3 Rules for Writing Running WorkoutsAll right, my friends, let's get going. Rule number one: take the long view. You got to consider the time of year when you're writing your workouts, right? Training phases do exist for a reason. General preparation, the first part of your training phrase, that's your training-to-train phase. You're going to be higher in volume and lower in intensity. And if you're going to have less speed work during a particular time of season, this is the time of year to do it. You can't be going crazy and doing too much fast stuff for this sort of competitive phase type training at the beginning of the season. Kids are going to burn out and then, like I said at the beginning, you might as well just shoot them because you're going to have soft-tissue injuries guaranteed. General prep. Train to train.
But you've got to consider the time of year. It would be great if we could just do speed work all day, quality work, full restful recovery, fun kind of stuff. You can't do it. It's too much. You got to take the long view. And I'll show you an example in just a couple minutes and see what I mean of the type of situation that it's going to destroy athletes because you're going too fast too soon. It hurts my feelings. All right, out of time. Number two: you got to know your energy systems, my friends. You got to know what a particular workout is going to do to the body because, if you don't, you're going to destroy your athletes. So let's go with the basics, quality work. What I call quality work is 90 to 100 percent intensity runs that are less than ten seconds. Is ten seconds a magic number? No, not really. But we're not going to get in here into the science of it all here. But generally speaking, that's quality work. That's going to be your anaerobic alactic, adenosine triphosphate, creatine phosphate system work. Your speed work. Plyos. Hopping, bouncing, jumping exercises. Same energy system as your quality work. Heavy weight training. So about 85 to 100 percent of your one-rep max, generally the one to six rep range. All of this stuff that you see on the screen here all has to be done in the same day. If you do all this on Monday, you cannot do any of this on Tuesday. You're going to destroy people. Keep your energy system stuff separated. Anaerobic alactic or whatever on Monday. Come back Tuesday, you can do your recovery work, tempo work. You cannot do these back to back to back to back unless your primary goal in life is to see what it looks like when an athlete tears a hamstring and flops around the track. I've been there. It's not fun. And it's not cool. And I don't want to have people doing that just because coaches don't know what's going on. And, again, I will show you an example of how not to do it and now to do it as well. Again, if you're combining this stuff, doing Monday speed work, Tuesday lifting and plyos, Wednesday speed work, Thursday plyos and lifting, Friday speed work, not going to get good results for your sprinters after about six weeks. I'm making that number up. You can't super compensate – I spelled that wrong; it's terrible – or recover without appropriate rest. Again, Monday fast, Tuesday tempo, Wednesday fast, Tuesday [sic] tempo.
Also speed work is fundamental. Everything else supplements it, right? So you do your speed work first. Speed work first. That's the most important, most technical demand. Then you can do your plyos because it's going to be more dangerous. You don't want to be exhausted at the end of speed work and weight room and then do plyos. That's the order you should do it in. It's common sense, guys. You're not going to do heavy bounding, then lift, and then 25 minutes later come out and do speed work. You're not going to be able to do anything. Got to understand your energy systems. So based on the thing that we've talked about so far, let's say that theoretically I were to show you a sample microcycle of, let's say, a college program. Now let's look at Sunday: jump rope, stair hops, some low-level plyos, low-level plyos, then some speed work at the end. Well, if this is the order you're doing it in, not good. Why? I'm not going to tell you. Just think about what I said previously. Then we come back the very next day: three fly thirties. Okay, this is a workout from August. Why you doing fly thirties in August? Then you do three fly sixties with five minutes rest? That's not enough rest. Then after that you're going to be doing these, 60, 80, a ladder, at intensive tempo pace giving them a booty-lock workout, crapping them out. So then after you've done speed work and plyos, then the same energy system the next day plus some booty-lock workout. Then you're going to come back the next day and you do bounding strides. Then single-leg work. Then after we do that, we're going to do some tempo work. So, yeah, you got tempo work in but you still did this craziness. It's too much in a row. But let's come back in on the fourth day in a row, say, and do