Complete Speed Training

Speed Training

Today we're gonna talk about how to progress your speed training workouts and workout planning.
The big question that I constantly get from people and this is recordless of sport. Don't think this is because I'm looking at what looks to be trackish type workouts for track athletes. If you're a soccer coach or a field hockey coach, a football coach or whatever, if you're running workouts where you're not asking athletes to hit a particular time or you're not paying attention to times, how do you have any clue as to what energy system you're working, whether athletes are getting good enough workout just looking at how tired they are at the end of the workout. Is a real half ass way of trying to get people in shape. If you're not using real times and numbers to quantify what you're doing and why you're doing it and how many you're doing with how much rest, then that's a lazy way of coaching.

You're athletes are either gonna under train, over train but certainly not maximize their potential. So don't just look at this as oh, well, I don't coach track athletes so I don't have to run repeats on a track. Okay. You cannot do that but you're not gonna get as good results as people that actually use real times and numbers. But the big question you always get is how many should I do? What total number of reps? I coach eleven year olds. My eleven year old son? How many should I do? I'm a master athlete. How many 600s should I do? The answer is I don't know. The answer is you do as much as you can do. The whole purpose of getting in shape is based on the principle of progressive overload meaning you have to challenge the body systems in order to get better results.

If you do 200s and the goal time is thirty as we're looking at here and you stop at eight even though you're clicking them off like nothing, well, you're not gonna get in better shape because you're not forcing your body to adapt to anything. Whether your a masters athlete, whether you coach nine year olds or you have high school kids, the answer to the puzzle of how many should you do is based on really looking at athletes times and figuring it out from there so let's take a look at what I mean. Today's work out our goal is repeat 200s at 75 intensity with two minutes rest. That's not a ton of rest so we know that volume is probably gonna air on the shorter side than the longer time. But one through fifteen I say for affect is to help you understand that when you write workouts there's no magic number.

For me and my program, my athletes, I'm dropping kids off after a course of a workout. Maybe I got freshman girls who can only do four or five in the time range that I want before they're done. But I got a stud senior who is a year round track kid and they can do twelve. Well, when a freshman can't hit their times anymore, they're done. Workout's over. But I write down the times for my athletes from my state champions down to my first year slowest scrub kids because when they start getting better I need to know what they used to do so I can understand how many they're supposed to do. There's two things we're looking at here with these times and repeat 200 workout. Are they hitting their times? How consistently are they hitting their times? Let's take a look and scroll down here just a little bit. Let's say that our first five intervals. Here are our times for our athlete. Again, the goal time is the target time is 30 seconds so the first one they come through at 30.8. All right. I always say first one's not a big deal because you're just trying to get a feel for your rhythm.

Second one they come back and it's 30.3. Better. Getting right down. I want my athletes to be within two to three tenths maximum from their target time every rep. They come back 29.7. Not bad. I'm gonna say come on let's try and get on our times. You're a little bit too fast. There's a big difference between 29.7 and 30.3. That's over half a second. I want better than that. So I'm gonna start to get on this.

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If this is a very in experienced athlete, I'm not gonna pay attention. But if I got an athlete that's trying to win races or win a scholarship or be a champion of some short, I'm gonna be very anal about hitting these times. If your athletes can't hit their times, then they're going to have a problem later on in the season doing the faster more specific work. Come back third rep 29.7. Not bad. Forth rep 29.2. Too fast I'm gonna say. Guys too fast. Slow it down. Hit your time. Being too fast is not good enough. They go too fast we're working at 75 percent intensity here today. That's extensive tempo. That means aerobic work. I don't want to turn this into a lactic acid workout. If it starts to become, if they start to run too fast particularly with this short amount of rest, it's gonna turn this into a lactic acid workout and I don't want that. Intensive tempo is extensive so we're working at that. Come back on the fifth one they run 30.1. That's pretty good. They're not doing too bad right now. There's no reason with a target time of 30 second that they can't keep running so if you're a masters athlete and this is a 32 one on your fifth one, your workout's over. You've fallen off your time and if you can't hit your time without having to feel like you're all out sprinting, you've reaching the point of diminishing returns and it's time to end the workout for your athlete. Keep looking.

Let's say we get this next batch we're gonna look at six through nine here. Number six I hit 30 flat. Perfect. Number seven I hit 30.9. Now, that's a big drop off. This is a red flag to me. This time right here is a red flag because they've been pretty consistent from the second rep all the way through then all of a sudden they drop off almost by a full second. To me I'm saying all right, if it's an experienced athlete I'm gonna say okay. Let me let him run another one and see what happens. They come back and they run 31.1. Nine times out of ten they're done because the go time is 30.0. They've been running pretty consistent with these times for the first sex. Then number seven they drop off.

I'm gonna say all right. Let me watch this next one and see what happens. Then number eight they run a 31.1. Well, to me that workout is over. Maybe some kid might argue and complain how they made a mistake or they got boxed in their group or whatever so I'm gonna let him run number nine. They could come back and run a 30.9. Workout's definitely over. For the most part seven and eight here is what I'm most concerned with. That's what I'm most concerned with because once they hit this time, they're falling off. Once they come back again, two bad ones in a row, that's a problem. Therefore I know that they're not getting anything auto of the workout anymore. We've reached the point of diminishing returns.

Nothing to be gained anymore. Stop the workout.

