What characteristics do the “Workhorse Sprinters” have in common? What kind of athlete can win you multiple events?

This article was provided by Complete Track and Field

Have you ever had an athlete or athletes that could win multiple events at a championship meet?

These athletes are better referred to as your “Workhorse Sprinters…” Your multi-talented sprinters who can run the 60 meters through the 400 meters and who might even be able to find success in a field event or on a relay leg.

And then there is the combined event athlete who can score points in an individual event and the MultiEvent.

Can you think of any athletes on your team who fit this description?

Since the sport of track and field requires a lot of mental strength, it is important to note the mental capacity it takes to be considered a “Workhorse Sprinter.”

With mental traits, the first thing we have to look for is someone with a positive personality. These student-athletes are going to be working with various event groups so you want to make sure that they are a positive contributor to each event group.

You don’t want someone with negative personality traits because then they are carrying all of that negativity, not to just one event group but to every event group they might be training with on a given day or given week or throughout the entire year.

We also want to find a highly motivated, highly driven student-athlete.

Are they willing to do more work?

We also want to find student athletes with good self-esteem. If you do one event you’re probably going to get a lot of constructive criticism from your coach. If you do multiple events you are probably going to get more constructive criticism from your coach. So, we need to have good athletes that understand what constructive criticism is, how to internalize it and stay positive, move forward and learn.

We also want to find people who are leaders especially if they are going from event group to event group to train with other people.

We want people to lead in the right direction and not the wrong direction. We also want to look for athletes who have a high pain tolerance. They are going to have to do a lot of different types of training and sometimes it’s going to be really hard. So, we want to make sure this is something that they are up for.

Are they up for the challenge?

It is important to take a look at the history of stress for your athletes. The athlete as a “Workhorse Sprinter” will deal with high pressure situations. They are going to be in more events than most, which means they are also going to have more stress and more pressure. And if they are someone that doesn’t do well with stress and pressure, then being a “Workhorse Sprinter” is probably not something they will care for.

One of the tests I use is the 4×400 meter relay test. Towards the end of a track meet if you walk up to group of athletes and you ask them to hop on the 4×400 meter relay, if they are the first ones to walk away, they are probably not going to be positive team members with good leadership that are highly motivated and they probably don’t have a high pain tolerance.

So, they are not going to be the people that you identify as Workhorses. The ones that jump at the opportunity to do something are the ones that you probably want to focus most of your attention on.

NEW RELEASE:

Training & Race Day Tactics for Your Workhorse Sprinters – Marc Mangiacotti (Harvard University)

Creating a weekly plan for your sprinters’ in-season training will help you make sure that you have all critical aspects of their training and recovery addressed.

In the video below Mike Ford, Associate Track Coach at Baylor University, shares his weekly in-season training plan for 100/200m sprinters. The video is taken from a recent Glazier Track and Field Clinic.

Here is a quick breakdown of his training plan:
Monday – Tempo Endurance: 200’s or 30/30
Tuesday – Speed/Blocks: Flying 20m-40m, 4×1 exchanges
Wednesday – Off Day/Pool Workout/Speed Endurance/4×1 exchanges
Thursday – Speed or Speed Endurance/4×1 exchanges
Friday – Pre-meet shake out/Speed Endurance/Heavy Lift
Saturday – Competition
Sunday – Religion/Rest/Rehab

For information about how to gain access to Coach Ford’s entire presentation, as well hundreds of other great clinic presentations, clicks the link Glazier Soccer Clinics

The YouTube video below has audio, so please make sure that your volume is turned up. Note that some schools block access to YouTube. Click the arrow to play the video

This article was provided by Complete Track and Field

Training shallower in the same pool means incorporating back to back sessions of high neuromuscular demand with the first being the more difficult or challenging and the second being lighter and less challenging

By Latif Thomas

In my previous article, I explained the many benefits of using back-to-back training sessions of high neuromuscular demand as a model for developing your high school sprinters.

If you haven’t read it, I recommend reading it before continuing on here in order to ensure you know the underlying ‘Reason Why’ behind the activity selection discussed below.

Click here to read Part 1: Training Deeper in the Same Pool.

Building on the ideas contained in that article, we’ll now move to our next preferred practice session format:

Training Shallower in the Same Pool

Training shallower in the same pool means incorporating back to back sessions of high neuromuscular demand with the first being the more difficult or challenging and the second being lighter and less challenging. (It can also be for low neuromuscular demand type sessions, but we already covered that.)

