down to the basic questions, repeatedly:

• how far in distance?
• how fast? intensity?
• how much rest between reps? between sets?
• total volume? total number of reps & sets?
• how do I start? blocks, 3 point, 2 point crouch, 2 point falling start?
• what surface do I run them on?
• when do I repeat this kind of workout?

I’ve always used a basic guideline of 500m, 1000m, 2000m, for Acceleration, Speed Endurance, and Tempo workouts. (obviously starting with lower numbers, and moving up during the season. Returning athletes can start higher)

Best Practice Sprint Training Recommendations

The Training and Development of Elite Sprint Performance: an Integration of Scientific and Best Practice Literature (Haugen 2019) is a refreshing article.

It’s good to see these numbers resemble closely to my numbers, in a perfect world.

Unfortunately, this coronavirus lockdown has closed access to many tracks, facilities, gyms, and all forms of therapy treatments that requires the human touch.

It’s clear that you will need to “reboot” your season, and eliminate many of the training elements. For now, until this lockdown is lifted.

For most people, like myself, I am limited to grass surfaces, and indoor bodyweight circuit training. I can risk using long spike needles on a grass surface, as I normally would, but I would not trust doing any max velocity workouts this way.

But let me guess… you’re bored of park runs, pushups & sit-ups, right?

SprintFIT: A Guide To Sprinting For Fitness

A fantastic resource is available free of charge from ALTIS. It covers:

• A comprehensive warm-up
• An acceleration session
• A maximum velocity session
• Cool-down suggestions
• Accompanying demonstration videos

You can download it here: ALTIS SprintFIT: A Guide To Sprinting For Fitness

The Charlie Francis 10 day taper

Haugen’s journal also breaks down the infamous Charlie Francis 10 day taper.

I’ve covered this in detail over 10 years ago, and the best example of this is Derek Hansen’s 10 Day taper with a high performance athlete. You can purchase this video on StrengthPowerSpeed.com.

But at this point, there are no races, and therefore no tapering is required!

Stay tuned.