I understand that 0-30m work, 60m work, and flying 20-30m work are the most efficient ways of increasing top speed. However, in a time when I am working around injuries [hamstring tendonitis], could an enterprising guy ‘convert’ the way he runs his 200m, for example, to at least maintain his top speed and acceleration ability for a short while?
Example: I can only run a brief workout every 5 days right now [at 100% speed that is] at any distance 200m and under due to this injury. I need to run the 100m and 200m at the important seasonal meets coming up. If I quit my 200m work my 200m times will be crap-I know this for a fact from prior experience. So I have to keep them, but I only have the hamstrings for one or two runs every 5 days.
Bottom line: Can I bolt like heck from the blocks and scream right up to 60m [like I was running a 60m race] on my one run-and then play the rest of the 200m out as well as I can without as much gas in the tank? As a stopgap measure around injury, shouldn’t I in theory keep my accceleration and top speed ability for a few weeks until competitive season is done, and also keep some measure of 200m speed endurance?
If there is an injury question, why wouldn’t you accel to 30 to 40m and maintain smoothly instead of accelerating beyond your capacity to maintain?
Perhaps weights and explosive med ball/ hurdle hops etc might serve to maintain other capacities during this period, depending on the nature of the tendonitis.
I guess the reason to accelerate beyond my capacity to maintain would be to keep the explosive nature of my 100m intact as well, because I want to run that event too. Working around my 100m in other ways makes compete sense. But just to satisfy my intellectual curiousity, purely for the sake of hypothesizing, would this strange way of running a 200m keep those more explosive qualities as well?
If, by strange, you mean as you described, I would expect it could interfere with explosive qualities somewhat by creating great distress during the SE run. Maybe there’s another route. What about some sort of “hollow” run? Say, fast for 80m, then easy for 60m and fast for the final 60, but always under control? Any ideas?
Yeah…that’s the ticket! The first 80m maintains my speed, the middle 60m ensures I’m keeping it under control, and the final 60m keeps my 200m SE decent. I like. Thanks Charlie.