If you're a coach and you're not writing these times down, you're not thinking about these things and asking kids to hit specific times, then how can you possibly do a good job of preparing for their next workout. I know that eight times 200 for this kid is where their max is so the next time they do this workout, I'm gonna be paying attention. I'm gonna say okay, I'm gonna note fell off at eight or something along those lines. If you're not doing this kind of thing and you're not demanding that kids hit their times, you're not writing times down so you understand how kids are getting in shape, who gets in shape faster or not, then you're not gonna get good results and it's gonna be hard for you to write good workouts for kids peak at the right time because there's no rhyme or reason to what you're doing. You're making it up. You're not gonna remember a week or two from now how many 200s they got or at what number they fell off. You're not able to quantify that. For this athlete, not only ‑‑ they ran pretty well so I'm not too concerned about their times being all over the place. They're fairly consistent all though I'd like to see better. This is where we determine where the workout falls off when you start to see times fall off or they have to work ‑‑ where kids are laboring to hit their times. That's another thing too.

If you watch a kid and they're lab boring to hit their times, then you can ‑‑ they're gonna get to the point where two in a row are gonna be off and they're gonna fall off. That's what you need to be looking for. Now, this principle doesn't just apply to these longer repeats. It's the same way I look at with my speed workouts. Let's do the exact same thing with the speed workout. Let's say today's workout is an acceleration workout so again it applies to every sport that you coach on planet earth because everyone needs to do acceleration work. If you're doing a field or track. One to fifteen times 30‑meters. I don't know how many you gonna be able to get through before you break down.

That's why you got to write all this stuff down. Three minute rests are just standard. Let's say for the sake of simple numbers a Target time is four minutes. The first time they run 4.2. That's fine. 4.1. Four flat. 4.1. We're pretty consistent here. That's what I'm looking for. 3.9. 4.2. When you see these consistent times around their target time a at the point or two off, then you know there's consistency of execution. They're running the same exact way every single time. That gives you a foundation to build off of so you can start to do the more technical elements of their training. Particularly when we're talking about sprinters or if you're getting a football player ready for a 40 or a baseball player ready to run a 60 or whatever. These are what you're looking for. This consistency. Get down to the next one so 3.9. 4.2. Four flat. Very consistent. But then all of a sudden on the eighth one they run a 4.4. To me that's a little bit of a red flag. I'm gonna say all right maybe they're starting to fall off now but their last one was a four flat. They've been pretty consistent. 4.4 might be an anomaly. Maybe they got a bad start.

Let's say they come back and they're back at 4.0. Well, if they're back at four .0, I'm gonna let them keep going. They're back at four .5. I'm gonna let them keep going because they're not falling off. They're not breaking down. But if they come back and run a 4.4 again, what do you think I'm gonna say? Workout's over. They've reached the point of diminishing returns.

Speed work needs to be down without fatigue. If they're clearly getting fatigued because they're falling off by 4/10 of a second twice in a row, then I need to shut the workout down. There's nothing more to be gained. They've reached the point of diminishing returns. Again, it's critical that we take a look at our athletes and make sure they're running consistent times. Again even without sprint work because inconsistency says doing something different every time. There's no ‑‑ they have not acquired the skill of sprinting. The skill of running fast. When you see wildly inconsistent times, that says you have an in experiences runner or a lazy runner or a sloppy runner who's not focusing on the mechanics and the speed drills and is the speed drills and the acceleration work that you've been working on in practice.
If you're not taking a look at this and writing it down and figuring out over the course of time, you're not gonna be able to know whether your athletes are getting consistent unless you've got an excellent eye to spot technique issues but again, if you're not doing this kind of stuff, you probably don't have that eye because part of developing that eye comes from this process here. So you're looking for consistency. If I saw ‑‑ if I were to just look at these numbers, I would say you probably have a pretty good ‑‑ assuming these are ‑‑ the goal time is four flat. I'd say you probably have a fairly consistent improving printer or whatever because I seek consistent times here.

I they're all over the place and the goal time is four flat and they're all over here and they're times are all crazy, they're doing this kind of stuff, this tells me you got a kid who's all over the place who does not know how to sprint. Who is not a good consistent sprinter not running consistent times. Excuse me. Must have consistency so the question is how do you develop the consistency of speed training? By teaching them the skills of sprinting. By getting them stronger. By using speed drills and certain parts of speed training that are gonna help teach these athletes the right way to run. Running is a skill. It's not just a mindless thing that you go do. You don't just say get out of line we're gonna run 40s today. Think that athletes are gonna become better runners. Consistent runners. If you want ‑‑ once you teach athletes how to run correctly, it's understanding how to progress these things.

Where and when to put these into place ands into the program. Those are the two things you have to be able to teach your athletes regardless of age, sport or gender. A, you have to understand how to progress the workouts and where and when to put them. And B, you have to be able to teach or learn how to run correctly. So when you're talking about repeat 30s at full speed or we're talking about repeat 200s at tempo pace, aerobic pace, the point remains the same. Athletes need to hit their times. You need to write them down and if you're not doing this stuff, you need to figure out how to get that done because this process here of demanding that kids hit their times and understanding what it means and when to shut workouts down it what separates the good coaches from the bad coaches.

The good coaches do this, the bad coaches just stand there and yell out times and don't write stuff done. So hopefully that's given you some insight on how to write workouts and how to run workouts and what you should be looking for.

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