Preparing For Fall Sprint Training

Either it's football or soccer ending early or it's a kid who is solely focused on track, but for some teams, between six to eight weeks from now some of the over-eager sprinters will head out to their track coaches (if they are holding practice, some may opt to wait till January) to begin their season. What should you do with high school sprinters who come out late November/early December to prepare them for the spring season and get them ahead of the game?

Well one of the first and foremost items that need to be addressed is developing the practice routine.  It will be different than their previous sport if they even did one at all, and you need to show the athletes what time practice starts, what the warm up is, and what tempo you want your practice to be.  This can go on for a week or two as developing the mindset early in the season is crucial for keeping practice flowing well throughout the year.  For instance, when the John Curtis football players come out for track in late December/early January, the first week or two is dedicated to learning the warm up and just doing a few strides on grass to get the rhythm of practice down.

One thing a good sprint coach needs to focus on is not allowing the athletes to dictate the workouts. Doing blockwork on the first week of the pre-season is unnecessary despite how much kids may say they want to do it.  Don't over look some small things like doing shin exercises to help rid the athletes of shin splints from the get-go so you don't struggle with that down the season when you are racing. Also, you may want to get the ball rolling on some strength work.   It doesn't have to be crazy, and honestly body weight strength training exercises will be fine for the majority of what you need to get accomplished in high school track and field.  Once again, for instance, the John Curtis track/football guys haven't lifted for over a month and a half when they start running again and need to start with just some basic exercises.

Malachi Dupre of John Curtis is a 5-star wide receiver as well as a sprinter/jumper.

Get your plan set ahead of schedule because the seasons can be short.  In Louisiana the indoor state meet is in the middle of February and the outdoor post season starts the second week of April.  The season is over before you know it so a good base is important to success.

Training To Be Your Best: August 26th-September 1st

Goals: The racing season starts within the next two weeks.  It will be important to begin to find your pacing for your three mile or 5k during workouts.  Last week we did a 5k time trial, so monitor your progress and use that time trial as a rough guideline of what to run effort-wise in your workouts.  It's also time to start adding in your strength work!  Read the article and I will also add the strength routines down at the bottom.

Monday- 35-45 minutes easy, Strength Workout A
Tuesday- 12x200 @ Mile Effort with 200m easy jog recovery
Wednesday- 35-40 minutes easy, Strength Workout B
Thursday- 20 minute tempo run
Friday- 10-12x Hill Runs with equal jog recovery. Stretch after!
Saturday- 35 minutes easy, 10x strides
Sunday- Labor Day Weekend!

Strength training will be another great component of the program.

Legend:

Easy- A pace you can handle and have a conversation at the same time. Relaxed.
Tempo Run- A distance run at a pace of 5k race pace plus 30 seconds per mile.
Strides- Not a sprint! Simply a short pickup of 50-100 meters at around 1-2 mile race pace. Full recovery.
Fartlek- A run of varied pace for varied time which can be anywhere from an easy jog to hard sprinting.
Hills- Not all out sprints, good paced effort around 5k race effort. Can be anywhere between 100-400 meters long.
Workout A-  10-30x pushups, 10-30x prisoner squats, 10-30x lunges, 10-30x crunches, 30-60 seconds of planks on each side and the middle, and 30-60 seconds of Australian crawl.
Workout B-  20-40x step ups, 5-20x tricep pushups, 30-60 seconds of bridging, 10-20x dips, 30-60 seconds of pedestal, and 30-60 seconds of scissor kicks.

No-Excuses Weight Training for Track and Field

One thing that will almost always fall to the wayside in track and field, especially for distance runners and female athletes, is strength training.  For the most part, distance runners don't go to the weight room because they feel intimidated by the football players or because other sports have priority over the weights and girls rarely have access either way.  Then on the other hand coaches tend to decide that more running is more of a benefit to the athlete than using that time to life weights, and if you are talking about lifting for hypertophy (or in other words, gain in muscle size) you may be right, but I'm not.  I'm talking about getting in the work necessary when running is the focus, but the benefits of ancillary training can't be ignored.  Take a look at Meb here; he isn't big by any standards, but you can tell he takes strength training seriously.

