Sprint Program – Week 7 of 10 Special Prep Phase April 26, 2010

This week we start doing more event specific speed and speed endurance workouts.  Monday is our meet with St. Ann.  For the sprinters, that’s a speed endurance workout day.  Any time they sprint for more than 5-6 seconds at a time, that gets into the speed endurance area.  All our sprinters will do at least 200M of sprinting today.  Some will do more.

We’ll try to get two more speed endurance days in this week.  One of those days we’ll do 6 X 50M with 4-5 min rest.  We’ll be working on the drive phase of the 100M and 200M race – the first 20-30M – then transitioning into the max velocity phase.  The mechanics of sprinting change from the drive phase of a race to the max velocity phase.  We’ll be observing and coaching the kids on the proper body angle, arm action, and step over, drive down technique to get maximum velocity with minimum expenditure of energy.

The second sprint day will be another speed endurance day.  We’ll be simulating the workload they will feel at the CYO meet when they have to run preliminaries, semi-finals, and finals all within a 90 min. period.  So we’ll do 3-4 X 30/30/30 with 6 burpees after each 30M sprint.  This is a very tiring workout both mentally and physically.  They have to stay focused on executing the proper sprint technique even when they’re tired.

The in between days we’ll do recovery workouts – 10 X 100M @ 75% or 6 X 200 @ 75%.  We’ll keep the plyos and core (abs, hips, glutes, and hamstrings) work going.   This is essential to continuing to make them stronger and therefore faster and more explosive.

Week 6 – First Week of Special Prep Phase April 19, 2010

In the Special Prep Phase of the season the volume and intensity of the workouts will be at their highest.  We will also begin working on maximum velocity (Vmax) skills with our sprinters – i.e., how do you sprint effectively after you have gotten up to top speed.  Of course, we still have a lot of work to do on acceleration mechanics – proper body angle, agressive arm action, foot plant directly under or slightly behind the hips.  So we will only move into the Vmax work with those kids who have gotten the acceleration mechanics reasonably mastered.

We’re coming off a tough meet against Holy Family in which our kids had some really fine performances.  Lots of personal bests.  We saw the benefits of all the strength building work the kids have been doing as many sprinters dropped their times significantly and some of our jumpers totally blew away their previous personal bests.  We’ll continue doing our core exercises to build strength in the abs, hips, glutes, and hamstrings and our plyos to increase their explosiveness.  Strength, explosiveness, and correct sprinting mechanics are the keys to running faster and jumping farther and higher.

Here is what we’ll be doing this week:

Week 6 Special Prep.

Monday – Aerobic conditioning /Recovery day

• 10 X 150M @ 75%, 90 sec rest. 
• Core (abs, hips, glutes, hamstrings)

Tuesday – Speed day

• 3-4 X (20/30/40) out of blocks, full recovery (2’/3’/4’)
• Plyos, strength

Wednesday – Aerobic conditioning day

• 5-8 X 200M @ 75%, 2’ rest
• Core, strength

Thursday – Speed/Vmax day

• 4-6 X Fly 30 w/ 20M accel. zone, 5’ rest.  Start teaching how to float (mechanics, why it’s imp., common mistakes).
• Plyos, strength

Friday – Aerobic conditioning day

• Extended dynamic warm up with General Strength circuit to get heart rate up.
• Core, strength

Sprinter Workouts – Week 4 General Prep Phase April 6, 2010

As we enter week 4 of the season, we are starting to increase the volume and intensity of the work for our sprinters.  We continue to focus on the proper mechanics of acceleration – aggressive arm action (driving elbows down and back, hands going back behind the butt), big first step out of the blocks or 3-pt. stance, powerful strides driving the ground down and away, and accelerating at a 45 degree angle.  It’s harder than you think to break old, well-engrained, but bad habits of running!  Our athletes really have to focus on what they are doing when we do our sprint drills.

Our workouts for the week:

Monday

• Aerobic conditioning day -  5-8 X 200M @ 75%

Tuesday

• Speed day –  7-10 X 30M out of blocks, 2’ rest. 
• Plyos, core, strength

Wednesday

• Aerobic conditioning – 12 X 100 @ 75%, 1’ rest
• Core, strength

Thursday

• Speed endurance day – 3-4 X 30/30/30M from diff positions, 3-4’ rest.  10 tuck jumps at end of each set. 
• Core, strength circuit.  (Jog 50M after each.)

Friday

• Aerobic conditioning  - 2 X 3 X (200+100M) @ 75%.  Walk 50M after each.  2’ rest between sets.
• Core, strength