Rate, Magnitude, Duration
This is my take on it. Note that my interpretation of a lot of this stuff is just my interpretation…I don’t ask DB about everything so if you were to ask him you may find that I have screwed up a lot of stuff :).
Think of a force/time curve and imagine every action/movement you do being analyzed with a printout of a peak force and time curve.
On some the force/time curve would be characterized by a very short peak over a very short time with multiple small force peaks over a given time followed by a sharp but short gap in between each peak. Peak velocity sprinting is an example here. Relaxation and deceleration are important here.
On some you would have a very HIGH peak with a short time. This is the Magnitude or level of peak force is extremely high and the time, although longer then “rate” work, is still relatively short. A depth jump is an example here.
On some you would have a medium peak maintained over a long time. This is duration. A heavy weight training movement is an example here. The duration of force is long but the peak is not as high as a movement characterized by magnitude.
If it helps, the start of a sprint can be characterized as magnitude and top speed sprinting as rate.
In general you don’t want to mix rate and duration work in the same session. That means that you have these options for a session:
rate by itself
magnitude by itself
duration by itself
rate + magnitude
magnitude + duration
So you wouldn’t want to mix strength work with flying sprints. The big problem with mixing DUR with RATE work is that RATE work, and this is a good explanation from Brad, is you’re trying to teach your body to gain and release tension as quickly as possible whereas DUR work is trying to teach your system to sustain tension and delay peak twitch (supported by IIB to IIA conversion) (ever do a biceps workout and not be able to extend your arm? Same type of thing!).
If you want to start a DB style program the easiest place to start is with his Power template:
Session 1:
Strength speed
Example:
Power PIM Squat x 3-5 74-94% appropriated weight
**Force drop absorption (FDA)squat x 3-5 51-74% appropriated weight
Reactive glute ham raise x 5-9 seconds
**Progress into Reactive squat as proficiency improves. Set loading to coincide with technique.
Monitor drop-off with something like a broad jump or vertical jump…go to a 4% dropoff.
Session 2:
Speed strength
speed endurance
Example:
Amplitude depth drop landing (squat) x 30+ inch box x 3 (increase box height as technique improves)
Reactive depth jump x 18 inch box x 3
lateral barrier jump x 15-25 seconds
Again go to 4% dropoff. Use your depth jump to assess VJ and count the reps in the barrier jump then add 4% to the time and continue with the same # of reps.
guidelines:
perform session 1- 4% drop over 4 day scale
perform session 2- 4% drop over 4 day scale
perform session 1- “”
perform session 2- “”
perform session 1- 7% drop - 6 day scale
Notice there’s no sprinting. That’s intentional because I’d hope someone here would try this and see the effect that functional development has on technical. After a month go out and give yourself 2 sessions on the track and see what your acceleration looks like.
Of course it’s easy enough to add sprinting to the above schedule. You could add it easily to session 1 and eliminate the speed endurance from session #2 and replace with sprints. Or if you wanted to factorize the sprint work over multiple days, and your work capacity told you that this was the right thing to do (you could do more then 4 accelerations using a 4% dropoff and more then 4 peak velocity sprints using 2%) you could do session 1, rest 4 days, then do session 2 as above but with your sprint work separated and factorize that out over the next 4 days using the prime method (find how many sprints can you run at 95% - take that number and divide it out over 4 days and perform that many sprints each day at 95%). Then do session 1 normal, rest 4 days then session 2 and again factorize your sprints over the next 4 days then repeat session 1, rest 4 days etc. So you would have sprints factored into one 4 day period and not the other 4 day period.
If it were me for sprint factorization I would take a 4 day period and perform sprint accel work over those 4 days but to a 2% drop off on day 1 (starts) and 2% on day 3(accel). (Note that this is just what I would do I haven’t asked DB about it so take it with a grain of salt)
So it would look like this:
Session II- Day 1 (2% drop)
Amplitude depth drop landing (squat) x 30+ inch box x 3 (increase box height as technique improves)
Reactive depth jump x 18 inch box x 3
*10-20 meter starts -(go to 2% drop off)
day 2- off/restoration
day 3- 30 meter sprints- (go to 2% drop-off)
day 4- off
day 5- Session 1- AM (2% drop)
Power PIM Squat x 3-5 74-94% appropriated weight
Force drop absorption (FDA)squat x 3-5 51-74% appropriated weight
Reactive glute ham raise x 5-9 seconds
PM
*20 meter flying sprints- (go to 1% drop-off)
day 6- off/restoration
day 7 - 20 meter flying sprints- (go to 1% drop-off)
day 8- off/restoration
Day 9 - start over at day 1.
After a couple of cycles of that you would then eliminate the sprint factorization work for a time.
Note that restoration does not mean GPP. Also instead of trying to change things up and inserting more sessions, spreading things out over the week, factorizing work, messing with the drop-offs, etc. (like all that confusion I probably just created above) 
- most are much better off by simply following the basic outline to start and then make adjustments from there. Most of the time if you start adding in extra days, tempo workouts, warmups, etc. you’ll just end up short changing yourself. First I’d say see how much you can progress by doing less then you ever expected and if that’s not working make adjustments.
That basic split above simplifies everything. But let’s say you want to get more into the gist of the system. First thing you need to do is read all his articles, q&a’s and book. It will help if you have a good knowledge of something like supertraining because you’ll have a broad grasp of everything. Then dive into DB’s stuff and you’ll have to plan on taking at least 3 months of using it before it all starts to fit together in your own mind.