For all intents and purposes, the deeper/shallower formats are simply the inverse of the other. However, training shallower is my preferred format when max velocity/top end speed is on the menu, especially early in the season or with the freshmen/Year 1 kids.

In my experience, once kids get out into that 35m – 60m range, injury risk rises by 47%.

I don’t have data on this. I pulled that number from the ethers. My measuring system is the level of cringe I feel when watching unskilled sprinters flop their limbs around as fast as they can.

Toe first landings. Heel first landings. Casting the lower leg. Poor recovery mechanics/excessive backside mechanics.

If you’re looking for a surefire method for finding yourself in a team wide shin splint, hamstring, adductor, and/or hip flexor injury epidemic, continue to allow these postural failures to repeat themselves endlessly, day in and day out, in spikes, and at velocities they can’t control.

I’m not advocating to *only* go shallower in your maximum velocity/top end speed themed sessions. I do both on the regular.

Just be cautious. And remember this:

Most of your sprinters are completely vertical within 3 – 8 steps.

Therefore, top end speed technique is a far more important skill to learn and apply than acceleration.

If your sprinters live there for 90% of their race, even in the 100m, then you should be living there in practice as well.

Our sample sessions for training shallower in the same pool use a max velocity/top end speed theme during the “Special Preparation Phase” (if you believe in such a concept.)

Actually, let’s talk about “training phases” for a second. In this case, ‘Special Prep’. Or ‘Specific Prep’. Whatever.

Traditionally, the Special Preparation Phase is the part of the training year where, in practice, you are trending toward more event specific activities.

But, here’s the thing though:

We’re always trending toward specificity. But, if it looks like crap, it’s crap. Stop doing it.

Maybe we’re trending toward still not being able to put their foot down flat so top speed technique consists of having them walk/jog/run up some stairs or bleachers.

I don’t let the phase determine I have to switch to a different volume or intensity in practice. In fact, I don’t care about volume. I have no volume goals.

Instead, the training phase has more to say about the level of intensity and expectation for the practice.

Let’s use wicket drills and how this might apply in practice:

General Preparation Phase: They can’t get to wicket 1 in 6 steps, they kick over the wickets, double step, and forget to run off the wickets through the cone.

I’m not that worried about it. I just want them to get a feel for the drill and attempt to apply some things we’re doing elsewhere in practice.

An entirely heuristic approach.

Specific Preparation Phase: They’re expected to get to wicket 1 in 6, get through the spacings clean and carry through the cone without making me feel sad.

Less heuristic. If/when they don’t/can’t execute, there will be more feedback and instruction. I may ask them (the group or individual athletes) to execute a specific movent or display a particular postural position.

I show decreased patience and I’m not making jokes with repeated failure. I remind them that little things add up to big things and the inability to focus and execute comes at a steep price later in the season.

Continued lack of attention to detail gets varsity athletes demoted to a remedial spacing. That usually solves the problem real quick.

PreCompetition / Competition: I expect everyone to be focused and dialed in. I don’t want to hear talking and goofing off between efforts or while waiting in line. The only talking I should hear is athletes coaching each other and giving each other feedback.

I expect consistency of execution at the highest range of their current ability level.

They may be timed through the drill. There may be competition.

Less instruction. Instead, I explain how their particular failures/successes in executing the drill specifically impact their races.

I think the set up for Monday is pretty standard. Nothing stands out to me as trying to be too cute by half. Plus, I explained training unit construction via a commonalities based approach to training back in Part 1.

No need to be redundant.

Getting out to 22 wickets isn’t something we do right away. Generally we’ll start with 11 and I’ll have multiple spacings set up using as many lanes as possible.

Regarding the Main Session, Ins/Outs is a technically challenging activity. So, let’s be honest, for 90% of the team those are just 50m sprints because they’ll have no idea how to shift gears during the 10/10/10.

As you know, top speed sprinting is a vertical activity. So hurdle hops for our plyos and in the weight room.

About Tuesday…

Because this is the lighter/easier day, I’m treating the entire session as a culminating activity. The activities, cues, volumes, and intensities will largely depend what I saw in Monday’s practice, from the group as a whole, but primarily kids who are on the varsity relays.

In the Technical/Postural Development unit, I consider the list of activities an inventory of options. I’m not going to try and do everything on the list in the order it’s written because that is just drilling to drill.

It’s a classic example of ‘coach what you see’.

