Sprint training explained (2/3): How to get started
by Jan BobinecIn this three-part series I’m going to tell you why you should think about sprinting more. You might not have had a trainer or the chance to work on speed, so I’m going to share some practical ideas on how you can incorporate sprinting drills into your frisbee practices. In the first part you can find out why regular sprint training is something you can benefit from greatly for yourself in terms of injury prevention and increasing running speed. In this part I will explain how to get started with sprinting and what to look out for while you’re doing it. And no, you don’t need to be a certified Sports Performance Coach, have Track and Field experience or anything like that to be able to start doing the right things.
PP - Plan & Prepare
When starting with sprint training, here are three things to bear in mind:
Work on one thing at a time.
Whether you decide to work on your acceleration, change of direction, or top speed. Pick one and be intentional about it.
Film and time yourself
You need to know what you are working with to make meaningful changes.
Plan your workouts and prepare yourself for them
This is even more important if you’re not being coached by somebody else. This means having a sequence of exercises prepared, and a bag full of material you’ll need to make your life easier if you’re not running on a track. Your bag should include a measuring tape, at least 5 cones, your phone (Tripod or likewise is recommended) and some resistance bands or likewise.
Your workout planning-strategy should follow some simple yet effective rules:
Warm-up & Mobilize
Strengthen
Technique (Drills)
Sprints
In my experience the single biggest influence on my training is always the time I have for the workout. It determines how much time you can spend on any given part of the workout. No matter the amount of time, never skip any of these 4 parts. Shorten them to the most necessary if needed but never skip them.
The time you spend on sprint training changes depending on which part of the season you’re currently in. During the off-season it’s perfectly fine to hang around for 1 to 2 hours working on all aspects of sprinting and getting tired. As you get closer to the season and in-season, you will want to narrow it down to the things that you need to perform well during training and keep up the intensity.
In sprinting you determine volume by the distance sprinted. You only count for the actual sprinted distance. A 20 metre build up with a 10 metre fly would count as 10 sprinted metres. For beginners I’d suggest not sprinting more than 50-60 metres per session. Advanced (2 years+) team sport athletes can aim for 100 metres spread across a longer session. In-season, 50-60 metres is always enough. Within a single session you should put the exercises in an order from less dynamic (e.g. cat-cow) to more dynamic (e.g. A or B-Skips). Additionally, the speed you perform your technical drill at should start slow and increase with every rep. Once you’ve done all your drills and want to start sprinting, you want to feel ready to go hard without any doubts about your body.
The physical side
Let’s recap quickly:
You can improve your power
Your top speed can be increased
Your tendons can become more reactive
In theory it would be best to have endless time to work on every aspect as much as possible. In reality, you will find yourself combining these 4 aspects into a mix that works for you.
For example you can work on your reactivity quite well during warm ups or even after the workout. Start with around 50 pogo jumps, in sets of 10-20, and work yourself up to around 100 jumps gradually over the course of 3-4 weeks. It’s also never a mistake to include a couple of jumps with maximum intent (e.g. broad jump) to drive neural stimulation. You want your brain to be ready to roll.
You can even create some very good power stimuli if you include resisted sprints. Take a couple of the light to medium resistance bands, knot them together and try to accelerate for 3-5 steps. Do 3-5 sets of these with enough time in between and you have yourself a nice power block. Also works great with hill sprints, sled work or stair runs if done correctly.
The development of your top speed is simple and complex at the same time. On the one hand “all” you need to do is to run as fast as possible once a week. On the other hand, it’s quite technical and you want to avoid running at top speed too much with bad form so you don’t overload your muscles and tendons the wrong way or even injure them. Mark 40 metres, build up your sprint for 20-30 metres and then try to reach and hold your max speed for 10 metres. This is called a 10 metre fly and it’s a great way to control sprinting load so you don't overload.
The technical side
Here, I want to dive a bit deeper into the two aspects that I mentioned in the first blog: projection and switching.
Projection is the direction your body is pointing towards.
Switching is the timing of your legs when they start to move in the opposite direction once they’ve reached their end point of extension/flexion. Good switching is when the legs move in opposite directions at the same time.
However, technical aspects of running are hard to put into words and even harder to understand if you’re not the one who wrote it. The pictures below should allow you to have a better understanding of what a good projection looks like and how to recognize a good switch.
Projection
The white lines mark the centre of mass. The red line shows the projection of the athlete. The green line shows the more favourable projection. When watching your own video you want to see your ankles, knees, hips and shoulders on the same trajectory before the front leg starts to push back. This particular frame was the last one before the athlete started to pull back his front leg, so he missed the opportunity to fully extend his hips which would have resulted in more distance travelled. The turquoise line at hip height is the actual distance this athlete is missing out due to his projection.
When analysing your video and seeing something like this you should try to stay on the ground longer and really push away from the ground as hard as you can.
Switching
Switching can be analysed with acceleration-like actions as well as upright sprinting. In these pictures you can see how a former athlete of mine progressed over time. The first three pictures highlight an unsatisfying switch, marked red, while the second set of pictures, marked green, show an improvement in switching. The space between your knees should be as small as possible when the foot touches the ground. While that’s not the only parameter to judge whether your switching ability is good (or not), it serves the simple self-analytical purpose.
a) toe-off b) mid-air c) touchdown
When analysing your video footage, take a picture at toe-off, mid-air and touchdown of the foot. Repeat that for the next step to get a comparison of the left and right side. That should give you enough feedback to see if your technique is changing the way you want it to.
Other things that you also want to see when sprinting upright is an upright torso and a stiff leg. Both of these aspects are recognizable in the bottom pictures.
To be continued…
Now you should be able to better understand how to create a workout for yourself and what to look for when analysing your own runs. However, don’t be too hard on yourself when going through the footage.
Changing technique is never an easy thing to do: trust the process and be ok with making mistakes.
In the last post we’ll get into the topic of direction change and drills you can implement in order to develop a decent technique. Stay tuned.
Jan Bobinec is a sport performance coach from Graz, Austria. His primary focus is speed development for team sports athletes. He has multiple years of experience with athletes in various sports ranging from novices to experienced veterans.IG: janbobinec.coaching