still the fastest on the field?

Expert Discussion Biomechanics and Physiology
1

This is a scenario/question I´m been thinking on regarding speed,fibers etc…

Lets say a footballplayer that is extremly fast the first 15-20m, never beaten on the field.
Tryes sprinting for quite a while…but doesn´t really make the goals he should…he dicedes to run 800m insted, for a couple of years. With a mix of tempo, distance, weights and still some pure sprint training.
Then he wants to be only a footballplayer again…is he still going to be the fastest guy on the field, or has his fast fibers converted or are they still as explosive?

Charlie and others, would be interesting to hear your toughts. :slight_smile:

2

Fast fibres switch back to their default after the training stimulus that caused them to become slow is stopped. The problem is not the fibre conversion; as the human body needs to be adaptable fully, but the amount of muscle mass lost through wasting due to the endurance stimulus, and the patterns of movement that would have been established. A study by Staron et al showed that just 6 wks of weights leads to muscle fibre changing to slow. After 6-8 months cessation they returned back to default.

Basically you should be ok.

3

I’ve done something similar to what you describe in a recreational sense twice over the last 12 years both times using increasing volumes of longer duration work which destroyed my explosiveness and speed…so in the situation you describe I’d expect that no immediately after engaging in high volumes of 800 meter training that guy will have lost a lot of explosiveness.

Like Martin said though, he can get it back and even then some but it won’t be immediate…at least this has been my experience. The muscle will have adapted by building more mitochondria which to a certain extent is OK but you can’t have it both ways. Anything that maintains those negative adaptations needs to be drastically reduced so that the body can once again adapt…but in the other direction. It takes far less volume to maintain an adaptation than it does to build an adaptation so he’ll have to cut back further on conditioning and non-specific power/strength training work than he would under normal circumstances.
Higher-Faster-Sports.com

4

Ok, and what if you still do strenght acording to a sprintprogram, and still do 20-30m starts some days and mix it with dist.runs. Can you maintaine your current status, or will it automatlicly drop once you start to involve endurancework?

5

Then you will become a general athlete, in other words not very fast and not very slow. Good endurance but not very explosive. Long distance endurance work will kill your speed if it is a large volume of your training

6

Ok, but one that it didn´t seem to effect to much where the Cuban 400m-runner Alberto Juantorena. (who took gold both in 400 and 800m in the Olympics in Montreal 76:)
I read that his coach told him to join longdistancesrunners some seassions to do a 15km run. (Don´t know how often doe.)
I belive his pb:s were around 10.3-20.?-44.2-1.43 don´t have the exact numbers but his unusual mix of distances must be an outstanding performence. And for a couple of seasons ranked no 1 in both distances.
The closest to compere must be MJ:s 200/400m…

7

To run 1.43-44 you must be clocking atleast 10.7 secs in the 100m. So it figures. The point is are you going to run 10.6 secs doing 15km runs?; or do many distance runners achieve 10.3 sec sprints? The point is he was fast before doing his 15km runs, remember many things are attributed to the greats of track and field which transpire to be just hot air, ie Ben squatted 300+ Kg before the Seoul 100m final. Be careful.

8

I think that another thing to consider is how the hypothetical guy trained as a 800 guy. Approaching the 800 as a 400 guy is much different that approaching the 800 from a 1600+. The training between the two approaches is quite different. If the football player trained in the 800 with the distance runner approach, his “recovery” to higher speeds would be much slower because of higher mileage.

9

Wow, I really should have said something about this post because I ACTUALLY DID ALL THAT CRAP! (But backwards…)
Coming off of a decent cross country season I started training for track. In winter preseason I did a lot of weights and acceleration work, under 70m. I also did some pretty intense interval work and of course god’s gift to man, hills. nothing over 2 miles in a session, though. All in the aims of getting myself the explosive kick and killer endurance I would need to be a good 800 runner. As martn said, an 800 runner needs to be a general runner. Anyways, I took it easy for about 2 weeks afterwards, 3-1-3 right? And I got to track practice in January I was keeping my ground in the 55 (7.0H) and 100 (12.2H) against some sprinters that last year dusted me. About a total of 2 weeks after the end of my gnarly weight and speed work I ran a 2:06 at the Simplot Games, which is pretty impressive IMO because the race is at 6k feet!!