What’s more interesting to me in a session like this is:

A) Who is making the connection between yesterday and today by showing technical improvements and/or making a volitional effort to change how they move in order to match a revised understanding of how I want them to execute. B) Are they asking different questions or answering questions in a way that implies a change in experiential understanding of the skills being taught in practice?

When these things begin to happen, it means we can start spending more time in practice doing things that look like Monday’s session and less time on partial movements and remedial technical and postural development activities.

Last year I took over a program that was a hot mess. I remediated everything and our ‘deeper’ workouts looked a lot more the ‘shallow’ workout. We literally walked up stairs and ran upstairs because they needed to learn to land flat with a vertical shin and recover correctly (toe up, lift the thigh) with the heel coming up underneath the hips instead of flexing at the knee with the heel going backwards.

From a coaching standpoint, it was the most bored I’ve ever been in my life. Because when they can’t walk up stairs right, where do you go from there?

But, I took the long approach within the 2017 indoor/outdoor season, as well as the 4 year plan. So even though we did infuriatingly remedial stuff instead of fly runs and ins/outs, it was the only way. And you can still get decent results without using 5 figure speed machines.

I had 9 girls in the winter and 15 or so in the spring. Here’s how they placed at the RI State Championship, even on a strict diet of ‘you’re only allowed to do what you can actually do’.

55m: 2-3-6
100m: 2-5
200m: 1-5
300m: 2-3
400m: 1
4×200: 1
4×400: 1

3. Booty Lock
That’s a scientific term. #Fact

Booty lock workouts are crucial to the success of any sprints program, especially your long sprinters.

And that goes double for your girls.

(Fine. If you want to be a nerd about it, I’m referring to Lactacid Capacity themed workouts.)

I’d also recommend being careful with the frequency and volume of these workouts because being proud of inflicting misery on kids and expecting to grow your program is literally the worst coaching idea I’ve ever heard. Literally nobody would be stupid enough to use this as a marketing tool for the team.

For example, I just finished my first year in a new program. Three of my best long sprinters didn’t do indoor because kids were not really enjoying their experience in the sprints/hurdles/jumps group under the previous administration.

(I base this on the fact I only had 3 girls on my indoor team who were not freshmen. That’s correct. Three. Two juniors, one senior, and six freshmen. Total. [No worries though, we won the State Championship in the 4×200 and of the six girls in the entire state who qualify for New Englands in the 55m, my team of nine sent …three.])

Point is, these girls weren’t in shape because they were couching it for the previous three months.

At the end of the spring season, they told me they HATED one of my staple booty lock workouts: 4×300 with 4 minutes rest.

Yes, some workouts suck. That one sure does. It’s the nature of being a 400 runner. And I know from experience how hard it is because I was a DI collegiate 400 runner.

(That’s why 94% of your sprints group swears they’re 100 runners.)

BUT, I need them to like track. Kinda important. Like remembering to bring your spikes to the meet so you don’t have to run in sneakers. (What you never had a varsity athlete forget their spikes?)

So, had I known, I could have easily changed 4×300 to 3-4 x 2 x 150 or any of countless other things.

I’d get the same physiological result, but without anybody cussing me out behind my back.

(Yo. High school girls can be mean, man.)

So the purpose of Booty Lock workouts isn’t to make them puke or have everybody laid out on the track. That is not impressive.

I’m not saying I’ve never had kids laid out after a workout. I have.

But nobody ever joined the track team after hearing from their friends that every Tuesday, Coach Thomas makes you do a puke workout.

Short story long, two of the three girls ended up being members of our State Champion 4×400 team and all three are doing indoor this year.

Hearts and minds, coach. Hearts and minds.

Once again, to nobody’s surprise, I have strayed from the original point…

Apologies.

So I’ve become a huge fan of following a speed day (not more than once per micro, though) with some type of booty lock workout, especially during the Preparation Period and especially with long sprinters.

Look, Booty Lock Tuesday is every long sprinter’s least favorite day of the week. (For the sake of simplicity, assume no dual meet during the week and also the Fact short sprinters never REALLY hurt so they are never allowed to complain.)

So Monday is technically challenging, long, and of relatively high neuromuscular demand. Tuesday is a different kind of terrible. So it’s two different, but difficult practices.

So how have I turned track into a cult at every school I’ve ever coached?

Well that’s a multifacted conversation beyond the scope of this article. So, for now, I’ll focus on how I smash kids on Monday and Tuesday and they keep coming back for more.

