Tempo???

Expert Discussion Advanced Sprint Training
41

He said where is their evidence that it take 48 seconds to recover!

you might as well try it yourself…its not that tough.

studies? studies like the one cited before? Talking about and i quote:

All four subjects were accustomed to vigorous exercise and had considerable experience in sprinting to exhaustion on the treadmill.

come on, please…

how can you POSSIBLY argue the benifits of aerobic ability? there are numerus, just read u the studies referenced on any training book, of the top of my head essentials strength training and conditioning.

having more capilaries on your muscles is good-faster nutrient transportation…

regardless, most if not all elite sprinters do some form of tempo, if results are talking, that would be it.

theory is good and all only when it gives results, and at least in the region of human training physiology, science, has the habit of aproving with some delay what great coaches know for some time…

But I dont see the need for tempo once you are adjusted to running fast, as this is whats needed to improve.

where is the prove that short duration speed training sessions are enough to cause proper (elite level) adaptation?

i mean, ok, for the tempo side of things we have the fastest human ever (johnson). On the other side? You? No dissrespect, seriously, but you know what i mean.

how do you know that doing less more frequents work outs does not drain the CNS? Any prove on that?

1 Like
42

Let me try and rephrase this :

are short duration speed training sessions a sufficient mean to fully address the complex factors which ultimately limit individual sprint performances at (current) elite level?

43

I watched abit of Ben’s training in 1985, 1988 and again in 1990 and he was doing very, very easy tempo on grass surfaces pretty much on alternate days to high velocity sessions. Of course his speed sessions were at maximum velocity which in his case in 88 was certainly at or almost at world record pace. Then he would head off to the gym and lift seriously heavy in the bench and squat. In 1990 he wasn’t training with Charlie anymore, but he was still doing pretty similarly constructed training with Loren Seagrave. Loren coached the first three placings in the 1989 US Championships women’s 100m. I guess he knew something about training methods and he was using alternating tempo with Ben. I don’t know if he did with his other athletes, although when I watched him working with Sandra Farmer-Patrick at Barcelona World Cup in 1989 they were definitely doing tempo work mixed with various exercises including glute-ham-gastroc , all done on the grass infield.
Cathy Freeman I’ve seen in London over several seasons and she was very strict about doing tempo. Not sure why she and her coach(es) felt tempo was important, but it was part of her training since at least 1992 and through to including 2000. For her size and slight build she was amazing quick and had fantastic endurance.

44

1-Essentials strength and conditioning huh, its all good and well reading strength and conditioning books but you must understand what sprinting demands before you can extract the relavent information from such materials

2- Maybe they should not be because the negatives greatly outweight the positives.

3- Yes correct, science has proven to get faster you must run fast, to get faster you must be very strong to withstand ground support forces created by gravity during sprinting, science has proved that mechnical muscle work is not responsible for force generation at top speed,
science has proved to run faster you need to release more stored potential elastic energy at ground contact, science has proved all of this, all pretty obvious stuff any coach could have guess this. All science today contridicts many of the so called benifits or tempo running sessions.

4- ?? Are you serious

5-No disrespect to you or ben but generally people who cheat get very little respect

6- How do you know that it take 48hours for CNS to recovery. Why do tempo when the same benifits can be gained without the detraining effects? At least “zap” has laid some evidence down.

45

If he was going into the gym and lifting some pretty heavy weights would this not be classified as high intensity? Surely he could not do that because his CNS would not have had 48 hours to recover. :rolleyes:

I supose because ben did bench press in training this makes bench press a vital part of every sprinters program.

46

How easy were his tempo runs,at what effort did he do them on a 0-75% scale?

47

Actually, the point of lifting right after sprinting is to maximize recovery time. If you lift right after, then you have the maximum time between high intensity workouts (most importantly, the next sprint session).

I supose because ben did bench press in training this makes bench press a vital part of every sprinters program.

To my knowledge, all 5 of the sub 9.8 guys bench over 300lbs. Not that it means that bench press is most important, but it certainly shows there MAY be something to it. A lot of sprint programs (like CFTS) use the bench press as part of the taper, which allows for CNS stimulation without fatiguing the muscles specifically used in sprinting,

48

It seams that you are the member of Weyands and others spring model… Actually, you are wrong! There are two tents: propulsive theory and spring theory of Vmax and the things are not so clear yet! If you are interested search for post form Alex Michalow (alexmicha) in “Barry Ross on Ben and Maurice” thread! Human is way too complex than a bouncing ball!

49

Davan,
just because 5 of the sub 9.8 guys can bench over 300lbs means nothing. You will notice that you use the muscles stimulated in bench whilst running very very minimally.
Cns stimulation of the muscles you use in a bench press??? to help sprinting in a taper???
you obviously dont understand that lifting heavy is to practice and encourage the recruitment of larger motor neurons within the SPECIFIC muscle…thats what strength gains are.

