5x60m w/ full recovery

I took over this program pretty recently, but our top 3 on the men's side are averaging 1:51.8 with most of their 400's around 48.7-49.3 when they get the chance to jump into 4x400m legs, which is a little less often than I'd like.Before I started, the team didn't have anyone under 1:58. One of those 3 was a solid recruit that I've had for 2 years, the other two are now seniors.

Texas HS Coach wrote:

If the demands are so great, who not increase recovery time and drop the volume?

Does a distance runner need 5-10 reps at max v?

Why not 3x50 to 3x70m progression over several weeks? Full recovery. How much quality at the cns level occurs after that third rep...particularly when doing risk analysis?

I don't mean to spook people with CNS fatigue, its a very real issue that needs consideration (sprint coaches have a very firm grasp in this area). The reason we tend to operate in the 5-10 rep window is that we want to spend more total time at max velocity. I'll go through an example that I think will illustrate it. For this I'll add up the total number of meters at top speed assuming that from 0-40m we are accelerating and that past 80m we are slowing down again. Its mostly accurate but HS kids and people who aren't as developed will use lower numbers, probably topping off around 60-70m.

3x50m: this has 30m total at top speed (10m per rep)

3x70m: 90m at top speed (30m per rep)

10x50m: 100m at top speed (10m per rep)

8x60m: 160m at top speed (20m per rep)

In this sport we still need to follow the principle of overload, 3x70m can be a great way to do some maintenance work, but there are other ways to get in more volume and across a 12 day plan its hard to overload the CNS with this kind of work. Now if you do this session a couple times or if you add in a speed endurance session (80-150m reps) then CNS fatigue needs to be watched. We don't his speed endurance until pre-comp usually, sometimes specific prep in a limited capacity (80m reps).

But I think your suggestion of raising the recovery is very smart mostly to ensure CrP gets replenished. It should take about 3 minutes but on longer reps I'll push our recovery out to be safe. I don't think this helps with CNS fatigue since it isn't metabolically driven.

It would be great if a sprint coach or a physiologist could let me know if that sounds right to them.

bobby sss wrote:

Can anyone help me with this workout?

I was out of shape coming off a 2 year lay off and I jumped in a friends workout. 6x 300m good speed, 100m fast jog, 100 hard speed. (total of 500m continuous) There was a 300m rest between each one. My legs burned and was spent the next couple of days.

Where in the season would this kind of work fall into?

That depends a fair amount on what you're training for. I hate giving that answer but its hard to do better without more context.

It looks like its set up to be a lactate tolerance workout for a miler. Personally I am not big on workouts that make it look you're trying to kick multiple times. I know tons of coaches who love workouts and have had success with them but aside from lactate tolerance it seems to lack specificity. I tend to be a little formulaic so that I'm sure is part of it.

If we say that the workout you did was working lactate tolerance then for us you'd find it in the last 10-12 weeks of our program after they have established their speed and are working on improving their sodium bicarbonate stores to resist acid build-up. This also needs to be after you have a solid aerobic base because this workout will lower your blood pH (thus the burning legs) which starts to damage mitochondria. Once you get out of your base phase for distance runners you're on borrowed time before you need to shut down the season and rebuild your aerobic components again.

I don't know if that was what you were looking for but I hope it helps.

V,

I'm not sure how your reply slipped by me. Thanks for the breakdown. This is an awesome thread.

What changes between MD and LD do you make for the track season besides moving to a 12-day cycle? Have you had success with a particular training "scheme" for events like the 1500m?

I'm no physiologist, and wouldn't call sprints my primary coaching expertise, but I'll chime in with what I've learned/been taught.

The window on holding top speed is roughly 2 seconds, whether you're an elite sprinter, or a low level distance runner who's done some basic speed development. The obvious difference is the elite sprinter is going to cover a whole lot more ground in that 2 seconds, and they are going to take a bit longer to get up to speed (a bit via more time, but mostly in terms of needing to cover more ground). If you have even a mid-distance athlete who isn't dropping off top speed til 80m, they're most likely better sprinters than your actual sprinters.

