Periodisation & peaking

Welcome to the pilot episode of Sprint Lab, where we try to answer these questions:

• What are the standard periodisation models in sprint training, and which one is 'best'?
• How should you organise your training to avoid burnout, and achieve peak performance?
• What should your priorities be when training for the sprint events?

Transcript

Introductions

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 0:00

Right. Hello. Uh, welcome to the podcast that is going to be known as sprint lab. Um, my name is Kieran. Uh, I run the Instagram page at sprint science. Um, that's where possibly the people that I've directed into this podcast will know me from. Um, but I'm here with Alex Rodriguez where, well, just introduce yourself. And, uh, yeah, we'll go through sort of who we are and what we're about to do.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 0:26

Cool. Yeah, Alex Rodriguez, I'm a sports science technician at the University of Lincoln. formerly a research assistant in biomechanics at the same institution, um, with sports science, sport and exercise science, bachelor degree with honours and sports engineering master's degree. So some credentials, I guess.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 0:46

Yeah, some just some. Yeah, you're outqualifying me to be honest. You got an MA. So, um, my name's Kieran Gillespie. I'm a 400m hurdler and I'm like a PE and a math teacher by trade basically. Um, but recently, well. A couple of years ago, I made the step into, um, semi professional athletics coaching. So I coached sprinters and hurdlers across all the, all the different sprint events, um, from 60 all the way through to 400 meter hurdles. And yeah, we're starting this podcast to, um, to just, to just chat about some, some stuff that we find useful, I guess.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 1:25

Yeah, exactly. Exactly that.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 1:28

so let's explain how we know each other then. So.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 1:30

Yeah. I moved to Lincoln for this job I've got. So back in end of 2022 and with that move, that meant I moved to, I joined Lincoln when at an athletics club, which in the UK. We have like, rather than a big school sort of system, we have local athletic clubs. So anyone, any ability you can join, just pay a little membership fee for the year. And yeah, Kieran happened to be at this club and I later found out he's the, the man behind the scenes of Sprint Science with over 50, 000 So, um, Yeah. and obviously like what I look into at work is a lot of like research and sprinting and biomechanics and everything. So I thought nice little overlap.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 2:13

Yes, it

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 2:14

decided to do something

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 2:17

exactly. Yeah. Um, it's been a while coming because there's a few different people at Lincoln that have, that have social media followings and whatever, but you know, this is, um, this is obviously something we're coming together to do is just sort of, uh, I mean, we're not making anything off this, so it's just a bit of fun. Um, but yeah, like I've, I've been, I'm from Lincoln originally in the UK and yet been a member of Lincoln Wellington for just a couple of years, um, moved about a little bit in the UK, uh, based in Leeds and we'll, we'll get onto that at some point, I'm sure, um, in the university system and all that sort of stuff, but, um, I think we should probably just get straight to what we're going to talk about today.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 3:00

periodization, I guess, in training. And I mean, you're the expert coach out of the two of us, so I'll let you lead with

Periodisation

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 3:07

Yeah, we, we, it's, it's nice. We've got different, different areas that sort of compliment each other. You're, you're definitely sort of the, um, the underlying like principles of everything, biomechanics, physiology, all that sort of stuff. And then I'll just, I do it, um, with, with athletes and things, but periodization, I want to split into, um, kind of three main, uh, subsections. So there's different styles of periodization for track. We're talking specifically about, I'm not, I'm not going to stray into, um, like strength and conditioning, um, concepts too deeply or anything like that. Just want to talk about, um, coordinating performance on the track. Um, there's a few different kind of well known models to this. So there's long to short training, um, the short to long and concurrent training. And we'll talk about those three. Um, I've just summarized them simply there, but we'll talk about those three a little bit more in depth and then talk about sort of the positives and negatives behind them. So, um, yeah. The terms short and long literally just, just refer to, um, the, the amount of volume present in the program at the time. So long, either referring to long distance, like individual repetitions or just overall session volume. Um, now the transition from sort of higher volume training in the early part of preparation, uh, and the slow sort of trimming down of that into, um, Kind of short distance, high intensity, uh, performance as you get closer to a competitive period is, is quite a like traditional model. Um, if you want to look at a concrete example of that, it'd be Clyde hearts that coached, um, Michael Johnson. He still coaches, I believe. Um, yeah, that's, that I think is where people have the most experience. Um, or the training model that people have the most experience with. I don't know what you think about this.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 4:59