50

1-Essentials strength and conditioning huh, its all good and well reading strength and conditioning books but you must understand what sprinting demands before you can extract the relavent information from such materials

well i kind of figured that better nutrient transport to the muscle helps with recovery. You dissagree?

2- Maybe they should not be because the negatives greatly outweight the positives.

as far as i get it the negatives are a)CNS burn out (but then again, isnt the point of doing tempo at 75% or bellow excactly that? that is kind of “free”?) b)fatigue - again if you try it, youll see that after tempo you feel refreshed. At least i do

All science today contridicts many of the so called benifits or tempo running sessions.

i dissagree, the study above is a joke, and the science shows the many merits of cardivascular fitness. Again they are general (at least non specific) so you can just search around pubmed or wherever for the many, many-MANY studies conducted on the matter, as well as the experience of athletes. What im trying to say is that you build up and maintain a good substracture with tempo that ontop of which you build speed among other things.

4- ?? Are you serious

yes very.

you say that its more conductive to do say 4x20m today, and another 4x20 tomorow instead of 2x4x20 today and tempo tomorow. Where is the prove for that?

5-No disrespect to you or ben but generally people who cheat get very little respect

you did not just say that man, seriously, you didnt. Its ignorant, bellow the belt, and has no place in here. We are a bit past that one way or the other

6- How do you know that it take 48hours for CNS to recovery. Why do tempo when the same benifits can be gained without the detraining effects? At least “zap” has laid some evidence down.

im sorry but i saw no evidence, just theories can you elaborate?

Davan,
just because 5 of the sub 9.8 guys can bench over 300lbs means nothing. You will notice that you use the muscles stimulated in bench whilst running very very minimally.
Cns stimulation of the muscles you use in a bench press??? to help sprinting in a taper???
you obviously dont understand that lifting heavy is to practice and encourage the recruitment of larger motor neurons within the SPECIFIC muscle…thats what strength gains are.

CNS stands for central nervous system. That is the brain and the spinal cord.

bench is used in tapers as a safe means to excite the nervous system to maintain strength gains. Btw motor neurons are not chategorized by size, rather by number. You recruit more motor neurons.

If he was going into the gym and lifting some pretty heavy weights would this not be classified as high intensity? Surely he could not do that because his CNS would not have had 48 hours to recover.

again its about distributing cns load, utilizing everything in a trainers arsenal to make the most out of high cns session in a safe way

51

Zap & DJones,

It seams that you are directing into “specificity only” direction… Altought this is healthy discussion I belive this is a classical example of specific vs general discussion!
I will use the another example: marathon! Science has proven that to run marathon faster you should:

  1. Improve Vo2max, OBLA and “fat power”
  2. Improve eficacy of a run
  3. Increase muscle and liver glycogen storages

But don’t you think that marathon runners don’t benefit from speed sessions? I belive (according to Noakes) that higher speed re-set Central Governor and allows runner to reach higher speed during a run. Also, CNS is greater determinant of success than only number of mitochondria and heart stroke volume!!!
Speed training is for marathoners an example of GPP mean (general mean)! Also, speed sessions in marathoners improve muscle elasticity and thus eficacy and maybe prevent from SSC fatigue (sometimes called a “wall”) during a race!
I would not agree that science has all the answers… Did your read something regarding new fatigue theories (Noakes, Gandevia) and Laktate metabolism (Gladden, Brooks etc)?
Tempo represent GPP mean in sprinter, as speed represent GPP for marathoners! The ratios between GPP and SPP means is important… Both of you guys are “short sighted” (no offense) looking only at SPP (specificity)! A good level of GPP preparedness (tempo, ab work, medball) are needed to support new levels of SPP! but this is just my opinion…
Keep it up! Nice tread!

P.S.
I didn’t want to offense anybody

52

Doing speed training every day (in lesser volume) is monotonuous! Boredom will certainly be involved!
Also, Bill Bowerman is one of the first coaches who incorporate principles of HI/LO or hard/easy:
“…were the first to teach that training should not always be the same intensity and duration, day in and day out. They observed that their runners progressed best when they were allowed a suitable recovery period after each hard training session. For some, this period was only 24h; for others it might have been as long as 48h. This is what is known as the hard/easy day training programme” (excerpt for Lore of running, Tim Noakes, 2001, Oxford, pp369: Fith Rule: Alternate hard and easy training)
Altought this is example for long distance runners, it may be appropriate to sprint, because training principles are universal… You must incorporate “waving” into your both microcycle level, mezo and macro level (even some coaches used 4 year olimpic waves).

Altought I agree that we need a proof regarding CNS fatigue… It is also noticable in very long, in duration, activities (according to Enoka: CNS wont recruit units, but when muscles are being el stimulated they dont show decrease in force: Twitch imposition test)

53

[QUOTE=epote]
having more capilaries on your muscles is good-faster nutrient transportation…
QUOTE]

capillaries aid in providing better aerobic capacity for muscles, which is used in aerobic activities, sprinting is anaerobic and the energy required for sprinting is stored in the muscle (glycogen) where it is broken down anaerobically to form ATP and lactic acid. more efficient oxygen transportation is only formed to help you adjust to the constant tempo work whereby glycogen is broken down aerobically.

