Need help with making an offseason plan

Expert Discussion Advanced Sprint Training
1

Hi, new user here.

I just finished my first year of track yesterday and I lost 13 pounds since.

I’m gonna be a senior in high school next season. Should’ve though of joining track a long while ago, but I joined it this year as a junior. It seriously is a lot of fun.

Now that I am fit and finished the season, I am ready to prepare for next season.

What can I do train for 100-400 during the offseason?

I’m planning on gaining about 10-15 pounds and shed more fat while I’m at it.

Here’s the info:
17
5’9"
160 lbs (added 2 extra pounds last week because I started drinking protein shakes)
15-17% BF

Bench: 155
Squat: 245
Deadlift: 225
^^All using the 5x5 that I started training with last week

Best Times:
55: 8.2
100: 13 FLAT
200: 28.9
300: I wasn’t really conditioned to run it in the winter but I ran it in 52.4

GOALS:
-Add around 10-15 pounds of muscle mass to my frame, making me around 170-175, 165 would be OK too as long as my times see a big improvement.
-Sprint a 12 FLAT for the 100
-Sprint a 26-27 for the 200
-Sprint a 45-46 for the 300
-Be conditioned to run the 400 next season

Since the season ended yesterday, I have the summer until September to achieve my goals. Can you guys help me with an offseason program that can help me?

Thanks guys

2

Are you male yeah? I don’t think puting on weight should be a goal. I would concentrate on getting stronger and there may be weight gain as a by product. You need to bare in mind that extra weight is weight that must be moved down the track, so if it is useless weight in that it is not contributing the generating force in the direction you are wanting to travel, it is not beneficial. In fact, is is going to require extra energy to shift that weight, and that energy could be better spent. I have worded this whole post horribly, but basically, F=ma, so you need to make sure all the ‘m’ is contributing to the ‘F’ to get the most effective ‘a’!!

3

Haha thanks man.

What type of training should I do though?

All my coach ever made us do was run for like 30-45 minutes which isn’t really much training.

I want some technical **** so I can come back next season the best sprinter on the team.

Do I run hill sprints? 8x200s? 150s? 250s?

I also forgot to mention, I want to get my abs too lol. Like, get down 8-10% BF lol.

4

I think if you use the search function for GPP you will get some ideas. They will incoroporate a lot of what you just said. I also think that in 45 minutes, you can get an effective workout, although mostly mine last a good hour and a half. Because of your fitness levels, I would recommend a L-S approach as I think you will the most immediate gains this way. However, don’t get frustrated if you don’t blow away everyone on the team straight away as it does take time to improve. It is late here, but I will check in in the morning and if there’s not much more contribution I will try and give you a loose structure.

Also try looking in the journals section on here.

5

Thanks man. I appreciate your help.

I’m checking out the journals and the GPP Essentials threads. But for the vid, gotta pay for it. Fuckin money lol

6

Yeah, I totally understand the money thing. I would look at setting up your programme something like this:

Monday: Speed and weights
Tuesday: Intensive Tempo
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Intensive Tempo/Strength Endurance
Friday: Weights
Saturday: Extensive Tempo
Sunday: Rest

On the intensive tempo, I would look at doing around 1200m volume so say 6x200m, 8x150m, possbily going down to 12x100m, although you might find the individual rep distance is a little short, but you could run the reps as a pair, so 100m, very short recovery, 100m, then a longer recovery. I would like at running the 100s in 14-15 seconds, and 200s around 32-33 for your current level. The recovereries short be shortish, 4-5 mins, but reduce the recovery time for the shorter the distance.

The strength endurance could be done on longer hills, so upto 150m say, off shortish recoveries, perhaps slightly longer 5-6 mins, but the intensity will be raised partly just because you are running up hill. I would reduce the total volume slightly, so say 900-1000m. If you are on track, you could keep the volume a little higher, around the 1200m mark, and raise the tempo of the runs, but give yourself a little more recovery than the intensive tempo sessions. You could also run the reps slightly longer, so 4x300m for example.

The extensive tempo should be greater volumes, upto 2000m, but at a significantly slower pace, so for you 16-17sec 100m pace and off my shorter recovery, so for example, you could use 10x200m in 36-38 secs off 2 mins recovery.

Speed work, keep the distances short, less than 70m, keep the total volume around 400m and the recoveries long. If you did 6x60m for example, the recoveries would be 8-10 mins I would suggest.

On the weights day, you may want to incorporate some low intensity low volume plyometric exercises also, just simple skips, bounds and hops, as for contact numbers, somebody might need to help me out, but I would say around 50 contacts for the first session, building up to about 100.

I can imagine people are going to have vastly different opinions on what you should be doing, but there’s my two cents worth. Hope this helps! I’d also like some other people to critique this as it’s all a learning curve!

7

Thanks man! I appreciate the advice!!

Also, I will see weight gains as well, right? I only see weights twice a week. Are you suggesting I should do a full body workout twice a week? Because I’m already doing three times a week on Push-Pull-Legs split.

8

I don’t think you need to be concerned with putting weight on for reasons I already outlined. I would do two full body weights workouts a week yes. I think only doing legs one out of three sessions is a little wasteful as a sprinter, as you can’t apply force to the track using your upper body!

9

OK man. Once again great advice. Even though at 17, I do want to have that killer upper body to catch the girls. Not that I already do lol.

I will continue taking my protein shakes and multis and just focus on shedding off body fat with the program you set up for me. I will look forward to seeing some gains in both muscle and speed. At least 5 pounds of muscle will be fine haha.