Most 'slower' athletes are up to top speed around the 25-30m mark, which means they're already slowing down by the 50m mark of a dead sprint. Advanced mid-distance people are probably more in the range of 35-40m to top speed, meaning 60m is around the spot they'll start to drop pace. These aren't way off your figures, but I think the main point of emphasis (on my end) would be that on a given rep, once you've started to slow down, you're past the point of fully loading your CNS system, and its now overloaded to the point of not in 'full' control of muscular movements. Getting to this point is going to more substantially increase injury risk (sprinters typically pull a hammy in the first 2 steps, or the last 30m), require longer rest to be considered full recovery, and possibly prevent them from really hitting their max velocity in the later reps. Regarding rest, I agree with what you had listed. 90-95% of ATP/CP energy system recovery is done in :90 seconds, but it takes double that for essentially full recovery, so 3:00+ is a good idea for 60m+ on reps (keeping in mind that if the previous rep dug deeper than just the ATP/CP systems, they aren't the only thing that needs recovery).

The highly related workout type that I don't think has gotten nearly as much attention is pure acceleration work (so 25-40m reps, depending on how advanced your runner is). On the CNS side, max effort accels are making your CNS work at full capacity, just not for enough duration to bring it to the edge of overload. Rest can be significantly shorter, since you aren't fully depleting ATP/CP systems in a 4-5 second rep the way you do in a 6-8 second one, you can chop rest down to :90 rather than 3:00+, you're still going to get major power development stimulus, and its a much harder workout for an athlete to over-do.

I do fully agree with you on the point about volume. For a middle or long distance runner if they're working max velocity or acceleration, until the point in the season where they're in maintenance mode for those systems, the point should be to maximize the amount they get done without crossing any lines.

Thanks, Coach V! you answered my question

Horizon wrote:

V,

I'm not sure how your reply slipped by me. Thanks for the breakdown. This is an awesome thread.

What changes between MD and LD do you make for the track season besides moving to a 12-day cycle? Have you had success with a particular training "scheme" for events like the 1500m?

No problem, I'm glad it helped. I've sat on the sidelines of LetsRun since I was in high school, but I'm glad this thread has had so many people providing a lot of insight.

My 1500m guys train pretty similarly to my 800m runners but I will admit that we slant training toward the speed side of things with them. Generally they will emphasize one workout in the cycle that hits a projected mile pace harder than my 800m runners who do a little bit of work on that too. Then they downplay the 800m work a bit. If you looked at our plan you'd probably see that the 1500m guys will do similar 800m workouts but they lag a few weeks behind and never get to the really intense reps toward the end of a season.

Everything I've said in this thread, as best I can remember, really only works for 800-1500m runners. Even getting up to the 3k/3200m you have to make adjustments. I only have a few athletes in that boat but they will usually have one special endurance workout removed (800m work typically) and subbed in for a more specific 5k workout. They also continue doing tempos where my 800m runners stop early in the indoor season in favor of broken reps with short recoveries.

The other thing that you'll probably notice is that reps, sets, and especially recoveries are altered. 800m runners thrive with more generous or frequent recoveries, but my milers get antsy when I have them do speed dev or long recoveries with our faster special endurance 2 workouts even when the 800m runners are taking them to task on the reps.

So compared to their actual race distance my 800m runners use longer reps than my milers do but get way more recovery. My milers don't do as many long reps but I tend to push their recoveries more often. An 800m runner can wrap their heads around 500's but to tell a miler to do 1k at their race pace is much harder to convince. Physiologically I don't think there is a massive difference there as far as if the athlete can handle it, but I feel like I get more out of them for the bulk of the year doing sets of medium length reps (400-600m) with short recoveries to simulate those long reps. I save the +800m reps at mile pace for the late pre-comp phases. or I just do them at the start of a workout then go back to short reps just to let them get used to the idea of sustaining that pace without a break.

I guess the last thing I'll mention since I don't know if I fully answered what you were looking for, my MD runners do very little work during cross that builds up lactic acid. The only notable things that do are VO2max, races, one macro cycle of speed endurance, and typically one workout per cycle that does a little bit of mile pace work with short reps and conservative recovery. Those last two parts are not exactly textbook but I've tried it without and they just seem to come out of cross better when we add just enough to make them feel like they are still track athletes. Otherwise I get the younger runners freaking out that they aren't fast anymore despite huge improvements in their top speed.

If I still haven't hit on what you were looking for let me know

That training plan linked is insane. In four consecutive days: Race, short hill sprints, tempo, intervals.

I ran in college & Nike Farm Team and I never saw anything like that. And as a high school coach that would lead to injury and burnout. I've coached some fast guys 1:52/4:10 & girls 2:12/4:50 but I don't think they could handle this.

I am interested how this works for the 800m / miler?

That's a lot of quality wrote:

That training plan linked is insane. In four consecutive days: Race, short hill sprints, tempo, intervals.