in the UK, it's very common, isn't it? Um, well at least every club I've been at is very much just like work hard. It's almost like a workhorse's sort of mentality. Get the, put the winter miles in almost.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 5:12

Yeah.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 5:13

Yeah, obviously we'll discuss the pros and cons, so.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 5:16

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll flip that.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 5:18

Go for it. Yeah, no, go on. You go.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 5:21

towards short to long, then. So just to contrast it, um, so short to long would mean you do your high intensity kind of max velocity, uh, exposure earlier on in a preparation period. Um, usually after some kind of conditioning phase where you actually make sure your. physically safe and capable of achieving max velocity. Um, but that would, that would come early in a preparation period. And then you'd, you'd phase that into, um, a longer distance, higher volume approach, um, which more closely resembles your, your race or your, your like performance sort of domain. Um, and if you want to look at a concrete example of that, I believe, um, Tony Holler does. Some type of model to do with that. I don't really think he strays into like genuine, um, high volume work. He certainly doesn't do tempo running or anything like that. Um, but he does go from periods of ridiculously low workload up to some type of volume at, um, a race specific. intensity and length. Um, so they're kind of the two contrasting approaches and then you've got concurrent training, which concurrent means at the same time. So if you, if you take those two kind of contrasting poles, um, you're kind of like performing max, max effort, max velocity stuff at the same time as you're doing like race specific prep. And some people like to do tempo work as part of their training as well. Um, so that are the three elements. Yeah. Yeah.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 6:53

Yeah, that's good. Good little overview. So I guess I'm getting into like the pros and cons of each and when to use which ones and who to use which ones for, I guess. Um, all in my personal experience, I've. Being long to short approach athlete. Well, that's how I've been coached I've never coached myself. So the I guess the benefits I find is you in the UK At least it's bloody cold in winter and there's not a lot of access to indoor facilities So doing a little bit lower intensity longer reps sort of makes sense To, um, or to me, but having like studied it all and like physiology and stuff, there is definitely an argument against doing too much pure volume and then losing sort of neural athleticism, I guess, especially because we're talking sprinting here and sprint lab. So, um, it's quite striking. A good balance, I think, is key. And there are ways to mitigate that. So, like, you can program sessions. appropriately depended on weather, which obviously we will talk about Kieran. You've had some good ideas with this before, but, um, I'm assuming your similar approach, like from your personal experience has been long to short until recently, if I'm right.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 8:20

So when I first came into the sport, it was like when I was, you know, teenager, a kid basically, and didn't, didn't really know an awful lot about the sport. Um, that was my first introduction to it, uh, long to short training. And that's the kind of demographic that I think, um, that approach would be most useful for people that are just coming into the sport. Um, if you've not got a certain level of like prerequisite fitness, either from playing other sports or. doing track, uh, running as well, then some type of like either aerobic or, um, like physical conditioning that can be useful just so you can deal with the general demands of, of hitting high intensities quite often and recovering from that, um, like prerequisite fitness can help lactate buffer in and just general recovery, not neurally as well. Um, and so that, that can be useful for this first year, maybe two years of, of training, but then once you move beyond that, I think that's when the needs of the athletes start to change quite a lot, depending on obviously what, what style the athlete is as well, what event group they're sort of veering towards physically. Um, You know, I, I think that approach needs to change after a little while to stop the athlete sort of stagnating.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 9:38

