Global benefits of speed training

In episode 8 of Sprint Lab, Kieran speaks about the benefit of speed training in a more general/global sense: for people in other sports, for people in other athletic events, and the average person.
What is the point of developing maximum speed over 40-60m if you only sprint for 10m in your sport? Why should I keep training like an athlete beyond my 20s? These topics (and more) are covered in the episode.

Transcript

squadcaster-j0h6_5_10-17-2024_181339 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to Sprint Lab. It's Ciarán here. Uh, I'm gonna follow up Alex's solo episode last week, with my own solo episode. So we haven't been able to get around to record, uh, joint episodes for a few weeks, uh, just with calendar differences. But, I'm speaking on the 17th of October right now, and I'm hoping that this weekend Uh, we'll be able to get together and record a bunch of episodes for you. Uh, but for now you got to make do with my voice. Um, and this week I'm going to speak about something a little bit more general, uh, compared to what Alex spoke about last week. I'm going to speak about the benefits of sprinting to people in other domains from sprinting itself. So different domains from sprinting, that being neighboring events like the 800, the 1500, the mile and upwards. Or other sports entirely. Now, the inspiration for this podcast came from me attending a world chase tag event down in London a few weeks ago. Um, I had to go chase tag myself and I was enjoying it up until the point where I completely stacked it and gave myself a really. Bad dead leg. I was limping around for the rest of the day and really the rest of the week. But luckily, uh, my winter training has not been hampered at all. Uh, you'll all be glad to know I was back to sprinting very soon afterwards, but regardless, what a sport if you haven't seen a chase tag before, like clips of it online or whatever, YouTube, Instagram, look up world chase tag and you will not be disappointed. It is crazy. It is essentially a cross between TAG, the game we all played in the playground when we were younger, and parkour. So it's played on a 12 meter by 12 meter square called a quad, and there are, there's a bunch of apparatus just in the middle. Uh, it's the same course every single event, so a lot of strategy is developed. within the sport itself to actually, uh, get the edge over competitors in games. People take it turns to either chase or run from opponents and they have 20 seconds to score a tag. Okay, so obviously the 20 second cap means that it's quite a high intensity, high speed endeavor, but with the course only being 12 by 12 meters, there's not really a lot of distance for you to get up to anywhere near maximum velocity. So me attending that event. Was really to answer the question. Well, what benefit does sprint training have for those athletes? And you may be stood there as a rugby player, a football player, a basketball player, um, really someone in any sport who sprints over predominantly short distances and ask the same question to a sprint coach, why should I focus on my maximum velocity if it takes me 30, 40, 50 meters to get that well, the answer is simple, raising the threshold of performance raises your performance at every single sub level or sub maximal level underneath that. So if you raise your a hundred percent capacity, you will raise your 60, your 70, your 80 percent capacity even higher as well. So, yes, that means increasing your maximum velocity can also have a downstream effect of increasing your acceleration capacity from 0 to 10 meters or 0 to 20. And it's, it's not a totally direct carry over. Of course, training over naught to 10 meters will always be the best way to increase your naught to 10 meter acceleration, but maximum velocity development and sprint training in general carries with it so many auxiliary benefits that people ignore or neglect. It's one of the most intense, aggressive, dynamic movements possible. So obviously that comes with, a prerequisite level of physical preparation that you've got to undergo to actually. Perform it to the best level possible You may be stood there thinking well if it is one of the most intense movements possible Then doesn't it carry with it Some additional injury risk and for the average person that isn't prepared to sprint in any way whatsoever They haven't undergone any type of physical preparation before then Yes, it would carry with it some risk But you approach sprinting with the exact same mindset every other activity that you would undergo in an exercise domain Progressive overload. You do not go into day one and try and execute a maximum effort 60 meters sprint, you know, and then rest for a full six to eight minutes and then try another one. Expose yourself to a massive amount of sprint volume in day one. You need to progressively overload your tolerance and your capacity to sprint at a certain level. So you may not start your sprint journey at 100%. You may have to start it at a level slightly below that, once you do get over that hump, however, once you do reach the prerequisite physical requirements to sprint fast, well, then you are left with a heightened level of physical preparation for everything under it. Once again, raising the threshold raises your capacity for everything underneath it. If you are able to withstand the ground contact, and eccentric loading demands through the hamstring and the calf and the lower limb of a maximum sprint, well then you're not going to find something less intense as intense as before. If you're suddenly able to sprint at 10 meters per second, then running 6 meters per second in a game that you're required to play is going to be extremely easy for you. The logic behind it is to raise your sub maximal thresholds too, along with it. Now take chase type, for example, I began this podcast by speaking about those guys in particular, if they are reaching 60, 70 percent of their maximum velocity right now in their game, okay, raising their maximum velocity might reduce that demand to 40, 50 percent of max velocity. And you've got to then think, well, they've got to perform for 20 seconds at a time. They've got to go multiple rounds within the competition. They might be doing multiple competitions back to back. And that's certainly true for other sports as well. Well, your capacity to handle 40, 50 percent of max velocity