After doing much reading, experimenting with various methods and evaluating adecdotal evidence with a few athletes and myself I have concluded the following…
A) After a certain stage of development (and granted that you are genetically “fast” while maintaining strength) Acceleration (20-30 meters) and Max Velocity (flying 20-30’s) can no longer be improved by simply doing accel work and running at Max Velocity. What I mean is that once you are at a certain point and technique is sufficent running flying sprints is no longer going to improve your flying sprint times.
One of the reasons I came to this conclusion is because I realized on numerous occasions I can not train for 3 months and run within .05 of my PR within 3 weeks of training.
B) We then say the way to get faster would be to get stronger but I also see this as contradicting info.Yes there here are different types of strength which will be appropriate for various athletes but how to decide what is needed also becomes an issue. I don’t agree with many peoples standards and many of these standards contradict eachother. What is strong enough? Do we really need to break out the forceplates? This is what I am starting to think. My squat has gone up over 100 pounds since sophmore year of college (4 years) yet my 60 meter times have failed to improve. And I know what you are thinking… I need explosive strength. Wrong… My vert has also gone up 3 inches. And over the past year my squat has gone up another 30-40 pounds and deadlift has gone up over 60 with no increase in vertical jump. How can that be explained. Since soph. year of college 8 pound increase in bodyweight with bodyfat staying the same (around 5%) and since last yr. an increase of 2 pounds bodyweight bodyfat the same.
C)With all that being said either I do not know what the hell I am doing, I am an anomoly, or every training method is pretty much the same and superior genetics rule once you are at a certain level.
D)In this type of situation the best way to get performance increases sprint wise would be speed endurance which may not improve the 60 much but have great effect in the 100 and 200 which it has in the past.
I did not really want to make this a thread about myself but I couldnt help but use myself as an example. I have noticed this with a few other athletes as well (more advanced athletes with older training age). Someone else on this board has even noticed the same of himself. If he wants to come forward it may be helpfuk if he became involved in this thread.
I know I may get blasted here but I just needed to air out a bit. Also… Please save all the scientific mumbo jumbo. I have an Exercise Science degree myself but we all know alot of this book/lab stuff doesn’t apply the same in a real world setting.
It would be disappointing if you got flack for it as I thought it was a great post and rasies some great points. Having you as a direct responder rather than ‘someone I train’ should make for an intesresting and enlightening discussion.
Quik–
I have seen some of your training in the past and I didn’t see a lot of speed work. Maybe you were trying something new, I don’t know. Comparing your training to say, the Vancouver SPP graphs shows a significant difference in the frequency of speed work and volume.
To me, it seemed a lot of your training was based around lifting and int. tempo w/ some accel work and occasional max v. I think something more focused on max v and accel w/ more recovery considerations (seemed like you were sore or tight a lot) could help you out.
I’ve noticed that the effects of bodyweight can sometimes be negatively magnified more than you would think. In other words, for sprinting it would generally seem feasible that a 100 pound increase in squat weight would vastly overshadow a 10 pound increase in bodyweight for sprinting…particularly when the VJ has gone up as well. But considering you’re sprinting 60’s and 100’s the strength and explosiveness of the hamstrings would be more important than they are in the squat, VJ, adn shorter sprints, which all tend to be more quad dominant.
So the strength, power, and VJ gains you’re making may not be translating due to the fact that the wrong muscle groups are dominant.
One thing I would do is check for muscle balance issues in the lower body.
I have to agree with him about the mysteries of athletics. Consider these cases:
#1- All American (D3) decathlon, 55h, 110h: trains exclusively with tempo (zero speed work) and weights. Improved significantly over his career which lasted about 10 years from HS to college and after.
#2- All Conference sprinter. Big improvements in the 100m with zero tempo. Only used pure speed work, weights, and plyos. Training age of about 8 years.
#3- Good short sprinter. Made big improvements using weights only (no running). Training age 7 years.
#4- Myself. I do best on low vol work training when I feel like it with a heavy focus on weights and complexes. I feel that besides minor technical benefits, speed work does not help me. I am currently on a highly structured 6-day a week training program and running poorly. Training age 10 years.
what if hes doing ATG squats what that make any diff?
Usually but not always. IMO some people just have a lot more muscle cells in the quads and they tend to get overdeveloped or overly strong in proportion to the rest and screw up technique. The rectus femoris can also get tight and inhibit the backside. I experienced a bit of the same thing myself and it took me a good while to figure out what was causing it.
FWIW, I might recommend the only strength training be posterior chain work and lots of mobility on the quads and RF.
Chris Korfist also has an article series over on inno-sport.net where he shows videos of some of this type of deal on what he calls “pull” runners and “push” runners. I think it’s called Deconstructing Speed.
Pretty interesting nonetheless.
Actually now that I think about it Digitalair had the same type of deal going on…can’t remember exactly what we did but I know I pulled regular squats out of his program and switched to wider stance box squats and more explosive work…he was/is quite strong and powerful but needed to learn to use more of his backside for both decleration and acceleration.
very good points, so for the post chain he would focus on snatch dl and all sort of glut hams. would it be too late for him to start now since hes already inseason?
For the record I never really was consistent with squats my whole career. For one reason or another, injury, tiredness after workouts etc. I never did much squatting.
Anyway freshman year of college my 1RM was 225 and my vert with no technique was 29. I weighed 147.
Senior year of college my max was around 315 with minimal increase in my 60 time around .04 and my weight was up to 154 with vert at 32".
This past year. Being out of college for 2 years I am 158 pounds my squat without training it much is 335, deadlift which I failed to list but 2 years ago the most I pulled was 365 is up to 430 which was in a competition and my vert is still at 32". Also in college the most I was ever able to do with RDL’s was 185 for 8 and now I am doing 250 for sets of 5. So I guess this puts Kelly’s idea out the window which was also my idea as I will touch upon later on. Also…since my knee injury…from last March up until 12 weeks ago I did no lower body training or running. After this period I Tested my vert and it went down only a half of an inch. As of last week it was back to 32". As far as lower body lifts the only lifts I have been doing have Powercleans from the hang, Trap Bar DL’s, RDL’s, DB Swings and a shitload of X Band walks. I have been avioding quad work as I have had the same though as Kelly about quad dominance. This past weekend after 5 weeks of training I opened up with a 7.24 60 which is .10 off my PR. Last year off of 12 weeks of training I opened up with a 7.20 and finished the season with a 7.17.
In the past (past 4 years) there has always been at least 2 days of real speed work with the exception of the first 3 weeks and weeks of meets. I would have liked 3 but I sometimes have had problems recovering. None the less there was def. at least 2.
dude dont take this the wrong way but i think if u squat was higher that would help i was thinking u were squatting 430+. rdls are great but u should try reactive gh we done them all summer and they work great.
Kelly can you speak more about evaluating muscle imbalances…
I think you may have something here…
"The rectus femoris can also get tight and inhibit the backside. I experienced a bit of the same thing myself and it took me a good while to figure out what was causing it. "
“lots of mobility on the quads and RF”
I believe the hips were causing my knee problem which to make a long story short was neg. on an MRI, did not respond to PT, ART, Accumpuncture or rest. Somehow it seems hip work and xband walks made it go away. However yesterday the other one began hurting a bit. But thats another story which has not become an issue as of yet. If you can elaborate on the above statements that would be great.
BTW, I got the new book. Good stuff as usual. Shipping was fast as hell as well.
When my squat went from 225-335 it did not help so what makes you think it going up another 100 pounds will?
At the moment I am still ify about doing RDL’s nevermind doign reactive ones in the past few months they killlllllllllllled my knee problems.
