I continue on the fundamental understandings of sprinting. We will go into weight training today. Now first thing one has to understand is that weight training is a SUPPLEMENT to the sport of sprinting. As a matter of fact weight training should be secondary to a lot of sports period. Reason i say this because a lot of people think or believe on the idea that weight training is a means to an end, this philosophy results in injury most of the time for people who are not weight lifters or power lifters.
The goal is to get good at the sport one is participating in not the weight training. I can see people get addicted because progression in the gym is more measurable and linear then with any other sport. With other sports one requires a partner to time them on their speed or other complex movements, you don't just need a coach nowadays but a team of people to monitor a whole bunch of things, so it can get rather complex, so weight training is one of the easiest things an individual can monitor. So it's established weights are of great benefit as an assist to many sports. It all has to do with ones ability to recover.
Very few people can deal with large amounts of volume when it comes to strenuous movement or exercise. A lot of people still train like this, especially high school kids for PE, and any other sport in the curriculum. The reason being it was popularized by the Russians when they dominated in the 60s-70s, and their training programs had OUTRAGEOUS volumes, i mean the kind of volume is stupid...I can't even explain it. The reason why they even survived it is because the vast majority of the Eastern Europeans at the time were taking steroids. Aside from that tidbit a usual example i present to you, is lifting very heavy weights for a lot of reps in a given workout AFTER having another tough workout before hand, this is already to much for many people, even well trained people. Not everyone can recover as fast as wolverine, now there are some peoples bio-mechanics and flexibility who fortunately prevents them from being injury prone, these are the rare exceptions, you can prevent injury by being in shape, this allows you to handle more volume without getting hurt in the process. If you cannot recover fast enough for the next work out you are screwed, you are setting yourself up to under perform and get yoruself seriously injured, this is predominantly a reason why we have coaches. The nervous system can only take so much. So naturally understanding all of this how do we avoid this?
Sprinting is a power sport, specifically it is PURE PERFORMANCE power sport. Meaning it requires a lot of power to get that body moving to top speed which we talked about on the first part. Power is speed and strength, so the lifts sprinters are concerned about is the power clean, squats (very important), the bench press to is surprisingly important, and the secondary lifts is also good to improve overall strength of the entire organism, but even more importantly is Plyometrics. Plyometrics is a set of bounds and jumps from certain depths or distances, it is orchestrated by a program set by the coach that allows the progression of the athletes ability to develop more power in jumps or bounds that can enhance their speed over time. With the exception to the secondary lifts, the big lifts like the squat and the power clean are to be worked within 80-90% of your 1 repetition max, Plyometrics should also be handled delicately as injury is goddamn freaking high if one is not careful. So if you can only squat 315 pounds you are working 80-90 percent of that and more, if you can and often times it is done with singles or doubles, which is a nice way of saying one rep or 2 reps(yes it gets that heavy). This is monitored by your coach who knows what he is doing (this is where your faith goes). You need to exercise the ability to recruit all your muscle fibers and stimulate your nervous system to generate more power relative to your body weight, once achieved you will fly.
A very important quote to remember is "less is more". Don't overdue it even if you get a personal best in your lifts or the gym, people often want to leverage their progress by accumulating their workouts in order to get a bigger adaptation. No you are overreaching here or over training yourself to failure. Workouts for sprinters should not be any more different then power sports, like certain positions in football or many of the track and field events, and even to an extent for the weight lifting sports.
to be continued...
Showing posts with label sprinters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sprinters. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
The World of Sprinters: Part 1
I was always a fan of athletics, particularly the sprint events. I learned a lot about sprinters and the nature of sprinting in general. They are arguably the most powerful athletes next to weight lifters, power lifters come in second here, these guys primarily focus on brute strength. Where do i start? For one we know they are fast, but not everyone is aware of the nature of how they train, and what happens during the sprint race, or most importantly how they all got so fast anyways, they obviously had to be training, but lets be a little specific about this.