some stair hops, some more jump ropes, and then four times 90 meter in and out. This was explained to me by the athlete as basically sprint, float, sprints. Thirty-meter sprint, thirty-meter float, thirty-meter sprint, four of them, four days in a row, high-intensity work. Let's come back Thursday. Sprints up hill, plyos, plyos. Now that's another day in a row. Then the next day 35-minute run, technique drills, walking, I don't get it. That's fine. Saturday. So we got a bunch of days in a row of high-intensity, same-energy-system work. What's that going to do for you? I don't know, other than destroy it. So like I said at the beginning, next time just shoot them. Just shoot them in the ass. That would be better than this. At least you get it over with. Finally, number three: skill development dictates workout parameters. This is the first part of the paradigm shift in the way you need to develop your sprinters. The first part of two parts in the paradigm shift – and, again, I cover this in much greater, greater and specific detail in my upcoming masters class to get you guys ready for the upcoming winter season. This is just like one slide basically of that class. But what you think you want to know is this, right? Here's your standard weekly breakdown for a sprinter sort of irrespective of event, irrespective of training phases, etc., right? So Monday, acceleration day, plyos, lift, right, like we talked about. Tuesday you're doing your tempo work, your recovery work. Wednesday you're going to come back, do some sort of specific endurance work. So say we're training, say, a 300-meter runner or a 400-meter runner type, a more lactic-type workout or event, your speed endurance or your special one, special two work, and then come back lifting again. And then Thursday your intensive tempo, middle-intensity work. Pre-meet on Saturday. What you think you need to know, what you think you want me to tell you is, well, what exactly do I do on Monday, do I do 10 times 30 or do I do 6 times 40 and then what order do I do it and how much rest. It doesn't matter. Not important. That's the shift you need to make, irrelevant. Irrelevant. That's right, I said irrelevant. Plyos, oh, it doesn't matter. Then I come back extensive tempo on Tuesday. Oh, how many repeat 200s do I do at 70 percent with two minutes rest? Do I do 12 times 200? Do I do two sets of six times 200? Do I do 12 times 100? It doesn't matter. Irrelevant. Wednesday, Thursday, doesn't matter, right? Because here's the difference: skill development dictates the workout parameters. If you focus on teaching skills, the workouts will dictate themselves and you can plug in workouts. You can do 12 times 200 for your 400-meter runners for a workout. That's great. You can do 12 times 200 with two minutes rest at 70 percent and get all your athletes to run it. And I'll do 6 times 200. Your athletes might be better at running repeat 200s, but my athlete's still going to be beat yours in the 400. Why is that? Because my athletes are going to hit specific times within two-tenths of a second. They're going to be running on the balls of their feet. They're not going to be bending over. They're going to be focused on particular goals within that particular workout. Right? I'm teaching them skills; you're just getting them in shape. Well, you can get them in shape to run 12 times 200, but endurance to me, tempo work, is one of five biomotor skills I'm developing and with specific subsets of skills in between there. So you can spend all your time running these workouts. I'm going to be a little bit of a lot of different things that are going to develop a better overall athlete. So, therefore, in terms of inherent ability, a six on my team is going to be eights on other teams because my sixes are skilled, efficient sixes who have all five biomotor skills developed. And the other teams can do a whole lot of tempo work or endurance runs or whatever, but they're not doing the same stuff in the weight room, they're not doing general strength work, they're not as much on the core, their technique is terrible, they got back-side mechanics. I teach skills and let the skills I want to teach dictate what I do for a workout. I don't worry about the dynamics of the workouts because that's a backwards way of thinking it. So keep that in mind, you're going to be in good shape. Focus more on the skills, less on the specifics. So now what do you do exactly? Well, to break this down, if you want more information on the specifics of how to right workouts, get Complete Program Design for Sprinters. Go to this website. If you want more information on which drills and exercises to use that teach the specific skills you want to teach, Complete Speed Training II. If you've already got both locked down, too advanced, this is just baby dollish to you, well, keep an eye out for my masters class coming in October. It's going to break it all down for you.
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