How long does one go in acceleration development, 30m.? 40m.?
When does one start considering something speed work and not acc. dev.?
Does it mostly have to do with the level of the athlete (ie how long the athlete can accelerate at 100% effort before reaching top speed)? If this is the case then a mid-level athlete would go up to 30 or 35 maximum, right?
Just as a rule of thumb usually true acceleration work is up to 60 meters. However the faster the athlete the longer he will accelerate/the longer it will take him or her to reach their full speed.
Most of your acceleration is done by 30m.
Sorry i didnt quite distinguish what i was thinking at the time. Very true about most of the acceleration being done by 30 meters and just to add max velocity is usually from 30-60 meters. However when training for acceleration the MAX a run should be is 50-60 meters although a portion of that may be max velocity however the reason i said up to 60 is because true max velocity work are runs such as flying 30’s and such with a 20-40 meter easy accel zone.
I myself if i was doing an accel session i would do soemthing such as 6x30 and 3-5x50-60 depending what part of the season it was.
Personally I like doing something like 20-20-30-30-40-40-50-50 or reverse order more than 3x3x30 or 6x50
Is there a good reason why one should stay with sets of ONE distance?
Yes there is. Mainly because you wanna make sure you have good acceleration at one set distance before moving on to something longer.