is much higher than your capacity to handle 60, 70%. So it's a logical step to raise that threshold. So you can raise your capacity to perform at those lower intensities. Fixed year congestion is a problem across all sports, college sports, professional sports, everything, and who wouldn't want to get more sports specific practice in as well? So, actually devoting some time in your week to rested, high quality sprint practice can then improve your capacity to train and develop skills and physical capabilities in your sports specific practice that may be at a slower speed, But would still be aided by that auxiliary training. Sprinting is a movement option, in my eyes, for people outside of the world of sprinting itself. It's just like being able to squat deeper, being able to touch your toes, being able to climb stairs when you're an old man or an old woman. You know, sprinting fast is on the spectrum of running in general. If you can run just that little bit faster, it's an option that somebody can't then take away from you. If you're in a game situation where you're on a fast break, a counter attack, anything like that, And you are required to sprint at a certain speed and you simply can't, well, you don't have the choice whether to partake in that attack or not, or that situation in general. That choice is taken away from you. If you have the option to do that, if your body gives you the extra gear to find, well, then you do have the option to take part in that situation. All right, it's about giving people choices in their, their context or their domain that they perform in, whether that's everyday life or whether that's a specific sport. Um, it doesn't really matter to me. It's, it's about physically preparing people for whatever situation they want to handle and not to mention sprinting comes with a bunch of cognitive benefits as well, due to the neural recruitment and a nervous system demand of the activity itself, raising the threshold of nervous system output can raise the cognitive output. of your overall self in a, in a, in a psychological way as well. So this is why I recommend, um, people in sprinting to cultivate, you know, hobbies outside of sprinting as well, learning skills, engaging in academia, it's a mistake that people who want to go all in on sprinting make is that they drop, um, pretty much everything else that they've got going on in their life. There's sometimes they drop relationships. Sometimes they drop, um, academia and schoolwork. It's not wise. Sprinting takes up such a small amount of time. During your week and yes, if you're a professional level and other commitments may come into that, um, that you don't have a choice in your sprint training becomes a much more, um, time heavy demand on your lifestyle. But for the average person is sprinting recreationally and wants to make the jump up to a high level, they need to be cultivating other things outside of sprinting because you simply you can't train all day as a sprinter. A sprint session, uh, for me personally is less than, it's less than 30 seconds of, of. Maximum effort, um, work during a one hour, one and a half hour training session. Um, sometimes it's less than 20. Sometimes it's about 10 seconds, uh, depending on the day. So that's max effort, uh, maximum velocity development that's not my, you know, 400 meters specific training, 95 percent of people never actually sprint after the age of 30 as well, which I think is such a cry and shame. And, um, when I think about the, you know, mobility issues that people can have later on in life and, uh, the issues with, Well, pretty much anything injury, uh, movement related, um, cognition related, you know, anything like that. Um, I just wonder how sprinting can help the average person, really retain their level of physical. prowess into, into later years and who wouldn't want, um, to be more dignified in old age, moving around, climbing up stairs, um, running around with their kids in the garden, that kind of thing. Who wouldn't want that? So those, to those 95%, um, you need to get your acting gear guys, come on. Uh, so,, Benefits to other sports. I've kind of, I've kind of touched on it in the context of chase tag, but yeah, it's, it's, it's giving someone movement options and it's improving the threshold to improve sub maximal performance as well. Um, if you only perform over sort of 10, 20 meters in your sport, it's still a benefit to you to be able to sprint over 30, 40, 50 meters because of the benefit of what that. 10 meter segment right at the end of that sprint can give you, it's even a benefit to people outside of the sprinting domain, but still within the sport of track and field. So our neighbors, the middle distance runners, uh, the throwers, they can all have benefit from incorporating sprint training into their programs. Um, I had a case over the summer of a 400 meter hurdler that came to me, uh, wanting to just, you know, improve his capacity for sprinting over, over summer. So he could go back to, um, the off season. and really ready to attack the collegiate year. Um, being a 400 meter hurdler that comes with quite a, quite a large, um, speed endurance demand as part of the event, you know, it's, it's the most endurance heavy sprint event, um, but that did not matter. by way of programming sprint training to me. Uh, we still set aside one session per week to work on, um, max velocity and acceleration capabilities. And his 10 meter fly dropped from 105 to 0. 99. His 30 meter fly dropped from 3. 15 to 3. 