Here's my first post on how I train for speed.
I recently competed in the 400, 100, 800, 4x100, 1500m and did fairly well. While individual event timings were not top class, what I found most interesting was that I did a bang up job on every event. My wins were emphatic.
My training goals were:
1. General Endurance - to last through 5 events of maximal performance.
2. Strength - all the events required a significant amount of pounding the track. Since the events were fairly short (compared to the middle distances), the legs had to propel maximally on each foot strike.
3. Strength endurance - none of the events were pure endurance events. All (except the 100 of course) needed some amount of strength over a sustained period of over 1 minute.
I did several things for this mainly
1. Weight training - two sessions a week. One session was medium to heavy weights upto 15 reps on each set. The other was light weights at 30 reps or more at high speed. Strength and strength Endurance.
2. Plyometrics - bounding and hopping type exercises for 30 minutes, once a week. (there was a 20 minute warmup and 7 minute cool down sandwiching the Plyo session. Explosive Power.
3. Redline training. This was simply a case of getting the body used to hard running for more than a minute. Once a week, I would do a 7-8 minute warmup jog - probably 800 meters or so. This followed by six 400m repeats at near full speed. The speed was always kept at a level where form could be maintained. Between each of these runs, I would jog/walk 400m and allow the heart rate to come back down to about 68%. At the end of 6 repeats, I am totally wasted.
Every one of these sessions was closed out with either abs or arms workouts.
What this did for me was that it gave me a very fast recovery between events. Also since the events were no where near as long as my training sessions, I was able to bring the entire strength to the event and focus it on moving from point a to point b in the shortest possible time.
Do try out your own version of the above and let me know if it works for you.
Until next time.
4 comments:
Good blog Sandy. Yet another running blog site added to my list.
Like I mentioned earlier, I have started to try out Yasso's 800 for my speed workouts for this marathon and usually close my speed session with a set of abs, core and arms.
I plan to train seriously for speed from January to June with the final objective being the NY marathon next year.
Sandy, I am off beer for the next three weeks till the marathon. I promise to come back with anexplosive bang when I get back from Singapore. Then we will do a speed beer session like they drink a quarter in the wine shops
Mohan - thanks!
Shumit - All the best for your Sing Marathon. Watch out for the explosive return. I am not training for the Sing Marathon my self and if you want to do the come back with me, I just might come along. That might be a problem - for me that is!!
Great blog Sandy! Keep writing dude... and running.
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