Yeah. There's certainly like, like, initial benefits from it. Um, to the point by which then you start to plateau, but like a hundred percent, you get physiological adaptations, which seem like they're good for long distance runners. Like you increase your alveolar in your, um, in your lungs and increasing like blood flow and blood vessels. It actually, that's like very good for long distance runners, but at the same time, it's the more blood vessels you've got around muscles, the warmer your muscles. are, and then the warmer your muscles are, the lower activation like of action potential you need to actually stimulate them. So you can actually produce better contractions. So like, there's actually benefits to both which people don't actually understand as well. So don't see, I don't know, I don't like people who go too far one way or too far the other.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 10:34

There's, there's kind of polar opposites that, that are used to kind of popularize, popularize, um, social media profiles. Uh, I'm not going to name, like people do go to the extremes just to get some clicks. People accuse me of that, but, uh, I still think I, I remain a little bit moderate, at least like Charlie Francis talked about capillarization and muscle fibers from, from tempo running. Um, but the difference was that he didn't, he didn't cram all that work into one sort of period of the year. He did that concurrently with high intensity training. And, um, that's where this all links into, I think. Um, the middle ground, which is concurrent training. Um, now basically if you don't run fast, you are going to lose the ability to run fast, right? If you cram all of your fast work into one portion of the year and all of your long distance sort of slow running into one portion of the year, well, that slow running is going to severely compromise what you're then going to try and do. Later on or earlier on, you know what I mean? Yeah.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 11:34

It's um, you see it with people as well who are like training for longevity, and they sort of, they don't push themselves hard enough, or fast enough, but like, If you want to be like athletic in your forties or something, you need to be very athletic in your twenties and thirties. You can't like, you're going to fall off, but it's the same with like, if you don't train it, you lose it. And speed is one of those big things that you just, you've got to do. Um, and you can keep improving as well. Like it's not even about maintaining, you can, you can always push it

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 12:09

Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Um, speed is one of those characteristics that it's the hardest to train, um, and to develop. Um, if you know how to do it, it's very trainable, but, you know, from a, from an entry level perspective, it's quite hard to, to improve, um, without a certain depth of knowledge,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 12:28

no,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 12:29

it's the quickest thing to D train. Like it's, it,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 12:32

Mm hmm.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 12:33

10 days, depending on who you are. Um,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 12:38

and deliberate

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 12:39

of athletes, but yeah, it's deliberate attention. It's, it's like ring fenced protected, um, in the program. So that's not sabotaged by other work that you're doing. And that's where I think even people that try and do the right thing, like a concurrent approach, whether running tempos or they're, um, running sort of higher volume sessions and. touching max velocity, a lot of the time they can hit those longer sessions way too hard. Those can hurt, you know, the, the lactate accumulation and, um, the general sort of muscle soreness that you accumulate from a session like that can really impact, um, the high intensity work that you want to do later in the program.

Peaking & burnout

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 13:19

That's it. You can definitely get like a best of both or a worst of both case sort of with doing a concurrent So like you sort of do need to understand what you're doing what you're programming before Lineally sort of doing it So like you say that if you're hitting a tempo too hard, that's gonna take away from the actual speed hitting a speed Fatigued that's not training max speed Um, and then it's just two wasted sessions and rather than two good sessions, so it might not feel it at the time you might feel that you're flying, but two weeks time when you can't improve on that. And that's the point. Really? You want to be like building week on week on week, um, towards race season, um, which leads to like, I guess, peaking and burnout because. We have opinions on peaking for the majority of athletes. And obviously, what do you want to like highlight your most common cases where people come to you saying they want to peak for this race, whatever, but they're not in a state to peak really, like not at the