02. And those abilities will trickle up to his speed endurance capacity as well. So the higher speed you are able to attain, the better you are able to sustain lower speeds If I go from being able to sprint 9 meters per second to 10 meters per second, well then my ability to sprint at 7 meters per second is suddenly a lot easier, So speed endurance experience is a trickle up effect or benefit from improving maximum velocity. Now this effect diminishes as distance increases. It doesn't go all the way up to, you know, the marathon or the 10 K or something like that. I would suggest that maximum velocity is not very high up on the priority list of someone that runs 42 kilometers or 26 miles as part of their, event. But. It's still, um, it's still a benefit to people to be able to sprint as fast as they can. And I don't think that should ever be neglected. If you're in a situation where when you break out into a sprint, you honestly feel like you're running in water. Well, I think that's probably a sign to sit up and take note, in terms of that trickle up effect to middle distance and long distance events, uh, the 800 metres specifically is a part of this, but also the 1500 and the mile maximum speed is absolutely integral to those events as well. Um, I would honestly advocate for 8, 15 and mile runners to be running, um, max speed sessions. Consistently, at least bi weekly in their programs. Um, and of course by max speed sessions, I mean, 60 meter reps or less with full recovery. I'm talking one minute or more per 10 meter segment of a rep. Um, that would count as max speed sprinting, obviously in spikes, competitive ideally, but definitely timed. And yes, I think that's the benefits of milers and under, um, regardless of, regardless of who you are as an athlete, developing max velocity will help you. And why? Well, because who are the most successful athletes at championship level? Um, in the final stages of every single race, it's the fastest ones. Okay. It's the ones with the breakaway speed, the speed over 400, over 200 meters that can separate themselves from the pack. In those final few seconds, you, of course, need to have prerequisite fitness to make it through the first lap, the first 600 or the first three laps of a 1500. But once you get there, if you haven't exhausted your speed reserves to get there because you have the prerequisite fitness where you can use those speed reserves to then execute a lethal final one or 200 meters. You know, it's, it's, it's logical that the person that has the fastest maximum speed will have the fastest sub maximal speed once you get to the end of a race and everyone is tired. If everyone's on a level playing field, then the fastest person will be able to kick harder. Now, I don't feel like I have to tell you guys that much, to be honest, I'm talking to the middle distance guys because I always hear you speaking about speed development when it comes around to championship races and speaking about people's shorter speed capabilities when it comes to the late stages of those races. It's the sprinters that I think I need to educate here. So that logic transfers down to the 400 to the 200 to the 100. Just the same. The person with the highest maximum velocity is the person who finds it easier to sustain a submaximal velocity. That's, of course, more relevant to the 400, but the 200, you're not quite touching true maximum velocity. You're trying to sustain very close to absolute max velocity for a longer period of time relative to the 100. And in the 100, well, if you have a higher max velocity, then I don't need to explain to you how that is a benefit to you because you're going to, um, take longer to get there. You're then going to be able to sustain it later into the race. If you do the prerequisite, um, acceleration and endurance work around it it's really worth sitting up and take note of if you're a coach in early off season right now, if you're an athlete that's structuring their own program, if you're a coach programming for a club, you need to be incorporating consistent maximum velocity work, um, to develop those capabilities over a long period of time as well. Speed is the easiest thing to detrain in the short term. It needs attention every sort of five to 10 days to really, Drain all of the improvement possible from it, but the volume of those days that you do train speed needs to be extremely low I'm personally finding benefit from training in their sort of 120 to 180 meter total running volume range per workout. So that includes acceleration I'm doing, for example, three by 50 meters to make 150 meters of total sprinting, or I'm doing four by 40 to make 160 meters and I'm taking four or five, six minutes between reps to really make those as intense and as quick as possible. And. Speed gains come from doing that cleverly guided training with correct technical queuing, good analysis and feedback from a coach or an athlete. You cannot overwork it. As soon as I would go to four, five, six, seven reps within a workout, I would diminish my ability to hit maximum velocity multiple times. My body would then start a shielding effect to stop me from hitting maximum velocity that many times, or stop me from hitting my true maximum velocity, um, just to protect itself from injury. Now, the volume, the low volume approach that I'm taking, allows my body to think, well, if I'm only doing one, two, three reps at this intensity, I can afford to let the handbrake go that little bit more. I can afford to access further towards my max threshold. And that's the important part. Maximum velocity development needs to be within a very narrow bandwidth of your true maximum velocity. If it's cold, you need to prioritize staying warm so that you don't drop further from your true maximum velocity. If you are. Programming a workout where you're planning to hit maximum velocity, you need to give yourself adequate rest time and the best chance possible of accessing that true hundred percent. Because true hundred percent is not the same necessarily as the hundred percent you've experienced before. If you've not been correctly performing speed work before, your true hundred percent will lie somewhere above. Your current PBs or current PRs or whatever you may think, your potential is. And you need to give your body the correct conditions in order to access it. That is a massive, massive learning curve for a lot of athletes stepping into the realm of speed or even stepping into the realm of better speed coaching. okay, I'm going to wrap the podcast up there. Uh, it's not been a long one this week, but you know, I just wanted to run through, um, a few of the global or general benefits of developing speed for any context, really not just, um, specialist sprinters. So I hope that I've done that justice now, if you're a, if you're a sprint specialist, listen to this podcast and you want to really hone in on those, those niche benefits of speed training for your events. Then shoot me a DM on Instagram or, yeah, submit a question that we can answer in a following podcast because, this is something I love talking about. I love, fighting the corner of speed work in everyone's program, to be honest. Anyway, uh, catch up with you next week and hopefully I'll have Alex with me to speak about something different. See you later.