Renato Canova wrote:
Regarding hill sprints, during general period, my athletes use twice per week this type of training. When they move to the fundamental period, we use 3 times every two weeks, during the specific period always once per week, sometime twice. But, for example, I use (when possible) few repetitions (may be, 6 times only) also the day before the race, or the same day of the race, if the race is by night. The goal is the recruitment of the most part of muscular fibres, the same situation of sprinters or jumpers when they carry out some workout with weights soon before the competition. About the gradient, we start with hard grade (may be near 20%) during the general period, then gradually we move to easier hills (in any case, never easier than 10%) in order to develop higher speed. There is not a rule for this type of workout : it's not possible to decide how many tests for every workout. It's the coach that has to decide the number, and how many workouts per week. Not all the athletes need the same quantity of this type of training, exactly like not all people need the same quantity of a medicine, depending on the level of their sickness.
Because this is a very easy and useful way for increasing strength, of course is a type of training recommanded for high school too. The only attention must be for the execution : use always long recovery, this is not a training for ENDURANCE, but for STRENGTH. For STRENGTH ENDURANCE we use the type of circuits we described before. It's exact the interpretation of the poster, changing volume, intensity and distance according different events, and different periods.
Renato, when doing the hill sprints in the specific period of training, how does the athlete use six sprints with long recovery, without increasing the anaerobic capacity too much, and losing endurance pace?