Chris Parno, Minnesota State University Associate Head Men’s & Women’s Track & Field Coach / Recruiting Coordinator – Sprints & Hurdles;

Acceleration is one of the key biomechanical principles to sprinting. Coach Chris Parno, through a PowerPoint presentation and on-track instruction, presents the best methods to assist sprinters who want to achieve their individual maximal velocity through a proper acceleration pattern. Sharing a rich resource of sport science research and his own observational and accumulated expertise, Parno shows many forms of sprint starting as well as how to accurately set an athlete’s blocks to achieve optimal acceleration, and ultimately, their best speed.

We are providing this drill to give you ideas on how to enhance your current practice drills. The idea is not to implement it exactly as is, but rather to tweak it to make it fit your system.

There is sound with the video, so please make sure that your sound is on.

This is a YouTube video, so you will need to be on a network that does not block YouTube videos.

For more information about Bio-Mechanics & Drills: Sprint Starts & Acceleration, click here: Chris Parno’s Sprinting Mechanics & Drills Series – Track & Field — Championship Productions, Inc.

This post was provided by Complete Track and Field

By Latif Thomas

What to do when the summer months are upon us?

You’ve got a number of options, so here’s my take on getting the most out of summer training for sprinters (or any athlete in any sport, for that matter):

1. Consider Not Training At All.

Summer competitions are more popular in some places than in others. Where I live, it’s not incredibly popular. And quite frankly, I’m cool with that.

I generally don’t steer kids toward summer training and/or competitions unless the kid is hardcore and keeps asking about it or they’re a scholarship caliber athlete who needs the work in a low pressure environment.

The type of athlete who is going to be interested in summer track is the kind of athlete who’s probably already got 6-9 months of training under their belt for the season. That’s a lot of track! Track isn’t like basketball or soccer where much, if not all, of practice consists of 2-3 hours of not doing much more than just playing basketball or soccer. Track is just straight up training and that gets tough to focus on after a while. So summer is a good time for kids to recharge their batteries.

If you think over training is a possibility, consider doing anything other than track during the summer. But for those people who insist on training and competing, I always recommend the following:

1. Drop down in distance from your primary event.If you’ve been running 400s all year, don’t run the 400 all summer. Drop down to the deuce or the 100. Your sprinters need the speed work anyway.
2. Don’t train every day. 3-4 days a week is sufficient. Your (developmental) sprinters need the break from training. You don’t want them to show up in the fall feeling like they’re already tired because they trained too much all summer.
3. Don’t worry about setting personal bests. Your sprinters peaked at the end of spring. Now is the time to focus on execution because they’re not necessarily ‘in shape’ to run PRs anymore. Take that out of the discussion and shift focus elsewhere so kids don’t freak out when they get a great start at a meet, but don’t run a lifetime best. I’m not saying they can’t or won’t PR, but I definitely don’t focus on times during summer competition.

2. Focus On Weaknesses

Instead of treating summer track like an extension of spring track, consider using it to work on training and competing weaknesses that manifested over the course of the season.

Having a consistently tough time finishing 400s? Spend the bulk of training developing lactacid capacity and some Special Endurance.

Bad start? Don’t worry about speed endurance and fancy progressions. Focus on accel work over 20-30m and establishing an efficient and consistent drive phase.

Get the idea?

I don’t want to run a regular training progression during the summer. I want to get athletes set up to achieve their goals for the upcoming season and continue to develop their self-confidence. This can be done by turning their relative weaknesses into relative strengths.

3. Focus On Strengths

I read a quote from a coach one time who said, in essence:

“We spend too much time trying to turn our weaknesses into strengths instead of making our strengths even stronger.”

It might have been Clyde Hart. Or not. Either way, it’s an interesting concept to contemplate.

There are 4 levels of skill acquisition and none of your sprinters have reached the point of Unconscious Competence. More likely, they’re hovering somewhere along the spectrum of Conscious Incompetence. So ‘strengths’ are quite relative for our developmental sprinters.

Got a great start? Keep cleaning it up and adding more technical elements to shave precious hundredths of your sprinters’ times.

Known for your top end speed? Focus on transitioning out of your drive phase and getting lift.

Spend more time focusing on the things you’re already good at and that’s going to lead to better results!

4. Weight Room!

Your sprinters don’t run faster because they’re not strong enough. Their lack of general, absolute, and specific strength is the primary glass ceiling keeping them from the next level, whatever that happens to be for each individual athlete.

So, instead of trying to do all the fancy drills and workouts they aren’t physically capable of executing consistently and efficiently, spend the summer focusing on gaining strength in the weight room and improving the ability to handle more advanced plyos.

Technique in the weight room is, of course, critical. So don’t sacrifice technique to try and throw a million pounds around. Nail down technique and focus on developing the strength and power that allows your sprinters to take advantage of the technical skill you teach during the regular season.

