Track and Field Toolbox

Train for Speed

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This article was provided by Training and Conditioning

At Williams College, sprinters are shaving seconds and heading off injuries with a progressive strength and conditioning program.

By Ralph White and Fletcher Brooks

Ralph White is the Head Coach of Men’s and Women’s Track and Field at Williams College. He has coached 15 Olympians and more than 200 NCAA All-Americans during his career, which includes stints at George Mason University and Southern Methodist University. Fletcher Brooks, MPE, CSCS, is the Coordinator of Strength and Conditioning and Associate Head Coach of Track and Field at Williams.

The blink of an eye. For a sprinter, that can be the difference between winning and losing. Races are sometimes decided by hundredths of a second, which is less time than it takes to blink. Shaving such a sliver off a sprinter’s time, however, is the result of months and months of work, much of it in the weight room.

Many factors, both physical and mental, go into developing fast sprinters. While track coaches usually takes care of teaching proper sprinting technique, increasing confidence, and helping sprinters to learn how to run relaxed, the strength and conditioning coach plays a key role in building the physical abilities needed to save those precious fragments of time.

Building lower-body strength is the most obvious way a strength and conditioning coach can help sprinters improve, but it is not the only one. At Williams College, we have found that improving conditioning, reducing injuries, and developing upper-body strength also help sprinters—both over the long haul and during the short run.

A Balanced Plan

Here at Williams, we address our strength and conditioning program by first establishing a plan for the entire season. We start by determining what we will be doing with our sprinters on the day before the national championships, then work on two days before, then a week before, and so on until we have the whole season mapped out.

Developing this plan requires a high level of communication between the track coaches and the strength and conditioning coach. It is important for both parties to understand what the other is trying to accomplish. Without knowing which events on the schedule are the most important, the strength coach cannot have the athletes in top condition at the right time. Without knowing what the strength coach is doing with the athletes week to week, the track coach may be surprised to find his or her athletes are feeling tired and worn out as they head into their biggest meet of the season.

It is important that your plans account for a wide range of experience and skill levels. All too often, the focus is on the team’s top athletes. But a plan that will help an All-American senior often will do little for an inexperienced freshman and may actually cause substantial harm.

At a Division III program such as Williams, we see many incoming runners who are relatively weak and who have had little, if any, experience with strength training. As a result, we may spend up to two years working with these athletes to establish their base strength before moving on to more specific work to help them become faster sprinters.

But just because an incoming athlete has experience with strength training doesn’t mean he or she won’t have problems that need to be resolved. Oftentimes, new athletes come into our program with some sort of strength imbalance that we must address before moving on to event-specific work.

As with all our athletes, we start with our sprinters’ strength and conditioning program by first measuring for strength imbalances. We do this by comparing their results in any number of simple lifts, such as the front squat versus the back squat or a clean versus a snatch. If the differences fall outside predetermined percentages, we know that we have identified an area that needs to be more balanced. Simply watching an athlete squat may reveal certain problems we need to correct before moving onto sprinter-specific work.

We have found that most athletes have some strength imbalances, which can usually be equalized through exercises designed to strengthen the weaker muscle. If you do not address those imbalances first, you can exacerbate them, leading to decreased performances or increased risk of injury. For example, if someone is quad dominant or glute dominant compared to the hamstrings or hip flexors, a lift that might work both muscles areas will be taken over by the stronger muscle group. Therefore the imbalance is never corrected. Once strength imbalances have been corrected, real performance gains can be attained.

Sprint Strength

With strength imbalances addressed and base strength developed, we focus on ways to turn strength into speed. We use plyometrics to help make the transition from base strength to sprint strength in conjunction with targeted weight training, mostly using Olympic lifts.

We have a very structured plyometric program, aimed at getting muscles strong and ready to handle the speed work on the track. Plyometric work usually begins in January and increases in intensity very gradually. We increase the number of touches per session week-by-week rather than jumping into heavy work immediately.