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 14:25

Yeah. Well, I'll just, I'll just explain like roughly what peaking is and then, and then we can go into like, um, specific, like the useful examples of it. So peaking, um, is a term used to describe optimizing, um, all the different, like fundamental characteristics of performance. Um, you're balancing them all in the right way, um, at a specific time of the year. So take the Olympics, for example, it's just gone. Um, Athletes will have come into that wanting to balance out like their max velocity capabilities, their speed endurance, their max strength, their body weight, all these different things. Things that, that feed into performance. They'll have tried to coordinate, um, to be at the right balance on the right day, um, and that involves a lot of planning, um, involves a lot of heavy lifting from, from coaches, not literal heavy lifting, but mental heavy lifting. Um, and in, in the athlete sense, it's kind of just, they have to put aside, um, Their thoughts on races leading up to it. That may not be as fast as they want to eventually hit, but they have to trust in a program that then leads them towards a peak performance on race day at the right time. Um, now for the amateur athlete, that's, you know, going down to a club and just, you know, talking with a volunteer coach and they're doing their own gym work and that, and they're also not doing competitions like the Olympics, um, I'm not sure why those people are really worried about peaking.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 16:00

Yeah. A hundred percent, because after a peak, there's a decline. And if you're not at the level of which like you could be competing for, like. titles or medals or why would you just want to have like lay all your eggs in one basket for one pv a season um plus it's so hard to get right these olympians and stuff you want to peak they're doing it's way more complicated than just peaking for one race because some of them will have to peak before the olympics at like trials because it's so hard to make their team and then Without sacrificing coming off the peak for the actual games if they make it so like there's double peaks and etc So it's a very complicated balance to get right and really like you say, it's just if you're elite and you're looking for 0. 5 percent then you should change a sort of Training approach, but it's it's a big risk and a big sacrifice as well, really

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 17:05

Yeah. It's, it's, um, it's interesting. Like you get, you get guys that, well, I know this year, um, we're taking 2024 as an example. Like a lot of people, myself included, we're talking about how slow the times were that people were opening up with. And like, I say slow, they were still running, you know, 10 flat, just scraping under 10. But these guys were talking about world records earlier in the year. And. People were saying like, hold on a minute. You can't, you can't be, you can't be having world record in your mouth. If you're running 10, zero five in April or May, you know what I mean? Um, although to be fair to them, they did whip out a very, very competitive final and outside of the top three, they had the fastest places per place in a final ever.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 17:49

yeah, yeah

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 17:50

And that just shows you like, what's, what can be accomplished with a peak? Uh, like Marcel

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 17:54

are you?

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 17:54

came fifth with nine, eight, five. I believe Seville came, came last in nine, nine, one. Like those guys were moving fast.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 18:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 18:04

so, you know, that's what peaking can do. But if you're running 12, one, not nine, nine, one, then you just want it. You just want to go out and run fast every week.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 18:14

Yeah, just get better and better. Just progress, yeah, yeah.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 18:19

to run that level of time quite regularly throughout the year. It's not possible to run nine eights every week. It is possible to run 12 ones every week, you know? So, so the, the amateur athlete or the athlete that's not threatening in the elite level right now. Like, you can just train in a concurrent sense, not tax yourself too much in stuff that isn't all that important to your event. Hit the really important stuff very hard, like max velocity and, um, to some degree max strength work earlier in the year, and then maybe phase that out to a slightly lower intensity during the, during the end season. But that's all of the peaking I would do. To be honest, it's, it's, it's reeling back the intensity maybe in the non specific work in the gym, but then focusing your energy into the track work, um, as a priority.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 19:11

Well, you say then focusing your energy, so I guess that leads into burnout because that is a sort of energy management and effort management throughout the season. So, as a coach then, coached semi professionally now, how do you manage your athletes or like prevent them from burning out? Um, and well, I guess what is burning out

