okay, so I’ve got soccer tryouts next week. normally, i’d be fine with that, but the problem is that i just got back to soccer conditioning this week after basically a month of doing nothing (camps). My legs are pretty sore, and I’m feeling a bit out of shape/haven’t done much running.
Well, i’ve still got saturday and sunday to “heal up”, but monday is tryout day, and they’ll be timing us on a 20, 40, and 100m. Since I haven’t done much sprinting/running/anything lately, I was wondering if any of you had any tips to running these things. Maybe some form stuff, what to eat, or some of the “tricks” to boosting your time. Oh yeah, and no blocks I’m pretty sure.
note, i’ve never run these distances for track. I was a 400 runner before. I’m trying to become more of a short distance person, but running 10 miles every day for soccer probably won’t help
oh, and also any tips on recovering as quickly as possible over the weekend? I know that would belong in the recovery/regeneration forum, but I thought I’d just throw it in here with my “bigger” post.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any tricks that will help you without having had a proper preparation. The best you can do is make sure you relax and run relaxed and that will permit you to run to the best possible time your current form allows. What I’d do in this situation is do today or tomorrow (Thursday or Friday) a submax acc dev session with a little sp e at the end (ie 2x10m., 2x20m., 2x30m., and a 120m.), everything very easy and relaxed, then on Friday or Saturday do some submax bench press to make sure the CNS is stimulated. The only point of this speed session is to get you used to what you will run, like that you at least feel prepared mentally. If you try to do too much quantity or intensity of speed in your last session you’ll have the opposite of the desired effect, you’ll probably fatigue the body and not be able to supercompensate one training session … and surely tighten up which will cause your performance to drop even more.
I don’t know if he should try to run overly relaxed actually. A lot of beggining sprinters don’t know how to run fast and relaxed at the same time, and when you tell them to relax their times are significantly slower. My technical advice to him is just run.
Actually, Alex, you are right. I’m a beginner with a Speed Trap II, so I have a year’s worth of data to back it up. Around 6 months training age the tide slowly turned where a “relaxed” run yielded a better 30m, 60m, or 100m time than a grunting, gnarly, head-popping effort. It would seem you have to be in full command of what constitutes a full effort, and have some running muscles in place, before you can calm down while still giving that full effort. Interesting stuff. The kid will run probably run faster just going for it. After the initial test, though, Charlie is 100% right–start incoporating relaxation into every drill-it’s damn hard to master!
You are right, for beginners that would seem like the best way. I still remembre my first 200m., with just 2 months of training I ran 23.5, running horribly, but as if lions were chasing me, after 2 years of training I haven’t been able to run faster then that!
Agreed with all of the above. The faster you get the easier relaxation becomes. Of course that’s not to say you shouldn’t practice relaxation as a begginner, however tests are probably not a good time to work on it.
now that the “technicals” are over, does anyone have any tips for allowing my muscles to heal/recover the fullest? today was the last day, so i’ve basically got two days to get back as close to prime condition.
okay, well first day of tryouts is over. turns out it wasn’t a 20m, 40m, and 100m, but 20 yd, 40 yd, and 100 yds. I wasn’t able to go out and do the 10m 20m things or do any bench press, but I did some pushups if that counts for anything
in my first timed sprints ever, I got a 2.8, 4.9, and 10.72 (hand timed). I think I did my “best” on the 100, because on both the 20 and 40 I did something really weird at the start, and didn’t get an “explosive” first step. I also did the zig zag thing which I also screwed up really badly (i’d never done it before and it felt like I was knocking all the cones down so I looked back…the coach was laughing :P). I got somewhere above 10 (bad).
The best time we got today was from another kid who was on varsity last year as a freshman, with a 10.35.
So…how are those times for a 15 yr. old (5’5-5’6) kid who wants to start sprinting? I know they aren’t up to par quite yet (even more so by this forum’s standards), but I’ve been doing mostly distance or middle distance (400 meter) up till now, and I think I want to get started in more short distance stuff, so I can tighten up my 400m and maybe move up to offense in soccer (that’d also require some more footskills).