Track athletes need to focus on the entire body.  It may seem counter intuitive, but you need to train your upper body as much as the lower body.  Sure, you want strong legs and a great torso, but remember you need strength in the upper body to maintain posture and help establish your presence in tight packs in the distance races.  Also, none of this training has to an overwhelming amount of time.  Even as little as 5 minutes a day will do far more than nothing.  The fact is that strength training means you are more resistant to injury, you can handle more training, and you are more powerful with each step.  During running, the body feels ground reaction forces equal to several times the runners body weight, so a weak body will not hold up well to extensive training.

So this brings us back to the situation where you don't have a weight room, nor do you have much time to train with weights.  Well two days of the week you could do a core routine that includes planks, Australian crawls, pedestals, mountain climbers, bridges, etc.  You can easily get the work you need with just those exercises, but throw in med ball throws, Russian twists and more if you feel the need to get extra work in.

Now if you are still thinking you don't have the time or space to do this, I want to mention that there is a local team from an all girls school that finds a way to get it done.  They obviously can't get into the weight room at school, if they even have one, but the coaches bring out 3 standard bench press/squat bars to the track each day and the girls do squats and snatches and other exercises right there on the side of the track.  The moral of the story is that you can do it if you really want to.

So finally you can add lunges, squats, pushups, dips, calf raises and other body weight exercises if you don't feel like being over zealous and bringing weight training equipment to your practice.  The key is get a baseline strength training program started for your team which will pay dividends sooner rather than later.

The Training Blueprint for Small Cross Country Teams

The following is taken from an article I've written in the past few months for Louisiana Running, a Milesplit website.  This training is great for small teams like the one I coach which has around 20 runners both boys and girls from K-12.  This training, while very basic, is great for small teams and girls programs.  Large boys teams like those who have 40+ high school runners may have the ability to test higher mileage training, but for most high school teams keeping the athletes healthy is the main concern, and this addresses those teams.

I have only been coaching for around three and a half years now but in that time I have been lucky to work with coaches and athletes from a wide variety of events and training philosophies. Between coaching sprinters and jumpers at my alma mater, Archbishop Shaw, and aiding coach Micah Simoneaux for a season of cross country at the same school, to my experiences coaching distance runners and a couple young throwers and jumpers alongside coach Preston Curtis at John Curtis Christian school, I have come across a good bit of interesting training observations and coaching advice. I have spent some summer mornings watching the St. Thomas Aquinas cross country team prepare for their season, and I have also piqued the mind of several other top coaches including Mike Cambre who trained Pat Gavin, as well as listened to the talks of Pete Boudreaux and Ryan Gallagher at coaching clinics. The more you listen, the more you understand how deep training an athlete holistically can be.

Some coaches prefer one training method to another and I have personally witnessed what I feel works and doesn't work for athletes here in Louisiana. I have tried mileage based training and high quality based training, and I feel neither fully address the needs of the athlete. In order to help spread more information to the coaching ranks of Louisiana I present to you my own opinions on training the distance runner properly and maximizing the potential of an athlete. At the very end I will present sample schedules that coaches or individual athletes can use as guides to reaching the heights of their ability level using all ideas and workouts which have been actually used by athletes I've coached or used by myself.

To train the whole athlete is exactly what it sounds like, training an athlete in all aspects of his running, but this concept can be adapted to any of the demands of the sport the athlete is involved in. In this case we are talking about distance runners so lets look at what the distance runner needs to be successful: endurance (obviously), coordination, foot speed, strength, flexibility, and rest. When a coach approaches training to touch on all these aspects, he will produce athletes that will run at a high level.

The endurance runner has his corner stone of fitness built into his/her ability to perform at a high level for a longer time than his competition. Here in LA both boys and girls must compete at 3 miles for the state meet which for the average runner will take around 17-18 minutes for boys and 21-23 minutes for girls. Therefore, the first goal of endurance training is the ability for the athlete to complete the distance, soon followed by the goal of racing the distance, not just surviving it. The first goal is usually accomplished within 2-3 weeks depending on ability level, athletic history, etc. The next step is psychological. If you can complete the distance, you can race the distance, but the athlete must mentally prepare for the competition by learning how to be aggressive and giving an honest effort into pushing their body to its maximum. If you have an overly passive athlete, challenge them to move out from their comfort zone to see what they are capable of.

