Sprint Workouts for Week 1 – General Prep. (Mar 15)

Today we start our General Prep phase of training – weeks 1-4 of the season.  Our sprinter objectives in General Prep are to build aerobic capacity, general strength and flexibility, and to begin teaching our athletes proper technique for acceleration and max velocity running.  We’ll also be teaching a lot of technical skills like field events, hand offs, and block starts.  Your kids might find themselves with some sore muscles they didn’t know they had!  I doubt many will have done a lot of work on their hip and glute muscles.  Well, strength in the hips, glutes, and hamstrings is key to being able to step over and drive down into the ground.  The more force our sprinters exert into the ground, the farther each step is going to propel them forward.

All our practices will start with 800M of warm up jog followed by 15-20 minutes of dynamic warm up exercises.  Some of the dynamic exercises are designed to stretch the muscles; others to get blood flowing and loosen up the muscles.  The workout for the day will follow the dynamic warm up.  We will always end practice with 800M jog to warm down and 2-3 minutes of stretching.  The warm down and stretching are important to help get any lactic acid out of the legs to prevent soreness.

Most days we will mix in arm action drills, body angle drills, and speed drills to begin teaching our athletes proper sprinting technique.  Over time their bodies will develop muscle memory for the proper way to run and they will get faster.  Although in the first few weeks some will probably get slower as they retrain their bodies and change their running mechanics.

Here are the workouts for our sprinters for Week 1:

Monday: Aerobic conditioning/general strength – 10 X 100M @ 70% intensity, 1m rest.  5-8 core and general strength exercises with a 50M jog after each. 

Tuesday: Speed day – 6-10 X 20M @ 100% from 3-pt stance, 2-3m active recovery (walking around).  Core and general strength exercises.

Wednesday: Aerobic conditioning/general strength – 5-10 X 200M @ 70%, 2m rest; 5-8 core and general strength exercises w/ 50M jog after each.

Thursday: Aerobic conditioning/ general strength – 20 push ups + 800M run @ 70%; 50 core reps (bicycles, russian twists,etc.) + 800M run; 25 squats + 800M run; Hurdle mobility drills to increase hip flexibility.

Friday: Aerobic conditioning/general strength – 2 X (5-6 X 100M) @ 70%, 1m rest, 2m rest between sets.  2 X general strength circuit (5-8 exercises, jog 50M after each), 3m rest between circuits.

As you can see, we are focusing on general conditioning and beginning to teach running mechanics this first week.  Starting in week 2 we’ll add another speed day.  We look forward to starting off another good season for Raider Track!