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 19:33

Yeah. So, so burnout is, um, Really? It's just mental, physical exhaustion, um, that comes about from, from high stress life, basically, um, because we're not just talking about training leading to burn out here, we're talking about, um, every stress that you, you can think of really, um, mental stress, physical stress, the nervous system in the body, we use it in the same way. Um, for example, like. If you're going through an exam period at school, if you've got deadlines at university, if you've got a very high stress job, that's going to feed into how well you can recover from training to, um, you might not think it, but when that stress leaves you, when that, when that's not there, you'll suddenly find that you're able to deal with training stress a lot better. So there's loads of things you've got to watch out for, um, that can potentially creep up on you and cause burnout. And in terms of how I deal with it as a coach and program for athletes, like people don't need to train half as often as they think they do. Um, and when they do train, they don't need to do half as much volume as they think they need to do as well. Um, it's not about going out on the track and doing as much as you possibly can every single time. It's not about going out and like leaving the track all the time saying, wow, like I've really hit it hard there. I've had a good session. Like that felt really tough. A lot of the time you want to be walking away thinking that, right. That was a really high quality session. But to be honest, I feel like I could go out and do one or two more reps.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 21:01

that's where I struggle as a sprinter coming from sort of long distance background. I'm very much like fell in love with athletics because the runners high you feel great with the lactic and stuff afterwards. Um, so when you don't feel it, it's just like hard to like accept that you've done a good quality session and you've actually got better when you don't feel it. Cause I'm always like, I've always been sort of drilled mentally to just go and push yourself, push yourself. Whereas really that's just, it's actually like bad for developing athleticism. And that's a very like short, far away shortcut way to get in. Long term developing injuries because it's the invisible things that you say, like your mental state, your, your nervous system response, which you can't really like measure. You can't, you're not going to feel nervous. I guess sometimes you can, you can sort of feel like a bit lethargic, but for the most

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 21:59

of ways you can measure nervous system fatigue, but we can go into that in a sec, but go on.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 22:02

yeah, yeah. For the most part though, it's not like, I don't know, it's not like waking up feeling thumbs. It's a bit more complicated than that. Um, yeah, let's get into that. Yeah,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 22:14

So. Nervous system fatigue is something you're not likely to feel. And for those that aren't watching on the camera, if we don't upload this with audio, like I've done inverted commas there, feel, um, feeling nervous system fatigue is basically like the absence of feeling good in performance. Um, i. e. you're not able to hit your max speed for some unexplainable reason, you're not able to lift as heavy as you wanted to, you're not able to jump as far, or you're not able to really think that clearly, you know, you've got like brain fog or something, you know, that, they're the kind of manifestations of neural fatigue that you can get. Um, uh, And it comes down to fueling a little bit. So nutrition, sleep, um, you need to make sure you get an adequate amounts of salt, potassium, um, magnesium, those kinds of things. And, and also your monitor and your training load, um, at the same time. Now, in terms of measuring neural fatigue, um, that there's more expensive ways. So like I've got a whoop band, um, that, that can be helpful in detecting how ready you are to perform. Um, but at the same time, I don't, I don't think it always correlates with. with how ready I am to perform. Like we had a competition literally

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 23:31

it's a good estimation. It's a good estimation.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 23:34

it is, yeah,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 23:35

based on like, I think it's based on blood. Is that only like you sort of blood

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 23:40

yeah. It's like HRV, heart rate variability and a few other things. Um,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 23:44

than like brain,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 23:45

five, five or six different factors go into it.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 23:47

Okay.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 23:48

yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't always correlate with how well you're able to perform. Um, really cheap way is a grip strength test. Um, that's been shown to have like a loose correlation with neural readiness. Um, so if you establish like a baseline average of how strong your grip is, like, if you exceed that, um, on a particular day, chances are that your nervous system is ready to go. But once again, there's no, there's no surefire way of doing it unless, um, Unless you sort of establish how regularly you can train at high intensity and stick to that.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 24:22

And for the majority of people, then a safe bet is less is more. Um, if you're unsure, just. Go do less rather than do more because that's all the reason we said before like it's just safe You don't need to be peeking or anything. It's it's plenty of time to progress

