Tapering down in 2 weeks

[Track_man]

@lkh

I think the issue is more that the overspeed downhill (at 5-6% grade as has been posted here recently) places rather extreme impact stresses, and at 16 the body is still developing and maybe not ready to handle the higher stress loads.

It does appear that resisted or overspeed by itself does not seem to have much of a performance improvement (that was posted recently too and there other papers to that effect), so it may indeed be that the overspeed IS needed to get the gains that have been mentioned. I’m going to do this stuff for a couple of workouts with a high school sprinter, but he’ll be 18, not 16 at the time, which is a big difference.

Maybe you can run on the flat with the wind and not go to the full overspeed downhill?

do you mean that resisted/overspeed individually in a workout alone, with nothing else, are not effective for performance improvements?

and what are the best distances to use for this workout, 30m for resisted? and 60m for flat + wind sprints?

edit: just a random thought I had, what do you do when your downhill sprint is in the direction of a headwind? are you still reaching higher top speeds if the winds not that strong?