Sprinters do not necessarily have to look like ripped athletes like Usain bolt and Tyson Gay, sure they all an exceptional physique that one would expect at the world stage but their body types were more or less like that since their younger years. Some sprinters have average levels of body fat or higher, but a sprinter can be anyone (especially if you are gifted with a lot of fast twitch). Walter Dix is a good example of an elite sprinter with a high body fat unusual in the typical sprinter.
British sprinters like Craig Pickering also have average levels of body fat. The training itself is more important, the appearance of muscles have their importance but its secondary to the training itself. As you get faster you can always have the potential to look like some guy sculpted by Michelangelo. With the nature of sprinting, one would have less body fat in tropical warmer climates then in winter ones, because one can train outdoors more frequently enabling the loss of more body fat. Also in warmer climates nobody is stuck in the house either, it is to hot outside everyone is out walking around doing something with friends and family.
Lets get back to the topic of training. Training for Track and Field is very finicky because most the events are pure performance sports, meaning they are on mostly pure physical capabilities, so the nature of these sports is hard on the body. Techniques are employed but limited to limit these risks, and perform better it is no different then other team sports like basketball or football, American football, and fighting like boxing, or mixed martial arts technique is important, there is an element of skill in the sport. These team sports i listed as examples employ a versatile element of techniques that give many variables to tactics and strategies to win. In Track and Field especially sprinting strategies are very limited, i mean you only run for a few seconds in a straight line or bend or run the whole track. The strategies are mostly done through the training itself, and there is tacics in sprinting the longer events like the 400m. Also you are trying to improve your body to perform beyond the limits of what its comfortable doing, allowing it adapt over time to perform at speeds rarely achieved by humans. Not everyone sprints their hardest everywhere they go, we usually walk or jog because that is more efficient form of physical locomotion. For that reason alone, since sprinters try to reach the limits of what their body is capable of doing, they are more likely to get injured. So things have to be considered to prevent injury, strategy of training programs are very important, so the body can adjust and handle the stress of the violent forces it will be under. The programs of a sprinter are very extensive and the is a viewed more of an annual progression rather then a few months, you would typically see in a weight training program.
When sprinting everyone ACCELERATES eventually they reach top speed for about a few seconds and after that they slow down. The longer ones acceleration is the later they would hit the top speed, but if you accelerate further you are also traveling faster so you also directly affect your top speed, which will make you even faster. It does not end there though, if you have bad cardio or in poor condition, you will slow down rapidly due to a lack of speed endurance. You will see younger kids in high school during track meets stay ahead of everyone for 50 meters then fade away as everyone passes them. What that means is the person is fast, but has poor conditioning, they are unable at the moment to maintain their speeds and slow down faster then everyone else, who is also slowing down. YOU CANNOT maintain your top speed throughout the whole race, not even cheetahs can do this, you can only SLOW DOWN your deceleration. So in the end of a race, when the racer is slowly passing everyone in the final 30 meters, all it means is he slowed down the least compared to his competitors, essentially he has better SPEED ENDURANCE then his rivals and is more likely in better shape, he may also be lighter in weight but still powerful for his weight. This is an illusion to those who see others sprint. They assume the individual is simply finding a new gear and accelerating past everyone, which is clearly not the case.
Another way of looking at it is that we have Kid A, and Kid B who are on the blocks getting ready to race against each other. ON YOUR MAKRS GET SET......GO. Kid A explodes off the blocks, Kid B is a little slow to coming off the blocks. Kid A accelerates to 30 meters, but Kid B is catching up around the 45 meter mark. Around the 60 meter mark Kid A has reached Kid B who has already started to slow down. Kid A starts to fade away even more now. Kid B passe Kid A and wins the race, this race illustrates Kid B having better speed endurance, and Kid A being good off the blocks and having good acceleration. Kid A can beat Kid B if he were to train more speed endurance. There is a possibility that those who do well later in the race have more elastic power, and are better at bounding so they do well as far as speed endurance is involved, but because they lack strength they have a hard time getting off the blocks, you usually see this with jumpers who also make good sprinters. Jumpers have really good top speed because of the nature of the movement when you have reached that point in a sprint, their training of jumps and bounds is one of the ways to improve this point in a race.