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 24:45

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think if you're, if you're at sort of a middling level, I'm talking about athletes, right, from kind of the beginner level up to, you know, if you're a guy running low 11s for the a hundred, if you're, if you're a girl running low 12s, high 11s, like you probably, you know, if you feel, uh, Any hint of, um, kind of fatigue from a week to week training basis, you know, taking the mindset of doing a rep less, taking a minute more recovery, um, sleep in an extra hour per night is, is probably going to benefit you a lot. Um, it's very hard to detach from like a hardworking mindset because athletes, like they don't get into the sport cause they're lazy. They get into the sport cause they're like winning and they like training. Um, so it kind of goes against. Our nature a little bit, but once you do it and see the results from it, use those results to kind of reinforce your approach and your mindset towards it, because it's okay to be like to have the stereotype of a lazy sprinter.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 25:48

absolutely It's almost what makes them the best Which is yeah annoying, but it's like annoying to hear if you're not If you are, it's like music to your ears.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 26:01

Well, yeah, yeah, I get, I get DMs all the time from people like after I'll make a post about this sort of thing. Um, and I'll get the, um, from people saying like, oh yeah, like the laziest people on my team are the fastest. And. Like a lot of the time people see it as, uh, it's just because they're naturally good. Um, but I think that's part of it, you know, like naturally good people. Sometimes I don't want to work as hard cause they know they'll still win.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 26:30

Yeah. Okay. Yeah,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 26:31

often those people are the ones hitting the first couple of reps, like as hard as they can and then dropping out sessions.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 26:37

yeah, yeah.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 26:39

Or something like that. And that is, that is, there's something in that. You know what I mean?

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 26:42

Well, yeah.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 26:43

in minimizing the workload and yeah.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 26:46

Exactly. You just get a proper fast twitch response. I mean your energy system for like super fast twitch movements and explosive movements only lasts maximum like two to five seconds. Really. Um, so. Beyond

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 27:03

Yeah. Yeah.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 27:04

like as a pure energy source, that is to train max speed. You don't want to be going over five seconds worth of, um, effort, but obviously you want to accelerate up to that. Um, but yeah, full intent then. And then muscle fibers, they tend to shift towards sort of type one, which is like slow twitch fatigue resistant. Just with, just with any sort of exercise beyond like five seconds of work, they actually see like Besides elite athletes, who it's very hard to biopsy and take muscles from, but besides them, um, the highest type two X, which is like the most explosive muscle fiber is in obese, sedentary people. And they say it's probably because they just get up once a day. So it's kind of crazy how muscle fibers even just they just adapt to any exercise. Like if you're walking about, if you're doing multiple reps, then if you're kind of training against explosivity, it's weird. It's a weird

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 28:13

Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn't, it wouldn't take a lot to kind of poison the dose of, of high intensity work. Um,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 28:20

but I'm not saying don't train because like, yeah, don't, don't not train as

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 28:26

No, no, we're not, we're not out here advocating for people to just like completely cut out sessions at

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 28:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just realised that. Yeah, I don't want to be saying like, yeah, just sit around and just move once a day, because that's how you're going to get the most explosive muscle fibres. That's not, they're not going to be useful muscle fibres either. Yeah,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 28:49

People often, people often raise the argument of a, of the 400 meter event, um, when we talk about this kind of thing as well. And I think this is probably the last point we'll touch on, um, today. The 400 meters, um, I've heard people quote in different proportions of energy system usage, um, to me, and I, I don't think there's a hundred percent reliable way to measure, um, energy system contribution in, um, the longer sprints or, or the shorter

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 29:15

very, It's very individual as well,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 29:17

yeah, it is. Yeah. But the the, bottom line is you are always respiring aerobically, like aerobic respiration will never stop in your body. It will always be the primary energy contributor to like,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 29:30