I ran in college & Nike Farm Team and I never saw anything like that. And as a high school coach that would lead to injury and burnout. I've coached some fast guys 1:52/4:10 & girls 2:12/4:50 but I don't think they could handle this.

I am interested how this works for the 800m / miler?

I agree, I've never been as brave as him with that kind of thing. The biggest consecutive day quality efforts that I can imagine giving my athletes would be (days 3-6 below):

1- Lactate threshold

2- Mileage

3- Speed Dev

4- VO2max

5- Long Run

6- Special Endurance 1 (150-300m)

7- mileage

8- Hills

9- Special Endurance 2 (300-600m)

10- off

Many coaches probably consider 3,4,5, and 6 to be 4 consecutive quality days but depends on how you view the long run. I usually don't like going more than 3 days (i.e. every 3rd day) without seeing some kind of day that can be considered restorative (mileage, long run, off, and potentially hills)

From what I know of Scott's training he doesn't have many workouts that are mind blowing. Each one just tries to hit a different area of fitness enough to stimulate it a bit but never blow it out of the water. His runners also tend to be running 35-45 miles a week in track which helps a bit. But again, I do agree that it's dense, more so than I've been willing to test out so far.

I won't knock his program though, he's had quite a few state titles and had 4 guys go on to run sub 4:00 in the mile. I think that's tied with a New York school but don't quote me on that.

Hey V:

I'm just starting up my training again after a short break for knee tightness.

I've just gotten back into lifting again and I plan on starting periodization for sprints so I actually have some structures instead of just doing 100m sprints after my easy runs.

The biggest problem is that...It is already snowing like crazy here. Do you know of any kind of substitutions for sprint work when I'm not able to get outside and do it? I could go to my gym but my gym only has a small basketball court that is 30-35m across if i'm lucky.

I will go outside and at least get hills in when the roads clear, but I feel like I will be missing quality speed development days when I'm really looking to drop my 400 time a bit for the outdoor season.

George Ilie wrote:

Once in 5-7 weeks I have such sprints in my training, followed by a tempo.

Everytime, invariably, the quads and glutes are very tense during the tempo.

U.N.O. wrote:

Maybe you should sprint more frequently?

Good guess. I have a period of speed development, but I prefer not to mix strength with speed.

As much as I try to avoid overlapping them, the two types mix sometimes.

Slow, heavy strength and high speed exercises make the worst combination which can be done in the same week.

ThatAverageRunner wrote:

Hey V:

I'm just starting up my training again after a short break for knee tightness.

I've just gotten back into lifting again and I plan on starting periodization for sprints so I actually have some structures instead of just doing 100m sprints after my easy runs.

The biggest problem is that...It is already snowing like crazy here. Do you know of any kind of substitutions for sprint work when I'm not able to get outside and do it? I could go to my gym but my gym only has a small basketball court that is 30-35m across if i'm lucky.

I will go outside and at least get hills in when the roads clear, but I feel like I will be missing quality speed development days when I'm really looking to drop my 400 time a bit for the outdoor season.

I hope some of the high school coaches jump on this question because those are some crafty minds when it comes to getting their workouts done without indoor facilities.

The only time I haven't had some kind of indoor track or arena to use was in high school (as an athlete and later a coach) and we would usually do our speed dev days inside. Nearly every mid-large school has hallways that are long enough to get done what you need to do. Even if it means jogging around the corner before the start so that you aren't doing it from a dead start. After our school was redesigned my junior year we had a good 60m if one of the PE teachers or other coaches would let us use gymnastic mats to put against the far wall like what you see in the 55 or 60m indoors. Otherwise if you could get your buddy to hold open the door so that you could decelerate an extra few meters outside when the sidewalk was clear.

I'm sure this will get me in hot water but when I was a HS runner our sprinters would occasionally do them outside when the roads of the local park were clear. We all respected that coach a lot so if he told you to wear 4 layers of clothes for a warm-up and on your recoveries they would do just that. The problem isn't that its cold outside its that your muscles get cold. If, and its a very important if, you can keep your legs warm enough and the roads or track are safe to run on you're okay. Obviously some days that's not possible, but I think there are usually some days in the winter (I lived in the Northeast for over 20 years) that you can get them done outside.

You might have to jog back and forth in the hallway with a sweatshirt and long tights, do your warmup, go outside for 30s to get the sprint done and come back in, rinse and repeat, but its possible.

Plyometrics and the Olympic lifts are good supplemental things to do but truthfully they will not substitute anything entirely. Only do the Olympic lifts if you have a very good strength coach, I've been doing them for years and still have form that is probably considered "good enough." But you said you have 30m, sometimes that's the hand that you're dealt and you have to make the most of it.

