The Chilling Zone

Expert Discussion Advanced Sprint Training
1

When finishing top speed work with a zone in which you just “chill” i.e. 45m build up, 25m fly, 20m chill what is the purpose of this zone? Being able to relax after top speed is finished?

2

Normally you dont end with a “chill zone”… because in essence the 25 meter fly is maintainence of top speed. After that is is speed endurance. When you run sprint (20m) float (20m) sprint (20m) the float zone is pretty much your chill zone and the next 20 you try and accelerate again. The only way i can see using a 25 meter chill zone after a 25 meter fly is so you make sure you decelerate so injury does not occur.

Sorry if youre not following. I may have picked a poor chioce of words and phrased it incorrectly.

3

Thanks for the speedy reply Quick. I do follow however I did think that Charlie and some others advocated this chill zone with no pick-up afterwards although I could be failing in my memory.

If anyone else remembers this your posts would appreciated so I feel I’m not going crazy. :smiley:

4

I’m not positive but I think it could have something to do with stride control and though you have taken your foot off of the gas pedal, by relaxing and maintaining your sprint mechanics with minimal effort you are able to hold your speed or minimize your speed losses for certain distances. This is very useful for 400’s in my opinion since being able to run parts of longer races with minimal effort can leave you with more available energy for the latter stages of the race than you would have had you “floored it” the whole way. I often do work with 400 and 800 runners like this to allow them to somewhat recover within the race and teach them not to work so hard within the race in order to achieve better results. You can coast pretty far in a 400 after a good initial acceleration before you have to try to speed up.

5

Cool post. I was thinking along similar lines, that this might be useful in particular for longer distances than 100m.

6

Bump for the forum (the main use of the chilling zone is learning to maintain submax speed in 200m up and less useful for the 100?).