Oh,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 29:31

Most activity. Um, if it stopped, then you die

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 29:35

yeah,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 29:36

basically. Um, so when you, when you quote a sort of energy system contribution to someone about a certain event, like the aerobic system contribution is going to be massively inflated. I think you've got to look at the relative contribution of different energy systems in at rest. and compare that to during a certain activity. So, I mean, at rest, the aerobic system is, is contributing like the vast majority. I'm talking like 85, 90, 95 plus percent of your energy, um, just chilling out. that drops to around 40, give or take during a 400 meters. Now you're not telling me a 50 percent shift in an energy system, energy system contribution downwards is a significant, like justification to, you know, Um, but have that as, as the majority of the training,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 30:31

yeah,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 30:32

to run that event, you still need to give your body a specific stimulus to that event. Therefore, you need to run at similar velocities for a similar length of time. Um, and that's all it boils down to, you know, if you're ever in doubt about training for a certain event, you need to ask yourself, well, how fast am I moving in that event? And how long am I moving at that speed for? And just basically pepper in that range. That's your event specific preparation. If you run the 400 seconds, whether you're running 40, second reps at 400 meter speed, or give or take. You know, a little bit of velocity that's going to, that's going to do you right. For the majority of your like newbie games, certainly. And before you get into, you know, the weeds of real complicated programming. So if you're sat there and not sure about programming for a certain event, you just need to look at the event demands and, and construct your training around, around that as an idea.

Outro

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 31:34

yeah, yeah, yeah, great point.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 31:39

And, uh, I think,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 31:40

I think we've hit

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 31:41

end, to be honest.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 31:42

hit 30 minutes. I think now. So

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 31:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll leave it at 30 for this first time. At least see, uh, see what the, uh, reception is like, but I hope we've covered, you know, some helpful stuff for people, people listening.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 31:54

this was, so this was the topics that people got in touch with you about, isn't it?

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 31:57

Yeah. Yeah.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 31:59

If you were just, I guess, I don't know. Can you comment on wherever we're going to upload this? If you can comment on this, either comment on it or send myself

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 32:06

Give us, give us a rating, subscribe to it. I don't care. Share it with someone, share it with someone. That's probably better.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 32:12

Yeah, cool. And then we've got loads of topics, literally endless topics we can talk about on this. So.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 32:17

Yeah. And like we said, right at the start, this is, this is like a, it's just something we do as a job that we're interested in. So it's

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 32:26

Yeah,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 32:26

something we're going to be doing anyway. We don't care if you listen or not. Um,

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 32:31

we're gonna do it anyway. Literally.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 32:33

yeah, just find people that are also interested in it.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 32:36

Cool. Where can people find you? If they haven't already figured it out.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 32:41

Yeah. So my Instagram is at sprint science or one word. Um, that's, that's probably where, I mean, that's my only social media following really on Instagram.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 32:51

on Instagram. isn't it? Yeah.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 32:53

there you go. So, um, that's where you can find me. Where can people find you?

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 32:58

Yeah, I'm greedy. I've got more than just Insta. That is A Rod running on Instagram, YouTube. And TikTok as well, although I've only got like 50 followers on that, so,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 33:09

Yeah. You know what? I made a TikTok account. I was going to post some reels that I made on Instagram I just can't be bothered with it. I don't like it.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 33:16

I don't like TikTok really, but I only go on and I'll upload the exact same thing sometimes that I've just uploaded on YouTube Shorts or something,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 33:24

Yeah.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 33:25

then it always did better on TikTok because people love fucking scrolling,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 33:29

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's the first F bomb of SprintLab. I, we kept it, we kept it clean until then. That's it's gone.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 33:37

up our algorithm?

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 33:38

We're going to have to put an explicit label on it now. Not for kids.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 33:44

my bad, sorry Ciarán.

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 33:45

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. just bleep it out and in the post edit. Right. Okay. We'll wrap it up there. So this has been fun.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 33:52

Yeah,

kieran_1_08-18-2024_091743 33:53

short and sharp one for now, but yeah, we'll, we'll, uh, we'll record another one soon.

alex_1_08-18-2024_091742 33:58

cool. Yeah, speak soon then. See you later.