Most people agree that speed wins, then why if that is the case isn’t it made a priority. You must work on speed first and foremost. You must incorporate some elements of speed from the first training cycle through to the peak competition. That is true if you are training for a marathon or 100 meters, basketball or rugby. It must be part of every training cycle. I find it quite amusing when I hear a coach say that we have been working on base work, but I have not started speed work yet. What are you waiting for? The problem with that approach is that they are not training to be fast, they are training to endure, and then magically they hope that the fast will come. They are essentially training speed out that is easy. The inevitable result is undue soreness and greater risk of injury because of the abrupt change in the training program when they do start to emphasize anything fast. The key is to never get too far away from running fast. Always train speed in. It should be part of the first training cycle of the year and be a part of each subsequent training cycle. Speed development work can be as simple as sprint drills, light acceleration drills, or for a distance runner simply finishing each run with 8 –10 x 100 meter fast strides, but it must be there all the time. Speed first to be first.
5 Comments
Ben Richens
I saw this all the time with certain endurance track coaches, build up the winter base of long slow runs over 3-4 months then come the first week of January (when often the athletes had done little or nothing over christmas) straight into speed – no wonder one coach i worked with was seeing 50% of his squad injured at any one point in time.
Jim Hiserman
Coaches who insist on building a base first, and I always here this, should think about the following statement: Speed is the base for Speed. Thanks Vern, for trying to get coaches to move out of the past.
florida coach
This is the fundamental reason why we struggle at the distances. Genetically in the US we are behind because our most inherently fast and powerful athletes migrate to the short sprints or team sports for success. A then they refine that skill. Where as in Kenya and Ethopia, their most gifted athletes are distant runners due to the economical benefits of being a distance runner there. Here we try to turn the slowest or the moderate in our population into the fastest it doesn’t work. Face it, if you were growing up and you ran a 100 yd dash in under 12 secs for a young boy or 13 seconds for a young girl you were pushed in the direction of the sprints and sprint sports. Female athletes with this ability would easily migrate to basketball or soccer. The people who run distances in this country need to develop their speed just as a wide receiver with mediocre speed would due to genetic predisposition that they are already lacking. Power, explosive, high neuromuscular recruitment type of activities. They want to blame altitude and culture for the Africans being better, but it really is more that their most explosive athletes run the distances. We finally have a young lady how has entered the distance pool that has the type disposition. She can run under 56 for the 1/4 and is only 12 and has run 2:09 800 and 4:56 for the mile. This is not tons of mileage, it is her inherent leg power and speed that is carrying her.
Umut SALAR
Base work is a must for running, because improvement of muscles are quite faster than the joints. Injuries in running occur especially during or right after the speed trainings due to the reason above. Swimming needs more and more technical training to make sure a perfect glide in water and to reduce drag. Therefore reducing the stroke count is more important than the speed. The definition of speed in swimming is stroke length x stroke count. Also without hours and hours base work, building up the speed is impossible. Even best swimmers (like Popov) are training hardly base work every single day…
Speed Training Program
This is a huge issue with runners i have worked with. Especially short distance runners because they have mentally told themselves that they are “short distance” guys and don’t need to run anything longer than a 100 or 200.