To decrease the risk of injury, we perform many of our plyometric workouts on soft surfaces, such as a synthetic track or dry grass. We emphasize to the athletes the importance of landing on their full foot, not just their toes, and make sure they have plenty of recovery time with a typical work-to-rest ratio of one to five. Typically, we have one plyometric session every four days.

Table One below lists some sample plyometric routines that we have used early in the training schedule for athletes who have attained a sufficient base of strength. The number of sets and reps will increase as we progress through the schedule and will be adjusted for individual athletes.

Our lower-body strength work focuses on variations of Olympic lifts, along with back squats, split squats, front squats, and lunges. At our level, we find that sprinters get stronger with greater ease than they get explosive, and we will often see them performing better cleans than snatches. Since the snatch is more of a speed lift, we will often use more variations of the snatch than the clean to help build that explosiveness. Snatches also involve the whole posterior chain—a critical area for sprinters that includes the hamstrings, glutes, and low back—more so than the clean does.

For more advanced athletes, we add some contrast sets. Some of our favorites are squats followed by hurdle jumps, squats followed by jump squats or in-place jumps, and snatch pulls with chains followed by a full recovery and box hops. These sets are a little more fun for the athletes, but it is vital that they have the proper lifting experience and strength base to avoid injury. Rarely do we have athletes doing any of these complex exercises in their first year.

While much of the focus for sprinters is on the lower body and core, it is important to also work on the upper body. If we can make their arms and torso stronger, athletes can move them with more efficiency and relative speed to the lower body and in turn increase sprint performance. This is especially important for female runners who generally do not have the same upper-body strength as males.

Running Work

When prescribing running workouts for our sprinters, we follow a simple rule—sprinters need to sprint. Sometimes, younger sprinters will tell us they want to run cross country to help them prepare for the track season. It is their decision to make, but our philosophy is that if you train slow, you will run slow.

Although most of these athletes are correct in thinking they have to establish a strong base for the track season, we feel there are much better ways for sprinters to do this than by running cross country. Instead of having them run four or five miles to improve their aerobic base, we have them run 20 to 30 minutes Fartlek style. This is a form of interval training where athletes will sprint, jog, and walk for a specific time or distance.

For example, after warming up they may sprint for 30 seconds, jog for 30 seconds, and walk for one minute. This pattern is then repeated until they reach their desired time. This trains the athlete to run fast at the same time they are building their appropriate speed endurance levels.

Here is an example of running workouts we might use early in the indoor season. Of course the exact workout will vary based on the athlete’s fitness level and experience. We begin each workout with a 10-minute jog followed by running drills and dynamic stretching.

Monday: Three sets of three reps of 100-meter form running at 80 percent of max with 15 seconds between each 100 meters and three minutes between each set.

Tuesday: Circuit (see Table Two Below).

Wednesday: 20 to 30 minutes of Fartlek running, with sprint times ranging from 10 seconds to one minute. Athletes should be jogging or walking when not sprinting.

Thursday: Swimming or games, such as water polo, ultimate Frisbee or angle ball after warm up. The goal is to give the legs a chance to recover while still keeping the athletes active.

Friday: Three sets of two reps of 150 meters with each 50 meters getting faster (75 percent, 85 percent, 95 percent). These also provide an opportunity for sprinters to work on running relaxed.

Once we have developed a solid strength and conditioning base, we focus more on sprinting specific work including hill work. Here are sample January workouts. All are performed after warm up.

Monday: Two reps of 30 seconds hill work at 85 percent with 2:30 rest. Two reps of 20 seconds hill work at 90 percent with 1:45 rest. Two reps of 10 seconds hill work at 95 percent with 60 seconds rest. Athletes sprint up the hill and walk or jog down.

Tuesday: Nine 30-meter sprints at 98 percent, three from a standing start, three from a three-point start, and three from a jogging start. Rest 1 minute between each sprint. Three sets of three one-minute reps of 200 meters. (For example, if it takes the athlete 35 seconds to complete the 200, her or she would rest for 25 seconds.) Rest four minutes between sets. It is much better to start out too slow and get faster each set than to start out fast and get slower.