(Because they get fast. And winning is fun.

COACH! Stop distracting me from the point of this article!)

In practical terms, I let them know if they grind for those two back to back days, Wednesday is going to be very short and very easy. It has become known as ‘Yoga Wednesday’ (not that we necessarily do yoga) and I keep practice to 30-45 minutes, maximum.

They can talk. Goof off. Be loud. Have fun.

Much different than the demands of Monday and Tuesday.

Two hard days they can buy into. Three hard days in a row would break them down physically and mentally.

Two hard days …then a goof off/fun practice, that makes all the difference.

Now…

For purposes of running a compatible and complimentary program, as well as for my own sanity, I try to keep the Monday workout as similar as possible between the short and long sprints groups.

But, on Booty Lock Tuesday, that’s probably not going to work. Especially with the girls.

Please understand, I’m not making arbitrary and/or misogynistic distinctions between boys and girls.

From an endocrine system development standpoint, high volume/low intensity training with longer recovery times tends to benefit males. More moderate intensities combined with higher volumes tends to lead to improved endocrine system profiles in women.

Additionally, higher training volumes are associated with growth hormone increases, especially for athletes with lower training ages.

Well, that’s what my USTFCCCA Event Specialist manual says. I’m taking their word for it.

I majored in history.

At a state school.

If you are interested in learning more about how Latif Thomas build speed in his sprinters check out his Complete Speed Training  3 (CST3)

This post was provided by Complete Track and Field , a collection of great resources for coaches

How can high school coaches optimize the training of the sprinters in their program?

By Latif Thomas

“It depends.”

It’s the empty, but honest answer to nearly every training question I get from high school coaches about optimizing program design for their high school sprinters.

The reality is:

What you do at tomorrow’s practice doesn’t matter nearly as much as WHY you’re doing it and HOW you implement it.

We’ll go in circles forever if we go down the path of “What if…” so in this article I’m taking a slightly different approach.

Imagine you’re sitting at your computer planning your workouts/practices for the upcoming week. You schedule your standard speed related day for Monday.

So your biggest question now becomes:

What exactly should I do on Tuesday?

If your brain immediately blurted out ‘extensive tempo’ or ‘recovery’, keep reading.

Because I think you’re wrong.

In this three part series, I’ll tell you WHY you should change your approach. And show you exactly HOW to do it.

And I’ll give you three practice session formats you should be using if you want to design and administer more efficient and effective workouts for your athletes, especially if you coach large groups and/or multiple event groups at once.

Here in Part 1, we’re digging into…

Training Deeper In The Same Pool

Training deeper in the same pool means incorporating back to back sessions of high neuromuscular demand with the first being “lighter” and the second being more challenging. (It can also be for low neuromuscular demand type sessions, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.)

“OH OH But Latif! You can’t do back to back”

STOP.

I know what you might be frantic to remind me:

“Hard day Monday. Recovery day Tuesday. Everybody knows it takes 48-72 hours to recover from a CNS session. You’re going to injure your whole team doing that! What are you some sort of moron?” 

Mmmmm.

Nah.

Your ice cold take is #FakeNews though.

I don’t want to trigger you so early in my article, but here’s why you absolutely should be doing back to back neuro days…

Your sprinters are not good sprinters.

What I mean is…

…they’re bad at sprinting.

I didn’t say they don’t run fast. They’re just mostly bad at expressing the skill of sprinting so they’re not running as fast as they could be.

And if you don’t coach freaks you need to build technically proficient sprinters if you want to overperform from the top of your depth chart to the bottom.

In order to reach a level of skill acquisition where they can actualize (execute accurately in any environment) proper mechanics in competition, young sprinters need more frequent doses of specific work, but in lower volumes.

This approach is the most efficient means of helping them develop skill and, therefore, running faster times.

Training deeper in the same pool allows a ‘reset’ between sessions. This maximizes the number of practice opportunities you can facilitate in a given time period while minimizing the counterproductive technical deterioration resulting from, among other things, trying to jam too many activities into single training session.

In other words:

If you want them to get faster and express that speed consistently, they need to practice sprinting related activities as often as possible.

Training deeper in the same pool allows you to use Monday to set up Tuesday. In a ‘kind-of-but-not-really’ sort of way, you might consider it similar in concept to post activation potentiation. Just over multiple days.

Each individual session contains lower volume than they would following the traditional ‘hard, easy’ format. However, the quality of the work and the power output of each effort becomes significantly enhanced utilizing this format.