Coordination is important for the distance runner. Proper running mechanics is a big determinant in high school racing and mastering it can take some time for the young runner. Practicing arm carriage and arm swing will help the runner understand what they should feel during proper running mechanics. This can be done simply by sitting down and having the athlete pump the arms back and forth. Keeping the head forward and chin down will help the athlete keep their focus on the race as well as teach them to maintain good mechanics and not exert too much energy in unnecessary directions.

Foot speed is often overlooked by coaches, but this is a huge factor in distance running. We aren't talking about sprinter foot speed, and for most distance runners not even 400 meter sprint speed, but all athletes need to be challenged on their speed to help make them quicker runners. The best way to incorporate some speed work is doing 4-6 strides after runs, when the legs are already tired, to teach the body to move quickly even when it has already exerted itself during a full run. These don't even have to be terribly fast. Paces as quick as mile race pace for a 50-100 meter stride is usually more than enough to get the athlete pushing hard, especially in the cross country season when speed work is usually put to the side for more mileage.

Strength, while probably the least necessary of the items on the list, still has a place. Some coaches prefer to run more than add strength to their routine, but I find that five minutes of strength 2-3 times a week can pay dividends and rarely take away from runs. Many runners worry about putting on extra weight with strength training but you must assure your athletes that a little strength can go a long way. A good routine to follow is a burnout set (one set till you cannot complete the exercise again) twice a week of push ups, crunches, prisoner squats, dips on a bench, and finish it off with a standard plank. The core strength picked up from even a small routine like this will help the athlete maintain form during the competition.

Flexibility is the main cog in injury prevention. It almost always come down to an athlete being too tight when an injury crops up and stretches are almost always advised by a physical therapist. I prefer some leg swings and some sort of trunk rotation before exercise to loosen up the muscles deep in the hip girdle and lower back, and then some static stretching for hamstrings and glutes after the run will help as well. Also, stretch the calves at least once a day. Tight calves can cause issues ranging from heel soreness, shin splits, and reduction of ankle flexibility.

The last but not least part of training the distance runner holistically is rest. For young athletes, a normal distance run might be as hard as workout for them, and even more experienced runners will break down without ample relaxation after a tough session. Monitor your athletes and make sure they take enough easy/off days as necessary. Some athletes will be able to pound most days of the week without recourse, while others may need three days to recover from a hard workout.

So if you put all those ideas together you will most likely have a fit, fast team ready to race in the fall, or even spring. But how do they all tie in? I decided to write up a sample seasonal schedule to give you an idea of what you can do as a coach or athlete to train for cross country. I often found that most coaches got their training advice from successful coaches in New England or other parts of the world where they didn't have to deal with Louisiana heat which made it very difficult to follow their training to a T. I have tinkered with different training methods and have come up with a solid fall training guide for runners to adhere to. Here are a couple sample schedules to give you an idea of how to keep your athletes ready to go. Once again, these are all plans that I have actually used, and with a degree of success, either coaching adult individuals or at the respective schools I have coached at.

Early Season/Base:

Monday- Long intervals. Some teams do mile repeats this day. I find mile repeats are difficult to do in the heat, so I've done 3-4x2-3 minutes at race pace with a standing recovery (until the weather changes)

Tuesday- Easy jogging and strides.

Wednesday- Tempo run day. Depending on athlete, 2-3 miles at 3 mile race pace plus 20-30 seconds per mile.

Thursday- Easy day. Focus on stretching, recovery, and prepping for the weekend race (if there is one)

Friday- Pre-Meet or speed day. Easy jogging plus strides. Keep the strides relaxed, don't race them.

Saturday- Off or early season competition for advanced runners.

Sunday- Off or easy jog.

One thing you'll notice is that there is no long run in this training. Many coaches will disagree, but I find a long run in the summer in LA might mean the next two days of training will be difficult to achieve any quality, so if you plan on doing a long run, do it on a day that you can recover the following day by either taking off or doing some easy training. For those worried about mileage, you'd be surprised that some of the countries best teams, including some that qualified for NXN, only ran 30 mpw for the majority of the year.

Mid-Late Season:

Monday- Medium intervals. The weather should be changing and this is a perfect time to do a fartlek style interval session. Increase the number while decreasing the pace (should be working on goal race pace for the championship meets). A sample workout would be 6x500 @ goal race pace with a 100m very easy jog recovery or 8-10x300 with a very easy 100m jog recovery.

