-the winner just ran a 21.7x, 21.8x on that sweet ass grass track.
-this track looks like it has some little odd dips and abnormalities every 20m or so for whichever lane.
My thoughts are the grass really does allow one to practice different sprint techniques and drills with impunity/randomness/recklessness. They did studies on the ping pong players and their ability to continuously return the ping pong ball. They came to the conclusion it was cells in the hands exhibiting something called ‘non verbal communication’. They basically said it had nothing to do with the brain or ‘cns’ reading the terrain, but cells in the hands doing the work. I’m beginning to believe this may be the case with regularly sprint training on grass which lacks uniformity, the ‘dark matter spiritual cells’ known as ‘ormus’ contained all throughout the body, are reading the terrain and making these complex adjustments to maintain a relatively uniform sprint action to prevent what should be close to 10-15 rolled ankles during the course of this 200m sprint in the example aforementioned.
I’ve been utilizing a 120m grass track(40 bend 80 straight) for the past 5 years. I’ve run on it too much that it’s now become concave, as well I’m constantly varying starting areas along the track to avoid further degradation and ‘easy erosion’ of the track. I drive on it after and during the rain with vehicle to smoothen it out some lol. It also has around 11 slight dips to where it levels almost flat out and then continues to again rise(it is a 120m slight incline.
Running and training and sprinting on grass is amazing.
The " dirt" or " grass" tracks we see in places like this particular one are not just ordinary tracks so let’s not forget this.
As BoldWarrior has pointed out there are fabulous well maintained grass fields and then there are grass fields that are not cared for in the same way and not smooth or even so you might not want to do the best quality sprinting on surfaces like that
Sprinting on a surface that is uneven can be very bad for some more than others.
Charlie used to point out that the more relaxed you were the greater you ability to buffer the surface inperfections but don’t forget that you need to factor in the resistence of anything you move through.
We did do some speed training on grass with the provision that great care was taken and it was during hot summer ideal conditions when I was at my very best physically. ( ie torwards the later part of my running career)
We sometimes sprinting on grass to save time for one reason or another as we may not have wanted to go to the track that day.
The concept of using what ever you have is a brilliant one but most seem to over look it. I have spoken about this often in posts but also my blog.
Well, it’s not worth if you roll your ankle.
If it’s a routine problem you face you need to re think the structure of doing tempo on that day and location.
Remember you are always trying to prevent injury.
I know lots of people say that sprinters are sucks and babies etc… I have one such friend who played football profesionally… but why risk injury when you really do not need to.
For sure you need to at least 1 x a week find a way to get great tempo in a safe way on a flat surface. Ideally you need this circumstance all the time.
If we were ever faced with crap field when we were travelling for family events… we modified and adapted… Maybe you find a pool, maybe you do extensive med ball with few breaks or maybe you do a combo of pool and sit ups and med ball / worst case you skip it but you can’t do that routinely.
I don’t ever remember doing tempo on the track ever…
We have slowed the tempo right down and shortened the break by half but crappy fields are something you routinely need to avoid.
Bike is another clear option and the running on the matt too.
T slow wants me to show how we did tempo on the treadmill. That is something we also did a fair amount of.
Without question most direct way to ensure effective tempo is real running but you can always work around lack of facilities or bad facilities.
I find tempo on bad tracks workable up to around 20km/hr which is 36sec 200m pace. Always in joggers.
Anything faster and the grass needs more consistency. Sometimes slower depending on factors.
At the moment we are doing tempo up hills on the road. We find our best sprint time up hill and add 33%. Works a treat.
The treadmill seems to work ok but the bike tempo is kinda easy and make the quads and hip flexors tight. This is a real life problem for some post collegiate athletes - no access to good grass fields. If the athlete only had access to crappy fields would you drop all running tempo?
How would you define workable because I notice hip/lower back issues on most crappy fields over the long haul. While taking a note from Dan Pfaff - how slow do you really wanna go? There comes a point where you’re going so slow, I start to question the benefits of doing slow snail pace tempo work.
I have a strong therapy program so tightness in quads/hips is always being looked at and addressed.
20km/hr is fine, it depends on your recovery time, and what you do inbetween, eg, push ups, dips, chins etc between reps.
Joggers help a lot.
To be honest, tempo is super easy and can be anywhere with the right shoes. Walk out your door and run. Take a leaf from middistance guys, Farlek - run fast between power poles, then walk or jog between other power poles. Find a 3km or so loop. or, set your watch to counter repeat, 30sec on 60sec off and just simply run during the 30sec. You really don’t need anything. Just run.
In retrospect I feel like I do have a slight back issue from sprinting on my ‘horse trackish’ grass slight incline. It’s never really prevented me from maintaining sprint training at least twice a week though, however its only been 5 years I’ve been utilizing this ‘homemade track’. Also I may have been sort of drowning out the back issue with ‘15 minute bodyweight circuits’(12-14exercises) 2-3x a week, and ‘high rep/relatively heavy weight’ deadlifting and backsquatting once every 7-11 days.
I also feel as though I’ve developed an ‘asafa powell type shuffle stride’ from carrying out close to 400 sprint sessions on this grass hill track over the 5 years. I believe this ‘unnatural developmental’ stride is what prevents me from rolling my ankle when skimming over to level surface with the dips on this uneven terrain. My warm-up contains shuffle type A skips and B skips which I at all costs do not let the lower leg extend at all, around and through the knee and hip joint to the backside.
-at 2:15 spearmon and patton are doing 3 contact skips. Would they not stick with a 2 contact skip since it forces them to shuffle the contacts and detracts from their upright ‘max v capabilities/staple technique’?
What I meant was ‘deadlifting’ or ‘deadlifting and backsquatting’ or ‘backsquatting’ once every 7-11 days.
I used to backsquat or deadlift 2x a week at relatively high intensity(85-95% of max) while carrying out 2x high intensity sprints. For me, a degradation of heavy weights to once every 7-11 days works best in terms of ‘overall daily primal movement pattern smoothness’
With the 2x a week backsquatting at moderate weight/ intensity and emphasizing barspeed, this is what we used to do for ice hockey(jr.a ranks 16-20year olds) and itz what i’ve maintained to these later years when maintaining ice hockey participation for 4-6 months out of the year during the winter months.
It sounds feasible to implement with sprint running/training microcycles.