I recieved this email sent by Steve of Oztrack web site. Its a general email sent to all members of his Yahoo member’s site. All those who believe in masses of speed endurance take note
Just thinking about sprinting programs for developing athletes and it is clear that athletes can run very well with minimal speed endurance type work.
One of my female athletes last season ran 11.3h for 100m and she rarely did anything else other than 150 rest 8min 150 rest 8min 150 rest 2min 150. She did them from flying starts and started the year with them in times like 18.8, 18.8, 19.7, 20.8 and built to do them in times like 16.9, 17.1, 17.8, 18.7. Occasionally she did 2 x 300m rest 10min in 42s but did it within herself. Off this sort of speed endurance training she did a sub55s relay split and ran under 24s for 200m.The only other endurance work that was performed was sessions of what i call exercise tempo eg. 4 x 5 x 40m at 75% effort with a set of two different exercises before each rep. These sessions were done on a grass a couple of times a week. (This is a Charlie Francis idea , that works great)
I now firmly believe that it is too easy for athletes and coaches to overdo the amount of time spent performing speed endurance trainining and miss out on opportunities to further develop speed and power.
regards
Steve Bennett
www.oztrack.com