Tuesday- Easy jogging, same as before.

Wednesday- Tempo run day. The athletes should move towards all completing 3 miles instead of 2, and pace should be around 20 seconds per mile slower than race pace.

Thursday- Easy day, same as before

Friday- Pre-Meet, same as before.

Saturday- Cross Country Meet

Sunday- Off

The goal of this part of the season is to use the two workouts and the race to hone in on sound racing tactics and gain a sense of race pace.

The Peak:

Monday- Short intervals. 200s, 300s, and 400s. These are run faster than race pace with a short recovery. An 18 minute 3 miler might run 8x400 in 1:25 with 35-45 seconds standing recovery.

Tuesday- Same as before, more focus on the recovery and checking to make sure legs are feeling fresh.

Wednesday- Tempo runs are dropped in favor of a harder effort. Think 3x4 minutes at race pace with either 3 minutes standing recovery or 4 minutes jogging recovery or a time trial.

Thursday- Same as before.

Friday- Pre-Meet

Saturday- Late Season Meet

Sunday- Off

The peak should be timed right and should have a continuation of intensity up until the last week. Give yourself 3 weeks at least, 4 weeks at most for the peaking process to work under a training schedule like this. Don't abandon all workouts the week before the big meets though. Do your last good workout about 3-4 days before your final competition.

For the top athletes, a training program like this can hit around 40 miles a week during the early season period which is optimal for most high school athletes. It can be tweaked and beginner runners can run as low as 15-20 miles a week while they gain fitness. Once again, not all coaches will agree with a training schedule like this, but I encourage coaches to try it out and see for themselves how effective a simple program such as this can be.

Chaz Caiado is the distance coach at John Curtis Christian School and was an All-State Cross Country runner at Archbishop Shaw high school. You can reach him at ccaiado@tulane.edu

From http://la.milesplit.com/articles/92228-the-weekly-coaching-clinic-this-weeks-featured-coach-chaz-caiado

Is the Training Pyramid Optimal? Part 1

Almost all athletes are accustomed to the idea of periodization, especially those who find endurance sports to be their passion. The meticulous taper that these athletes follow is such an integral part of the process that it almost seems nonsensical to press the notion that the traditional pyramid training may not be the most optimal design. What on earth am I talking about? Well, I’m advocating year round quality phases. Yes, a total disruption of the traditional training mold. Now don’t get this confused with "don’t stop till you drop" repeats that have people heaving and wheezing like the end is nigh. I believe there are a lot of confused athletes and coaches out there who believe a base phase can’t have a lick of anything quicker than a jog and if you are going to go to the track you have to leave there in agony. Instead of a large, easy base period there should be an adequate amount of quality work mixed in.

Pickups, strides, etc., are forms of quality work that easily be done year round to supplement any easy distance training, or even other forms of quality, without taking much out on the legs. These are best done on an open grass field and should last 50-100 meters long. Some coaches prefer to put their athletes through plyometric training during base, or even year round to focus on power and proprioception. Although, due to the dynamic nature of plyometrics I find depending on the training age of the group the reward is less than the risk but that is something that the athlete or the coach needs to find out for themselves. It is noted that Clyde Hart, coach of the two fastest 400 meter runners of all time in Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner, was wary of plyometrics as well and used them sparingly.

The next form of quality that should be used year round is the hill workout. Hill sprints are a popular form of training for body builders because of the workout it offers, plus the excessive post exercise oxygen consumption of hill sprints is thought to elicit a higher caloric expenditure and higher fat loss percentages than light or moderate aerobic exercise. This would come in handy for those who seek to shed a few extra pounds or are looking for a challenging but different style of training. But why would this factor into a training regimen that traditionally is periodized like a runner or triathletes schedule? Well for one, the strength gains alone are a reason to add this training in year round, especially prior to intense anaerobic training that is traditionally seen towards the end of a training cycle because these workouts will decrease the likeliness you become injured. Added flexibility in the hips, ankles, etc., are a factor that contributes as well. Highly praised former track and field coach from New Zealand, Arthur Lydiard, described a complete phase where hill running should be done to increase speed, strength, and coordination. It has been long known to offer a great workout for athletes.