And most importantly, make sure I get get cuts and get ripped. Haha.

10

Maris, I don’t know if I am asking for too much, but can this be integrated with some cross country training because cross country season, as you should know, is September to November.

We only run 5Ks so can running 30 or so minutes be integrated into this program??

I mean, I don’t want to peak in sprinting in December. I’m looking to peak during this time next year. So I have about 10 or so months to train like this?

11

Honestly, if you are planning on running cross country in the fall, you won’t have to worry about your speed peaking this December. Your first opportunity to truly obtain peak sprint speeds would likely occur many months after ceasing CC training/engaging in a good sprinting program.

12

Ok so is your focus getting “ripped”, or are you looking for gains in speed? I’m sorry but it seems as if that is your number 1 goal…

I second Pioneer, XC is only going to set you back as far as speed gains go. Look into searching under GPP to get an understanding of how to structure a fall training program for sprinting. You won’t peak in GPP anyways.

13

Well my focus is getting faster, first and foremost.

With that in mind, I also want to add muscle mass and then get ripped/tone down as well as lower body fat.

I’ve gained 7 lbs in the past 3 weeks which currently puts me at 165. My goal is 175 as I previously stated. Once I hit 175, I would like to begin my cutting cycle.

That is just secondary. First and foremost, as a sprinter, I want to add speed and power. With that, I need to add some strength/mass so that’s what I am doing.

Also, the GPP will not affect my XC endurance will it? I can easily add like a 15-20 minute jog prior to beginning the practices.

14

If you are a sprinter and that is your priority then you are looking at the entirety of your program from the wrong perspective-in my opinion. You should be more concerned that the xc and it’s associated training will likely hurt your preparations to reach your potential as a sprinter. That is unless XC is your priority.

If sprinting and developing speed and power are really your priorities, then you’d be wise to re-think even participating in xc in the first place-again in my opinion.

15

XC is not my priority. Coach is going to make us participate/compete it in regardless so I might as well use it as conditioning for indoor and outdoor which will be December to May.

I mean 5k’s aren’t going to take me no longer than 25 minutes regardless so I don’t see how it will get in my way as a sprinter.

Either way, I respect your opinion as I understand what you are saying. Once I’m in college, I’ll obviously just focused on sprinting and that’s it.

16

You just wanna run those 5ks as slow as possible so you can get the benefit of it as recovery session. Not ideal, but I think you tweak the training so it suits your sprinting better.

17

Well it “can get in your way” and like Maris says, keep them on the slow end.

Physiologically I can’t tell you why(I’ve asked)but there does seem to be a major difference in the benefits derived from extensive tempo runs vs. a continuous/steady state run with the first option being much more effective in conjunction with a speed development program/sprinting.

Just, as Maris says, keep them as slow as possible.

18

I couldn’t tell you the physiological reasoning either. Do you think Pioneer, it could more a biomechanical reason? For example, I remember talking to a lecturer at university as I was interested in burning fat, and there is much talk about low intensity, long duration, steady state exercise, like jogging. However, he said he felt that because jogging is ‘closish’ to the mechanics of faster running, there was a negative transfer, so he suggested if I wanted to do some form of duration activity, he recommended cycling as it was further away from the mechanics of sprinting. Not sure if I totally agree with this, but it’s a suggestion.

Squirrel, a very arbitary rule I would suggest is, if you are going to do these ling runs, do it so you ‘feel’ it in your lungs, not your legs.

19

I think I read(perhaps from CF himself?) that there was some sort of enzymatic differences(and that’s as far as I can or am willing to go with that one!) between continous runs and ext. tempo runs making the latter a superior option.

I was kind of forced, at one point, to find out the differences having had athletes split time with the distance coach and myself(the kids were 400/800 runners) and I could not get over how much better they seem to recover from the ext. tempo work rather than the cont. tempo work-even slow cont. tempo work-also at one point found that a kid was not able to lift on the sprint days for about two weeks(even though now I’d have them lift BEFORE(edit) tempo work if we had to do so due to scheduling conflicts, etc.) when they tried to lift after ext. tempo they were fine but if it took place after a cont. run(very easy) they lifted like crap in almost every situation. This is one of the reasons why I decided to place any lifting we had to do on a tempo day, though not always ideal, before the running-esp. if they had to go out on a cont. run. That said, I know there are coaches out there who use the cont. tempo work in their programs successfully but I would not do it.

When I was a h.s. coach and I came into my first and only h.s. coaching position I was told that every Wednesdays(meet were on Thurs and Sat, at times) the kids had been running 20-30 min runs in the town I lived. I changed that immediately and never looked back.

Some of this background on tempo in programs was discussed years ago with CF probably on the original forum but I know much of it (including CF’s correspondence with Henk K. the Dutch sprint coach) is in the orig. forum review. Some of the material was reprinted from the supertraining site/forum. Very interesting material and I’d recommend looking into the purchase if you don’t already have it.

20

That’s interesting Pioneer. I think there are definitely methods out there, that at present, we don’t have a scientific rationale for why they work. I think that is one of the drawbacks with today’s sports science intervention, in that if it can’t be proven by science, they often like to discard it. I have actually placed a post on the thread regarding tempo and lifting on the same day, as like you mentioned, I have a lifestyle that doesn’t really allow me to combine my lifting with my speed work. Therefore providing I have a clear day between the lifting and the subsequent speed session, I don’t really understand the problem, but if you check that post out, I would be interested to hear thoughts.