I did all that winter training on my own, though, and I’m kinda mad at my coach for not puttin in enough hills or speed work. I feel sluggish and less explosive than I was in January/Febuary, however I am definately more confident in my ability to do the longer distances 1200-1600.

10

Yes Martn76, I know that Juantorena was fast before and had a great speedreserve with him, I just meant that his mix of the 400 and 800m was and fantastic performence to do, and that is quite rear theese days…

11

this is sort of the opposite scenario so not totally relevant, but i trained for the 200/400 all season and ran two 800’s at the state and national pentathlon with only 3 or so days of practicing 200’s at pace. i dropped my PR 2 seconds at states and then another 7 at nationals and ran faster than 3 legs of our 4x800 which was 8th at nationals.

so hang onto the speed!!

12

yes…but you have a great coach…who has one at HS now? If they are good they are at college or retire out of frustration.

13

college coaches have already driven me into a nervous breakdown and i am not even there yet!

14

Careful on the interperetation of that data. The IIb fibers turned into IIa fibers, which happens with all training. Show me one elite sprinter with a lot of IIb fibers and I will show you an anomaly. the IIa fiber is slowER than a IIb, but only in an in-vitro performance study. IIb fibers are consistently negatively correlated with in-vivo performance, because they go away with training.

15

Not sprinting but: I told a non-sports-oriented friend that he could become a good youth league baseball coach by watching the other coaches and doing the exact opposite of everything they did. :rolleyes:

16

This is a scenario/question I´m been thinking on regarding speed,fibers etc…

Lets say a footballplayer that is extremly fast the first 15-20m, never beaten on the field.
Tryes sprinting for quite a while…but doesn´t really make the goals he should…he dicedes to run 800m insted, for a couple of years. With a mix of tempo, distance, weights and still some pure sprint training.
Then he wants to be only a footballplayer again…is he still going to be the fastest guy on the field, or has his fast fibers converted or are they still as explosive?

Charlie and others, would be interesting to hear your toughts.

I was answering the sceanrio above. Whether fast fibres have converted and are still explosive. Probably yes to the conversion and slowing in speed. The reason I used the Staron article was to make the point that fibre conversions are reversible in adults and so he could regain his speed again if he trained more specifically as a sprinter. Some seem to believe that fibre conversions once intiated are irreversible, which is not the case. This was the point I was trying to make.

There are different types of type ii such as iia, iia/b, iib, iix (iix not yet confirmed in human subjects but in Rats), no one knows precisely which set of subtypes are most important to or abundant in sprinters. I was not trying to say that iib are predominant in trained sprinters just the fact that conversion is reversible and so any specific adaptations made by other training not similar to sprinting can be reversed by proper training. Also the Guassian curve will apply to even fast fibres, what I mean is a percentile of type ii will contract as slowly as the fastest type i fibres; and so it is not correct to say that in-vivo performances do not support the speed contractions of iia and iib, as found in in-vitro. The guassian curve applies even to fast fibres, some will be almost predestrian others as fast as the proverbial off a shovel in in-vivo. So it is fair to say that most likely a sprinters fast fibres are operating in the higher levels of fast fibre speeds and a middle/long distance in the lower percentiles.

17

Imagine this weekly program, what could this do for the former footballplayer, could this workout to do good things in the 800m. And still maintaine the quickness when he returns to play football, say in two years time…

Mon. sprint 20-30m+weights (like Charlie´s way)
Tue. tempo e.g 4x5x200m
Wed. 3x600m qualityruns with good recovery+weights (like Charlie´s …)
Thu. tempo or rest
Fri. sprint 20-120m+weights (like Charlie…)
Sat. longrun 20-40 min
Sun. rest

18

Fiber types are denoted with capital letters (IIA, IIAB, etc.) whereas MHC is small letters. MHC IId/x has been found in many mammals, was first found in the diaphragm (hence the “d”). Again, sprinters will have a lot of IIa, some I, and likely little else.