Additionally, it’s much less likely you’ll have to scrap plyos or parts of the weight room as often occurs on days where the practice runs long and you run out of time.

This format makes a great deal of sense when working with low skill teenagers.

But, let’s say you’re a proud dinosaur of the late ’10×400 is a viable practice option’ era and still setting up your week something like:

M: Neural
T: Tempo
W: General or Tempo
TH: Neural
F: Tempo or General
SA: Neural or Tempo
SU: Off

Well, here’s the fatal flaw in your design and administration:

After  trying to teach the skill of sprinting on Monday, they’re not seeing it again for 72 hours. And if you went “acceleration” on Monday and “Vmax” on Thursday, what are you doing Saturday?

Speed endurance?

Well, now they’re performing all efforts under a state of fatigue. So how does that teach *sprinters* how to *sprint*? (It doesn’t.)

Sprinting is a specific and technically demanding SKILL.

Sprinting is not fast running. Sprinting is not running fast.

If the foundation of your sprints training program builds on multiple days between administering specific work in practice, you’re simply not giving your sprinters enough opportunities to practice and develop sprint specific coordination, otherwise known as *skill*.

I mean you can do it, but you’ll likely arrive at faulty conclusions as to why your sprinters fall apart at the end of their races.

Let’s take a look at how you might set this up within your program and I’ll break it after the example below.

Fundamentally, every unit within Monday’s practice is meant to be compatible with the other activities within the session. Not only is the goal to build upon the previous unit within the session, but compliment the ‘deeper’ activity in the equivalent part of Tuesday’s practice.

Tuesday activities are progressions from Monday in terms of volume, intensity, complexity, and specificity.

All of this is explained to my sprinters, continuously.

You must constantly remind your sprinters what the objective of practice is or they are only doing mindless exercise.

Telling a kid that a hex bar deadlift should be executed like the initial movement of a start helps them tie together how the track work and weightroom work assist each other.

Hex bar deadlift becomes an opportunity to practice more starts. And when doing starts, they understand they need to push/pull with the same intensity as when they have to move all that weight during the deadlift.

This is how kids can learn to transfer strength and power activities directly to the track instead of just being strong in the weight room without it specifically improving performance on the track.

Let’s break down the specific session units from the above image, but without going neck deep into the weeds. There are other places for that.

1. The warmup on both days follows an acceleration theme. So we’ll probably do the same thing both days. But, as I’m cueing, explaining, and correcting different activities, I’ll talk about them in context of the activities for that day.

2. Ultimately, these are extensions of the warmup. But, both set up the main session.

3. Monday, we’ll use an ‘acceleration complex’ consisting of three different drills (anything that isn’t the specific activity/whole movement) to teach elements of acceleration and finish with 3 pushes/steps of the whole activity to start to ‘put it together’ and overview the objective of Tuesday’s practice.

4. Monday: MultiThrow for power and coordination. Tuesday: Horiztontal multijumps/plyos because the are compatible with the theme of the day.

5. Monday: Partial and foundational activities, similar to the theme of the session. Tuesday: Olympic lifts are in quotes because we mostly don’t do them (for facility and equipment limitations, not philosophical). Older kids might deadlift with a staggered stance because it is similar to their blocks set up.

So those are the fundamentals of training deeper in the same pool.

If you’re not utilizing this type of practice set up in your program, consider playing with it. I have gotten great results since I began doing this 6 or 7 years ago.

If you’re already doing it, the next level is to get even more specific in terms of how compatible and complimentary you are with your exercise selection, as well as the clarity in which you explain to your athletes ‘why’ they’re doing each activity, even the most mundane.

Click here to read Part II: Training Shallower in the Same Pool

In it, I dig deeper into exercise/activity selection using max velocity/top end speed during Special Prep as the example.

Kids are more likely to get hurt in those types of sessions so it’s important to understand why these injuries occur, as well as how to get athletes out of the training room and back onto the track when they do happen.

My athletes rarely miss time due to shin splints, ankle/foot problems, hamstrings, adductors and/or hip flexors (commonly referred to as the ‘groin’), etc., despite the fact that I utilize back to back speed days throughout the year…

…and spend 1/2 of the entire combined indoor/outdoor season stuck inside a high school a hallway.

If you are interested in a comprehensive sprint training program I recommend that you check Latif ‘s Complete Speed Training 3 Program