How are Djones’ comments below the belt… it is well known how Johnson became so fast, maybe he could have gone faster if he trained better…

Also when i mentioned more sessions at lesser volume, i didnt mean cutting sessions in half and spreading them over two days.

If recovery is so improtant, why do you do high intensity sprints and then high intensity weights on the same day… Wouldnt you need 48 hours to recover???.. If sprinting fatigues the cns so much that it needs 48 hours to recover then the weights on the same day as sprinting would be severely compromised and not near the athletes potential.

A full sprint session followed by a weights session the following day would be much better in conserving the cns.

Feeling refreshed after tempo…
so your saying that the day after a high intensity day, you feel crap, until your tempo runs make you feel refreshed…then wait another 24 hours before you do anything beneficial to sprinting.

Tempo is practising slower and lesser contractions, I cannot see how a whole session can be dedicated to this every off day without having the negative effects of training slower and lesser contractions.

and IF it does take 48 hours for the cns to recover from a massive high intensity session, it would take far less time to recover if the session was in lesser volume… hammering the cns every off day will probably produce greater fatigue than more sessions at lesser volume…which in the weight room have been proven to give greater gains in strength.

54

ok, this is just going round and round, see my previous post, i debated the exact points you just made

55

Aside from the sarcasm, the bench press is also used because it allows you to tax your CNS, which is important for sprinting.

When Ben hurt his hamstring, didnt he do the bench press in order to tax his CNS until he could get back to sprinting? one of many other reasons anyways?

56

This is what we used to do. Since making the switch to HI/LO all atheltes at all abilities who train at least 5 days a week have made better more conistant imporements. I can’t prove it is because of one thing or another but it makes a big difference.

57

Couple of thing to add:

  1. Acute effect of tempo is “blood flushing”, thus removing metabolites and bringing new material to muscles (altought we are talking about CNS fatigue). How is this related to speeding up CNS recovery? Training variety, GPP? I would love to know this answer!!!
  2. Chronical effects of tempo runs may speed up recoveries during speed session and thus increase CP and ATP restoration in muscle!!! This way the athlete is able to do more reps and to recover faster between them, thus its facilitates speed sessions!!!
  3. Regarding your statement: New research showed (gotta find the reference, but I know Noakes wrote it for Br J Sports Med) that during beggining of maximal sprints (tested with Wingate test) there is a great reduction of PO2 (partial pressure of oxygen) in muscle cells, thus indicating that there is a much greater aerobic component than believed!!! So, again, research is just starting to show some major flaws that we (coaches but moslty phisiologists) believed to be true!!
  1. As Davan have already answered to this question: to maximise time of recovery between two HI sessions
  2. CNS fatigue has a “delay phenomena”, thus it starts to take effect hours after the training session…
  3. Imediatelly after speed session, neural facilitation is greater than fatigue, and thus speed sessions may even facilitate lifting!!! If you delay lifting session, fatigue will overcome facilitation and you are going to be in a deep sh*t, also you will decrease a rest time till the next HI workout (speed session)!
58

zap and/or DJones,
could any of you provide a weekly plan of how you would set up any training elements you think necessary for a sprinter and perhaps for different training phases per season?
I think this will help us see where you are coming from…
Thanks!

59

OK-Here is a simplified sample

Mon- Speed end- (high int)- Tempo type warm down to finish the session (4-6x 80m) grass/70% + static stretch

Tuesday-Weights (medium volume) + accelerations 6-8- 20m warm down followed by stream room

Wednesday- Weights (high volume) + speed- tempo warm down- (4-6x 100m) @ 70% on grass + massage + static stretch

Easy day- Weights ( low volume) + pool recovery

Friday- Acceleration + Speed followed by tempo warm down

Saturday-
Accel (30-40)
Speed end (high int) low volume, tempo warm down recovery (8 X 60m @ 70%)

Sunday- Recovery/Rest/ Massage

60

I agree with you 100% in regards to the marathon runners and speed work.
The theory is that speed work for the long distance runner decreases contact times by increasing the plyometric ability of the athlete.
This theory has already been backed by studies which have shown distance athletes to improve dramatically without the increase of Vo2 max when strength and plyometric training have been included into the athletes general training.
Speed work should be a vital part of all distance runners programme.

Now you might say
Science has proven that to run marathon faster you should:

  1. Improve Vo2max, OBLA and “fat power”
  2. Improve eficacy of a run
  3. Increase muscle and liver glycogen storages
  4. Decrease contact times by includeding speed/plyometric work.

Distance runners would be crazy not to take advantage of the information science gives them.

A lot of information is now taking the guess work or theories out of training which is good for the coach and athlete.