Andersen JL ; Klitgaard H ; Saltin B
Affiliation: August Krogh Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Title: Myosin heavy chain isoforms in single fibres from m. vastus lateralis of sprinters: influence of training.
Source: Acta Physiol Scand (Acta physiologica Scandinavica.) 1994 Jun; 151(2): 135-42
Additional Info: ENGLAND
Standard No: ISSN: 0001-6772; 1365-201X; NLM Unique Journal Identifier: 0370362
Language: English
Abstract: The myosin heavy chain (MHC) composition of single fibres from m. vastus lateralis of a group of male sprint athletes (n = 6) was analysed, before and after a three months period of intensive strength- and interval-training, using a sensitive gel electrophoretic technique. Significant improvements were observed after training in almost all of a series of performance tests. After training the sprinters revealed a decrease in fibres containing only MHC isoform I (52.0 +/- 3.0% vs. 41.2 +/- 4.7% (mean +/- SE) (P < 0.05)) and an increase in the amount of fibres containing only MHC isoform IIA (34.7 +/- 6.1% vs. 52.3 +/- 3.6% (P < 0.05)). Fibres showing co-existence of MHC isoforms IIA and IIB decreased with training (12.9 +/- 5.0% vs. 5.1 +/- 3.1% (P < 0.05)). Only one out of 1000 fibres analysed contained only MHC isoform IIB. In contrast, a higher amount of type IIB fibres (18.8 +/- 3.6% vs. 10.5 +/- 3.9%, (P < 0.05)) was observed with myofibrillar ATPase histochemistry. The majority of histochemically determined type IIB fibres of sprinters seems therefore to contain both MHC isoforms IIA and IIB. Sprint-training appears to induce an increased expression of MHC isoform IIA in skeletal muscles. This seems related to a bi-directional transformation from both MHC isoforms I and IIB towards MHC isoform IIA.

The point is, whether you are faster or slower as a result of training, porbably has little or nothing to do with your fiber type. Even endurance athletes have a IIb to IIa conversion. Fast or slow, well trained people have little IIb MHC or IIB fibers. Can you tell me where I can find the reference to the slowest IIB being the same speed as the fastest type I? I am interested as I was not aware of that. Bottinelli has shown that IIa and IIb fibers overlap in unloaded shortening velocity, but that overlap is explained (r=.9) by MLC expression.

I am not convinced that fiber type tells you all that much. Percent area may be a good indicator, but we cannot separate out the influence of the nervous system.

I was answering the sceanrio above. Whether fast fibres have converted and are still explosive. Probably yes to the conversion and slowing in speed. The reason I used the Staron article was to make the point that fibre conversions are reversible in adults and so he could regain his speed again if he trained more specifically as a sprinter. Some seem to believe that fibre conversions once intiated are irreversible, which is not the case. This was the point I was trying to make.

There are different types of type ii such as iia, iia/b, iib, iix (iix not yet confirmed in human subjects but in Rats), no one knows precisely which set of subtypes are most important to or abundant in sprinters. I was not trying to say that iib are predominant in trained sprinters just the fact that conversion is reversible and so any specific adaptations made by other training not similar to sprinting can be reversed by proper training. Also the Guassian curve will apply to even fast fibres, what I mean is a percentile of type ii will contract as slowly as the fastest type i fibres; and so it is not correct to say that in-vivo performances do not support the speed contractions of iia and iib, as found in in-vitro. The guassian curve applies even to fast fibres, some will be almost predestrian others as fast as the proverbial off a shovel in in-vivo. So it is fair to say that most likely a sprinters fast fibres are operating in the higher levels of fast fibre speeds and a middle/long distance in the lower percentiles.[/QUOTE]