Wednesday: Six reps of 100-meter form running with walk back. Two reps of split 300 meters at 400-meter race pace. (Example: Run 200 meters at 400-meter race pace, rest one minute, then run 100 meters.) Focus on mechanics throughout.

Thursday: Pool workout. This could be swimming Fartlek-style or a ladder of flutter kicks such as four sets of one-minute flutter kicks followed by four sets of 45-second flutter kicks followed by four sets of 30-second flutter kicks. Use a 1:1 rest-to-work ratio.

Friday: Two to four sprint starts with gun, baton work, and 150 meters at 98 percent.

Although recovery is a key part of the training process throughout the entire season, it becomes even more important as the championship meets approach. At this point, we focus on quality over quantity and run less volume with increased intensity and rest. Here is an example of late season work:

Monday: Three sets of 20 seconds hill work with 10 minutes between runs.

Tuesday: Block and baton work.

Wednesday: Four flying 60-meter sprints at 99 percent with complete recovery followed by one quality 150-meter sprint.

Thursday: Running drills in pool.

Friday: Active warm up or rest.

Injury Prevention

One of the realities of track is that even that fastest runner will not win a race when they are injured. Injury prevention is such a big part of our program that we follow a philosophy that it is better to be at 95 percent of peak performance 100 percent of the time than to be at 100 percent of peak performance 95 percent of the time. If we have any doubt about a workout, we believe it is better to go too easy than go too hard. The last thing we want to see is an athlete missing a big meet due to injury.

The two most common injury types for sprinters are shin splints and hamstrings problems. To help keep these injuries at bay, we do a daily dynamic warm up, which includes running drills.

Many times, coaches will have their athletes jog for 10 or 15 minutes and then sit and stretch. The problem with this approach is that quite often the body cools down during the 20 to 30 minutes of stretching. Also, with static stretching, there is no movement of the joints—there is no activation of the synovial fluid to lubricate the joints, there is really no warming of the joints or the muscles at all. You need movement to accomplish that.

There is nothing complicated about dynamic warm up. It is just a matter of moving the joints as well as stretching and working the muscles. We start with a five- to 10-minute run, followed by running drills that include leg swings, arm swings, backward weaving runs, skipping, and side-sliding. Following the drills, we have our athletes do some hurdle-mobility drills, such as going over the hurdles with a single leg, walking over and then under the hurdles, or going over sideways, which warm up the hips and core muscles.

We also take static stretches and make them active by adding movement. For example, our version of a quad stretch looks like this: Athletes grab one leg, hold it for a few seconds, then take a step forward and grab the opposite leg.

In some cases, our active warm up may take 30 minutes or more, but the beauty of an active warm-up is that it is more that just a warm up. Motor learning and strengthening even occurs with many of these exercises. Early in the season, athletes will sometimes think the warm-up is the workout! But within two weeks, they are breezing through it, which shows its value as a conditioning tool as well. We also vary the surface we use for our active warmups and often do them on the grass or even in the jumping pits, where the sand offers greater resistance.

Another thing we do to help prevent injury is bare-foot training. We will do many of our warm ups and running drills in bare feet, which has helped to reduce the number of shin splints we see almost to zero.

It is also important to make sure that shoes fit correctly. Athletes sometimes focus on the shoes they wear in competition and forget about the importance of good training shoes, even though injuries are more likely to occur from training. Of course, none of these steps will eliminate the possibility of injury, but we have seen very few shin splints or hamstring problems over the years—something that has helped keep our sprinters on the right track.