Resistance training is a hotly contested option for training that may or may not offer improvement, but I believe that resistance training can be of high importance to maintaining a healthy, well-balanced body that can withstand the pounding that it takes to complete an intense sporting event. A study back in 1993 that is often cited claims that not only is resistance training futile for endurance athletes, it can actually have a negative affect. But this article by the National Strength and Conditioning Association claims the opposite. I believe an athlete in any sport will do well to incorporate a proper resistance training program into their training, and this should be done year round. While I believe that resistance training can be done year round, it is important to taper this towards phases of high intensity training such as the anaerobic phase of a traditional training cycle due to the immense amount of effort an athlete is using. It is not necessary for the athlete to use resistance training within two weeks of a peak competition as well. Furthermore, resistance training is traditionally done within the confines of a gym and offers some respite from the external training conditions.

And finally, in the south we have high humidity in the summers. Quantity, especially in this weather, is highly stressful to the body. For athletes to maintain the same training regimen in the south as those in more temperate climates it would require much more preparation, caution, and most importantly, rest. The necessity to train, and at a certain level, will not change for someone hoping to achieve a specific goal so adequate stimulus must still be met, but if we look at of our workouts we may find a way to curb the amount of time spent in the heat while still getting the training we need. This could come in the form of the three ways we have described or could come in the form of tempo workouts, a topic we will discuss next, as well the idea of macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles instead of a singular pyramid to develop a better overall regime.

Strength Training for Endurance Athletes

Strength training for endurance athletes is a hot topic amongst the coaches in the athletics community.  You have coaches that have their athletes in the weight room several times a week to others who simply do some core work a couple times a week and leave it at that.  The whole topic is tricky because it isn't as cut and dry as some make it out to be.  Some factors in the amount of weight training an athlete should do include age, training age, event the athlete is training for, previous experience with strength training, accessibility to equipment, and experience a coach has implementing strength training in his or her program.

Now since we are talking about endurance athletes and not football or hockey players I think we should begin there, began age won't factor in as much as with those sports.  Endurance athletes tend to be ectomorphs, or those who are naturally lithe with a fast metabolism who will usually not gain much muscle unless on a very strict program.  While these athletes can be naturally strong, they usually are starting from a point where they have minimal strength training experience and will struggle with issues dealing with proprioception and kinesthetic awareness and will have a much smaller threshold for tolerance to strength work.  This is true, in my opinion, regardless of age with ectomorphic athletes.  I find my high school athletes without strength backgrounds will struggle equally at the initial strength training phases as my middle school and junior high athletes and at this point we are only talking about pushups and lunges, not even weighted exercises.

From this point I find that most coaches dismiss strength training because of how long it takes to develop those neural receptors that make strength training as natural as walking or running, or because of the necessary technical aspects of weight training.  This is unnecessary as much strength can be gained from simple body weight exercises that can be added to the end of practice a couple times a week.  The technical aspects, while not non-existent, should not be too difficult for a coach to aide his athletes with.  You must remind your athletes that a strong body recovers quicker, is more powerful, and is less injury prone.  The body weight exercises also reduce the need for equipment, can be done regardless of training age or physical age, event, and is the base for potential weighted exercises down the line.

For some late high school and most college aged athletes, a more regimented strength training routine will be necessary, but for the majority of middle school through high school aged athletes should focus on the basics and become proficient in exercises that establish a strength training base.  I will show some sample training regimens for younger athletes since my focus is the age-group athlete in AAU or USATF.  But to be sure, these exercises are the base of the future strength routines the athlete will encounter down the road.  Most can have weight added to them when the athlete becomes mature enough to handle them.  One last thing, this strength plan does not deal with plyometrics with is a whole issue unto itself.  This deals with the basic exercises necessary to develop strength, not simply power.

Here are two strength plans that should only take a few minutes but can help a young team become better athletes:

Workout A-  10-30 pushups, 10-30 prisoner squats, 10-30 lunges, 10-30 crunches, 30-60 seconds of planks on each side and the middle, and 30-60 seconds of Australian crawl

Workout B-  20-40 step ups, 5-20 tricep pushups, 30-60 seconds of bridging, 10-20 dips, 30-60 seconds of pedestal, and 30-60 seconds of scissor kicks.