I guess I'm less cautious with weather but you know your situation better than I do. If you're ever unsure if its safe don't risk it. 95% of this thread has been talking about speed development but we are still distance runners, there are obviously ideal scenarios but you have plenty of other areas that you can work on with your fitness. Don't feel like the season is a wash because you can't hit this stuff perfectly every week, we all run into things like that at some point.

This is an outstanding thread. Thanks to all for sharing your expertise.

I'm training with several runners ages 63-80 for the National Senior Games next summer in distances from 400m to 1500m. The younger seniors are in the 14-16 second range for 100m. The 80-year-old hasn't run this short, but he's probably 18.x with some training. How would you modify the 5x60m workout for them?

Would you go shorter distance? Or fewer reps? Or stay as is? None of us are currently doing anything this short.

I'm wondering if the OP's coach might have told him to do these UPHILL and the OP just missed that part of it. Because 60m hill sprints with long recovery are a pretty standard base phase workout for distance runners. Check out Renato Canova's hill sprint workout, there are several threads on this forum about it and they're good. Do a search.

I'm 57 and tried hill sprints for the first time about 3 weeks ago. I did 7X60 with about 3 min. recovery. I think the mistake I made was that I ran them too hard, especially for someone who has not literally sprinted, all out, in years. Even though my fitness is about at an all time high.

So I'm wondering if, even though it's a "sprint", it's possible to run them too fast. I mean, if Usain Bolt were preparing for a 60m race, I doubt one of his workouts would be 7x60 at full race effort. Uphill. Would it? I dunno, I'm still a bit of a newbie at this despite my advanced age, and know absolutely nothing about sprinter training.

A week later I was still sore enough that when I tried the workout again I couldn't even do it. On my 3rd rep I felt like I was about to pull a glute or hammy so I stopped.

I waited about 5 more days, then did it again at about 90% effort and it was much better. I'm going to try it again tonight.

So just a thought fisky, if you're an older runner and haven't sprinted before it might be best to think about easing into them a little.

Here are some ideas I've used with HS sprinters without access to an indoor track during the winter.

Any time outdoors, make sure they've got plenty of warm clothing on. I won't let them go without tights (at a minimum). Often they'll have long tights + half tights, and sometimes another layer over that. More layers for warm up and between hard reps, as V mentioned.

Keep reps short when it's cold. I haven't had anyone get hurt yet working on acceleration with 10-25m starts.

Adding resistance to the acceleration work with sleds/tires adds another layer of safety, and allows for the work intervals (rep length) to be extended. It keeps the runner in acceleration positions longer as well as slowing things down a bit.

Hills are another good one to reduce injury risk. Short hills for acceleration development, and long hills to sub for more typical extensive/intensive tempos and they're especially good for strength endurance, and lactate tolerance work if you've got someone who needs it at that point of the year.

If you've got snow, but not too much snow, and the ground is relatively well frozen, put some long spikes in and do your hills on the grass.

If you have access, do stairs indoors. As per typical, doubles for acceleration development, singles for remedial speed development, and long stair sets for strength endurance and/or lactate tolerance.

Using that gym, you could get some good 10-15m starts (maybe up to 20m if you've got good padding on the opposite wall), and you could do a wide variety or plyometric work as well.

You could probably work out a somewhat more extreme version of Mike Hurst/Kitkat's concurrent training program for the 400m, focusing the short end more on acceleration during the winter, and then more of the true top speed stuff once you have somewhere appropriate to work on it. The extra time spent developing your acceleration power probably wouldn't be a bad thing at all either.

fisky wrote:

This is an outstanding thread. Thanks to all for sharing your expertise.

I'm training with several runners ages 63-80 for the National Senior Games next summer in distances from 400m to 1500m. The younger seniors are in the 14-16 second range for 100m. The 80-year-old hasn't run this short, but he's probably 18.x with some training. How would you modify the 5x60m workout for them?

Would you go shorter distance? Or fewer reps? Or stay as is? None of us are currently doing anything this short.

Hi Fisky,

Thank you for the kind words and I admire that you and the group you train with are still on the grind.

This falls a bit out of my expertise, I've helped out a few runners in their 50's but in the very limited capacity of giving advice because they knew I was a runner, not sure if they even knew I was coaching at the time.

