I been saying for years - if you go around the country to various meets and speak with various T&F athletes - almost all of them are doing tons of ext/int tempo and little true speed work. They are the athletes who are beating the one’s with the great programs/great setups while breaking Pr’s every year. I have a friend who believes in doing “base” work in the fall and Spec end year round.
The results: At age mid 30’s he’s still setting records - has a great 200 and always a great 100m finish.
I asked him to give me a 100m fall training program - see below:
Block 1: Base Block
Session 1: 8x150
Session 2: 15min jog
Session 3: 6x200
Session 4: Hills
Session 5: 3x300
Next block: Everything was fast with full rec
Session 1: 3x180
Session 2: 3x30flys+3x30+2x60
Session 3: 4x200
Session 4: 3x150
Session 5: 3x300
His inseason - almost every workout was a time trail - 2x200 or 2x300 etc time with full rec…
Certainly biomechanics have changed since Winter’s coaching of 1940-1970, but you can’t argue with his success, as posted previously, everyone borrows from others, many coaches have borrowed from Winter. It’s not like John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Ronnie Rae Smith, etc, just stepped on the track and broke records, they all worked hard, every sprinter that Winter coached improved. Watch films of his sprinters, they have that San Jose look, high knee action, and most importantly, RELAXATION, which Winter called key. His workouts were not that high in volume, 5x 200, 3x 320m, each month becoming faster until it was time to go to a comp schedule, which was quality based. As far as to run fast you must train fast, Winter had speed in every workout; starts, flys, In/Outs. As for the way he taught starts, he got that from Olympic Champ Armin Hary, the first man to run 100m in 10 seconds flat and one of history’s fastest starters, Winter wrote a book on it called, “The rocket sprint start”. How far have we really come in sprint times except for Lightning Bolt?; sprinters in the 60’s were running 10 and under for 100m on crap tracks, tracks that now you wouldn’t even train on. With today’s fast tracks, spikes and training technology, I’d love to see what Tommie Smith would have run a 200 in.
I’ve found that all this tempo stuff we look for correlations and explanations when there is possibly none. I’m sure we want to think that tempo makes you fast because it helps with recovery, and to some extent it does. But it always boils down to specific demands. You can’t tell me building a base, going from 8x300, or 8x150m down to 3x150 does shit all for speed. 0-60m builds speed, and then its about how you manage it and the other aspects. Its like when people look for correlations with weight training. So and so does 140kg clean, or 180kg squat. Just because its included in a program, means they’ll probably be good at it, especially for elite athletes. They will master it. It doesnt mean it transfers to the competitive exercise. And in most situations it doesnt. Same for tempo. Its in a lot of programs, doesnt mean anything.
I know two sprinters who were training with a jamaican coach. THey said they hardly ran fast at practice, mostly tempo. one athlete strived and ran pb’s. The other athlete regressed. So guess some things work for some athletes. I believe in training fast to run fast. I wonder if any powerlifters do a bunch of high rep light weight lifts. DO they get any stronger from that…I doubt it. But you never know. Tempo has its place, but ima follow charlie on this one. Plus tempo sucks balls. Its boring as shit
Better genetics, white guys dont run fast don’t you know. And i’m sure they are sprinting too, so you could also ask, why are more genetically gifted athletes who do specific work beating me? Maybe some do those volumes of tempo because everyone else does them, but they arent doing it solo and running those times. Specific sprint work, its not rocket science. Theres no tempo voodoo at play, only workouts that people do because its what you do. Dumb logic.
Bull shit - I know many white guys who can sprint fast… I know several white kids who didn’t start to run fast until they started doing 10x200 etc - he went from 11-10.9 to 10.4ish in cold wisconsin weather. Maybe you should give 10x200 a try - it could be your secret to breaking the 10.5 barrier.
The one thing that these fast guys have in common is TEMPO in their training or controlled speed work. UMMM, Powell, Blake, Bolt, Gay, Jeter, Felix the list goes on all have heavy amounts of tempo. Most athletes that I see that do tons of heavy squatting, 30m accels, flys etc are the one’s losing to the tempo athletes or running great 30m times but suck over 100-200m…
When I met Asafa back in 08 he told me about the workout he had the day before. 10x200 26 sec pace. Said the shit hurt. I guess when you can go 19 in the 200 26 is tempo. Or was it a specific conditioning workout he had to do? Dont know. I didnt discover temp until 2003-04 once i stumbled upon this site. I then and still do today use it for recovery. Shit I dont even warmup when I do it. I just start. I hate it but i know i feel good the next day for real speed workouts. Maybe these pros that are “Tempo Kings” just do more of it during specific training blocks. But I seriously doubt they only do tempo then use the meets as speed work.
They all insert start workouts and some do 60s, 80s. None seem to lift super heavy in my observation. I noticed Asafa is pretty strong. There’s a video of him sumo dead lifting 160 or so if my memory is correct. Really easy too.
If tempo is all that is needed, why aren’t 800m thru marathoners running sub 10.0? They do huge volumes of running at tempo pace. Its just dumb to say that genetics and specific speed work have less to do with elite level sprint performance than tempo.
Lots of accelerations, sled pushes, intensive tempo.
p.s I have been trying to log on here for 2 or 3 months now, and finally have been able to reset my password! I have an inbox full of messages from some of you, and I apologize for not getting back to you, but I’ve been trying and it hasn’t been working until now. So you should here from me soon.