Some people are naturally stronger then others, the heavy more sturdy strong individuals with good reflexes, are amazing off the blocks and have very good acceleration because of their strength, they can generate so much power off the blocks and start moving their bodies quickly to top speed, they make good indoor specialists running events like the 55m, 60m dash events. However since they are very heavy, their top speed suffers somewhat, or they have a hard time generating that kind of power in the later portion of the race, some peoples mechanics are like that. This is not always the rule though, if you are powerful(combination of speed and strength) and have a developed a good vertical jump, you can generate good forces at top speed, and effectively have good top end speed, which would make you EVEN FASTER. Even with poor speed endurance you will still prevail in some cases. Lighter people who are very strong and powerful are the optimal sprinters because they can generate so much power relative to their body-weight, they easily overcome the forces necessary to move their own bodies from static position and accelerate and achieve great TOP SPEED. Speed endurance is easy for them to train because of their lighter weight. However for everyones sake SPEED ENDURANCE takes slight precedence over acceleration training, mostly because many people are not conditioned properly for the later end of the race. Also why shave tenth or hundredths of a second of the first part of the race when you can shave of seconds in the later end of the race? Acceleration work is important for those who are not naturally strong, The element of skill for accelerating off the blocks can be taught quicker then achieving good speed endurance and top speed anyways.
I will go over more on acceleration, top speed, and speed endurance later on. However next time i would like to go over weight training for sprinters and other power athletes. I will say this top speed is the limiting factor to many people being fast, it is the the hardest thing to improve in track training. The difficulty of improving top speed, is the same as improving your vertical jump to try and dunk a basketball.
to be continued... Part 2
Sprinters do not necessarily have to look like ripped athletes like Usain bolt and Tyson Gay, sure they all an exceptional physique that one would expect at the world stage but their body types were more or less like that since their younger years. Some sprinters have average levels of body fat or higher, but a sprinter can be anyone (especially if you are gifted with a lot of fast twitch). Walter Dix is a good example of an elite sprinter with a high body fat unusual in the typical sprinter.
British sprinters like Craig Pickering also have average levels of body fat. The training itself is more important, the appearance of muscles have their importance but its secondary to the training itself. As you get faster you can always have the potential to look like some guy sculpted by Michelangelo. With the nature of sprinting, one would have less body fat in tropical warmer climates then in winter ones, because one can train outdoors more frequently enabling the loss of more body fat. Also in warmer climates nobody is stuck in the house either, it is to hot outside everyone is out walking around doing something with friends and family.
Lets get back to the topic of training. Training for Track and Field is very finicky because most the events are pure performance sports, meaning they are on mostly pure physical capabilities, so the nature of these sports is hard on the body. Techniques are employed but limited to limit these risks, and perform better it is no different then other team sports like basketball or football, American football, and fighting like boxing, or mixed martial arts technique is important, there is an element of skill in the sport. These team sports i listed as examples employ a versatile element of techniques that give many variables to tactics and strategies to win. In Track and Field especially sprinting strategies are very limited, i mean you only run for a few seconds in a straight line or bend or run the whole track. The strategies are mostly done through the training itself, and there is tacics in sprinting the longer events like the 400m. Also you are trying to improve your body to perform beyond the limits of what its comfortable doing, allowing it adapt over time to perform at speeds rarely achieved by humans. Not everyone sprints their hardest everywhere they go, we usually walk or jog because that is more efficient form of physical locomotion. For that reason alone, since sprinters try to reach the limits of what their body is capable of doing, they are more likely to get injured. So things have to be considered to prevent injury, strategy of training programs are very important, so the body can adjust and handle the stress of the violent forces it will be under. The programs of a sprinter are very extensive and the is a viewed more of an annual progression rather then a few months, you would typically see in a weight training program.