I would shorten the reps and do them uphill to start. you want to ease them into this and even though going uphill seems harder it takes away velocity which means you can do them with more control. 60's aren't great as an opening workout for this kind of work, even as distance runners we need to work on the acceleration component in isolation otherwise we aren't going to get much out of the top speed portion of a longer sprint (40-80m).

It will also be reasonable to lower the total volume and lengthen the recovery.

6x40m uphill with 3 minute recovery

8x40m uphill with 3 minute recovery

6x40m on the track with 3 minute recovery

2 sets 4x40m on the track with 3 minute recovery (5 minutes between sets)

These all address acceleration and usually I do one macro cycle with only hills (acceleration), one macro with 40m reps or less on the track (acceleration), then start speed development on the track with 50m reps. So typically in cross country my athletes aren't getting out of acceleration work for 2 months; essentially doubling the workout progression I have above.

See how they respond throughout that progression, if you don't notice anything by the end of the 5th week then it may be that accelerative power isn't adaptable enough at that age just due to muscle response. In that case, and for when you move to speed development in general, try doing reps with a rolling start. set up cones that are 30m apart and let them gradually accelerate so that once they hit the first cone they are ready to accelerate that last bit to top speed (should happen within 10m of passing the first cone). This just shifts the focus to the tope speed component and away from acceleration.

With an older group whose 100m times are longer than athletes I have you have to factor in a loss of coordination and CrP fatigue earlier since they are running the reps for a longer period of time. Our bodies have no idea what a meter is, our energy systems only care about how many seconds it can do something. The magic number for these sprints is between 7-8 seconds. If anyone in your group is running longer than that at a hard effort then its no longer alactic and means they will be slowing down to some degree.

Here's my disclaimer:

I haven't dealt with athletes in your situation so these are just my thoughts. There is definitely some variables for muscle elasticity that I just don't know enough about. I'd venture to say that a more senior group would be treated closer to a very young group in that they hit top speed much earlier (maybe 30m) because their top speed is lower. I also don't know how muscle responds to stimuli like this at that age and I have a strong suspicion that it might differ very greatly from senior male to senior female possibly in a unique way from how we traditionally think for males and females in general.

It wouldn't surprise me if the better way to go is to eliminate this kind of work and shift to slightly longer sprints that have a stronger metabolic component just because of limitation is muscle adaptations toward power or explosiveness.

It sounds like a big part of it was just that you didn't ease into it. 7x60m is certainly a tough workout especially when done uphill so I can definitely imagine soreness lasting a week if it hasn't been done for months or especially years.

As far as the "[can you] run them too fast" question then I would say that is a pretty unsatisfying "it depends." If you do them uphill as you said then yes, you can especially when the recovery is 3 minutes and you are doing so many reps. an uphill 60m is much closer to a flat 80m which for most people means that it touches speed endurance and relies on a more total CrP depletion (most agree that near total depletion for a trained athlete falls around 150m in a full on sprint). When we encounter that the easiest move is to extend the recoveries to ensure that your body can restore the CrP system and to lower the number of reps to maintain the high output of energy/velocity across the reps.

I don't know if it is or isn't something Bolt would do in general. For him this may be a specific prep workout where his speed is established but he wants to work on acceleration, but I'd be surprised if he wasn't doing 1-3 more minutes of recovery and possibly less reps.

You said you felt like something might pull on rep 3 the second time you did it, that can certainly have a strong rooting in muscle damage (excess soreness which you mentioned) and combined with a loss of coordination (CrP depletion from the long reps with somewhat short recovery) making you more prone to injury.

But I completely agree, easing into them makes a world of a difference.

Had Some Myself,

Good stuff, I'm glad someone stepped in to give some ideas on getting work done in the winter, I agree with everything there. Hills are a great move that most people can access and the idea for sled pulls is a clever way around it as well.

Thanks

Thanks for the tips. I did my first acceleration workout today. 2X4x50m hills. There's been a lot of snow but the main roads/high ways are clear so I was able to do it on a gradual hill on the highway (not a super busy highway, and only sprinting for 6-7 seconds reduces the worry for traffic since the berm was wide).

I will likely incorporate plyos and maybe 15m accelerations in the gym once a week in addition to hopefully finding clear days to do hill sprints.

I'll likely extend the 'acceleration' phase past 2 months until the snow is gone, but it is for sure better than nothing. Right now I'm simply in the base phase and just getting to 70 mile weeks. I'll probably hold 70 mpw and add in long tempos and progression runs while doing this sprint work. I don't have too much structure as of right now, just doing mileage and some steady runs. I'm going to try to do this sprint work (in the form of hills for the foreseeable future) every 6ish days.