One of the girls I coach had a terrible acceleration last year but had a great finish. This year we fixed the acceleration issue and hoped that if everything else remained the same she would run a faster time. But her finish has dropped considerably. Is she using too much energy in the beginnning of the race. Even if she is ,I don’t know what to tell her. In training we do enough speed endurance, so I cannot imagine it’s lack of training which is causing it. Charlie and other experts in the forum, can you sugggest how can I fix this issue. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
1: How’s her tech later in the race?
2: How’s her top speed/mech?
3: How did you go about improving her accel, did you drop all the other elements in her program?
I think this goes back to CF comment about focusing on your strength’s because if you focus on one side then the other will be weak etc etc.
I have this same issue, when my accel. seems to be a stronger part of my race, my speed endurance is weaker and people catch up to me. When it’s the other way around, I catch the guys that got ahead of me at the start. I have yet to put both together.
Accel should be the product of preparation. Trying to murder the first 20m is not the way to run 100. So yes, she is probably wasting too much energy in her accel. Remind her that it’s a race to 100m not a race to 10m.
Check the training issue in general (i.e., conditioning) and top speed -in this order probably. Plus what the guys say re: acceleration.