When sprinting everyone ACCELERATES eventually they reach top speed for about a few seconds and after that they slow down. The longer ones acceleration is the later they would hit the top speed, but if you accelerate further you are also traveling faster so you also directly affect your top speed, which will make you even faster. It does not end there though, if you have bad cardio or in poor condition, you will slow down rapidly due to a lack of speed endurance. You will see younger kids in high school during track meets stay ahead of everyone for 50 meters then fade away as everyone passes them. What that means is the person is fast, but has poor conditioning, they are unable at the moment to maintain their speeds and slow down faster then everyone else, who is also slowing down. YOU CANNOT maintain your top speed throughout the whole race, not even cheetahs can do this, you can only SLOW DOWN your deceleration. So in the end of a race, when the racer is slowly passing everyone in the final 30 meters, all it means is he slowed down the least compared to his competitors, essentially he has better SPEED ENDURANCE then his rivals and is more likely in better shape, he may also be lighter in weight but still powerful for his weight. This is an illusion to those who see others sprint. They assume the individual is simply finding a new gear and accelerating past everyone, which is clearly not the case.
Another way of looking at it is that we have Kid A, and Kid B who are on the blocks getting ready to race against each other. ON YOUR MAKRS GET SET......GO. Kid A explodes off the blocks, Kid B is a little slow to coming off the blocks. Kid A accelerates to 30 meters, but Kid B is catching up around the 45 meter mark. Around the 60 meter mark Kid A has reached Kid B who has already started to slow down. Kid A starts to fade away even more now. Kid B passe Kid A and wins the race, this race illustrates Kid B having better speed endurance, and Kid A being good off the blocks and having good acceleration. Kid A can beat Kid B if he were to train more speed endurance. There is a possibility that those who do well later in the race have more elastic power, and are better at bounding so they do well as far as speed endurance is involved, but because they lack strength they have a hard time getting off the blocks, you usually see this with jumpers who also make good sprinters. Jumpers have really good top speed because of the nature of the movement when you have reached that point in a sprint, their training of jumps and bounds is one of the ways to improve this point in a race.
Some people are naturally stronger then others, the heavy more sturdy strong individuals with good reflexes, are amazing off the blocks and have very good acceleration because of their strength, they can generate so much power off the blocks and start moving their bodies quickly to top speed, they make good indoor specialists running events like the 55m, 60m dash events. However since they are very heavy, their top speed suffers somewhat, or they have a hard time generating that kind of power in the later portion of the race, some peoples mechanics are like that. This is not always the rule though, if you are powerful(combination of speed and strength) and have a developed a good vertical jump, you can generate good forces at top speed, and effectively have good top end speed, which would make you EVEN FASTER. Even with poor speed endurance you will still prevail in some cases. Lighter people who are very strong and powerful are the optimal sprinters because they can generate so much power relative to their body-weight, they easily overcome the forces necessary to move their own bodies from static position and accelerate and achieve great TOP SPEED. Speed endurance is easy for them to train because of their lighter weight. However for everyones sake SPEED ENDURANCE takes slight precedence over acceleration training, mostly because many people are not conditioned properly for the later end of the race. Also why shave tenth or hundredths of a second of the first part of the race when you can shave of seconds in the later end of the race? Acceleration work is important for those who are not naturally strong, The element of skill for accelerating off the blocks can be taught quicker then achieving good speed endurance and top speed anyways.
I will go over more on acceleration, top speed, and speed endurance later on. However next time i would like to go over weight training for sprinters and other power athletes. I will say this top speed is the limiting factor to many people being fast, it is the the hardest thing to improve in track training. The difficulty of improving top speed, is the same as improving your vertical jump to try and dunk a basketball.
to be continued... Part 2
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)