5. Focus On Acceleration

At the end of the day, success in the sprint events boils down to your sprinters’ ability to consistently execute (starting to see a pattern with the importance of ‘consistency’ and ‘execution’?) an efficient drive phase/acceleration pattern. And, more specifically, your ability to teach it.

So you really can’t go wrong spending the summer only focusing on acceleration development and block work. In fact, I’d argue that you could have a very productive summer if your sprinters never ran a step longer than 30m. If that doesn’t translate to a far superior ‘start’ in the next season, I’ll be absolutely shocked.

Of course, just running 30s out of a 3 point stance three days a week isn’t going to cut it. As the coach, you have to know exactly how to teach skills like low heel recovery, triple extension, glute activation/force application, etc. If the technical feedback from the coach doesn’t facilitate a learning environment for the athlete, then you’re really just reinforcing bad running mechanics and making the situation worse.

So please keep that in mind.

So there you go. Those are some basic ideas for you to let marinate in your mind in terms of how you can approach your summer training.

Coaching Resource: Complete Sprint Training 3

This post was provided by Complete Track and Field

by Marc Mangiacotti

Marc Mangiacotti is an assistant coach at Harvard. He oversees the men’s sprinters and hurdles for Harvard.

Check out Coach Mangiacotti’s highly acclaimed coaching course: Advanced Concepts in Training 400m Runners

Sometimes athletes can’t always do a true acceleration workout because of space and access to equipment. However, there is always a way to check the box. These are acceleration workout considerations for athletes with limited space and equipment.

Drill Options:

Wall Drill x 10
Skate Start x 2 pushes
Hop-Hop-Splits-Skate Start x 3 pushes
Crouch Start x 4 pushes
Bow-Touch-Go x 5 pushes
Donkey Kick Start x 6 pushes
Push Up Start x 7 pushes
Rollover Push Up Start x 8 pushes
3 Point Start x 9 pushes
4 Point Start x 10 pushes

If you do not have the ability to do a workout after these, then the drill sequence can be done more than once to turn this into a workout.

Workouts options:

Pick 1 option or do a Plan B option

1) 6-10 x repetitions of 10-20m of straight leg bound into 20-40m build up with 3’ recovery.
2) 4 x 10m, 20m, 30m with 2-3’ recovery between repetitions and 5-6’ between sets.
3) 4 x 10m, 20m or 30m (odd reps without resistance and even reps with resistance – light sled, tire, or simply run into the wind). The athlete should follow the same rest parameters as the workout above.
4) Repetitions of low hurdle hops followed by a 15-30m acceleration with 2-3’ recovery. If you don’t have hurdles, just go through the motion of jumping over hurdles then accelerate.
5) Short hill accelerations of 10-30m using the same rest parameters as workout # 2.

Plan B acceleration options if you can’t go outside:

Stationary bike with resistance. Add enough resistance that you have to work really hard, but not so much that you are not pedaling fast.

These can be done on an Assault Bike if you have access to one.

A) 2 x 10”, 2 x 15”, 2 x 20”, 2 x 15”, 2 x 10” with 60 seconds recovery between repetitions and 3 minutes between sets.
B) 3 x 3 x 10” with 60 seconds recovery between repetitions and 3 minutes between sets.

Do you have a medicine ball or something else you can throw?

Explosive Medicine Ball Throws can be done three ways.

The first way is to throw and chase the med ball on throws that allow for an acceleration afterwards.

The second way is to add in a hop-hop before each throw (always hop forwards).

The third way is to just do the throws as it is written.

Note: If this was going to be all an athlete does, then the athlete should do all three ways. If it is done after an acceleration workout, then do the throws as they are written.

1) Straight Up Throws x 4
2) Med Ball Slams x 4
3) Overhead Forward Throws x 4
4) Below Legs Forward Throws x 4
5) Caber Toss x 4 (4 on each side)

Need something with minimal space?

Explosive In-Place Jumps Circuit that promotes a full range of motion at high intensity. These can be done for 15-20 seconds with 1 minute recovery.

1) Butt Kick Jumps
2) 180’s (rocket jump with a turn in the air)
3) Speed Skaters
4) Tuck Jumps
5) Squat Freeze Jumps
6) Lunge Jumps
7) Air Triple Jumps
8) Step Up Jumps

Explosive body weight circuits to promote full range of motion.

Each exercise should be done for 12 repetitions with 1 minute recovery. Each exercise should be done at 100% intensity. The athlete should want the 1 minute to recover.

1) Push Up with Clap
2) Rocket Jumps
3) V-Sit Ups
4) Mountain Climbers
5) Glute Bridge
6) Speed Skaters
7) Dips
8) Back Hypers with a Twist
9) Leg Toss
10) Single Leg Glute Bridge
11) 4-Count Thrust or Burpee

Check out Coach Mangiacotti’s highly acclaimed coaching course: Advanced Concepts in Training 400m Runners