Table One: Plyometric Routines

Here are some sample plyometric routines we use to help develop strength and conditioning in our sprinters:

Easy

    • Hop on both feet over a line for 30 seconds, rest 2:30, and repeat
    • Hop on one foot over a line for 30 seconds, rest 2:30, and repeat with other foot
    • Hop for distance and height with both legs x 10, rest 60 seconds
    • Hop for distance and height on right leg x 10, rest 60 second
    • Hop for distance and height on left leg x10

Moderate

    • Two sets of 10 depth jumps off 12- to 18-inch box, rest two minutes, and repeat
    • Three sets of tuck jumps for 30 seconds with 2:30 rest between sets
    • Three sets of double-leg jumps over six to eight low hurdles with 90 seconds rest

Difficult

    • Two sets of alternate leg bounds for 60 meters up hill followed by slow walk back for recovery
    • Two sets of 10 double-leg depth jumps down and immediately up from 18- to 24-inch box with two minutes rest between sets
    • Two sets of single-leg bounds on each leg and two sets of double-leg bounds onto and off of six to eight 12- to 24-inch boxes with 2:30 recovery between sets

Table Two: Circuit Training

Our circuit consists of eight stations located 50 meters apart. Each station is assigned three related exercises.

Athletes begin by pairing up. The first member of the pair starts the circuit at Station 1 and performs the first exercise at that station 25 times. He or she then sprints 50 meters to Station 2 and performs the first exercise listed there 25 times. Athletes continue until they have done the first exercise at all eight stations. The second member of the pair then completes all eight stations while his or her partner rests.

After the second partner completes his or her first circuit, both partners run 400 meters. The process then repeats with athletes completing the second circuit, running 400 meters, completing the third circuit, and finishing off with a 400-meter dash.

Station First Circuit: Second Circuit: Third Circuit:
1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

 Regular-grip push ups

V sit ups

Tuck jumps

Arm circles

Toe raises (straight)

Crunches

Bent-leg doggies (right)

Bent-leg doggies (left)

 Wide-grip push ups

Crunches

Split squats (each leg)

Back uprises

Toe raises (inward)

Crunches

Straight-leg doggies (right)

Straight-leg doggies (left)

 Closed-grip push ups

Leg scissors

Burpees

Shoulder shrugs

Toe raises (outward)

Crunches

Back-leg extensions (right)

Back-leg extensions (left)

Core Routine for Runners

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Strength training is important for runners. Having a comprehensive strength training program designed specifically for your runners will not only improve performance but will also help to prevent injuries.

In the clip below you will see 14 core strengthening exercises that are designed to help runners maintain proper posture throughout the race. The clip is from Runners Connect. You can find many other tool to help you run faster and stay healthy by clicking on the link above. You can also view other video like this one by checking out the Runners Connect YouTube Channel

There are coaching points for each exercise to help you get your athletes in the proper position so that the can receive the maximum benefit from each exercise and reduce the risk of injury. Fro several of the exercises there are modified versions demonstrated. These may be used if the excercise is too difficult of the athlete.

The YouTube video below has sound, so please make sure that your sound is on and that the volume is turned up. Also note that some school block access to YouTube. You may need to contact your network administrator to gain access.

The following is a list of the exercises demonstrated in the video above.

1. Front Plank(Prone Position)- hold for 1 mnute
2. Front Plank with leg lifts – 1 minute alternating on each leg for 10 seconds
3. Reverse Plank (Supine Position) – hold for 30 seconds
4. Reverse Plank with leg lifts – 3 times hold for 10 seconds. Repeat for other leg
5. Side Plank (Side lying prone position) -30 seconds each side
6. Side Plank with leg lifts – 3 leg lifts each hold for 10 seconds. Repeat for other leg
7. Front Plank with one leg bent – 20 times each leg
8. Hip Thrusts – 20 times each leg
9. Donkey Kicks – 1 minute each leg
10. Fire Hydrants – 1 minute each leg
11. Knee Circles – 1 minute each leg
12. Back Extensions – 10 times, hold for 5 seconds
13. Opposite Arm Opposite Leg – 15 times each side
14. Double Eagles – 10 times on each side


Customized Strength Workouts for Track and Field Athletes

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This article was provided by Training and Conditioning

 

At the University of Alaska-Anchorage, track and field athletes are taught to play an active role in setting their own individual strength and conditioning priorities.
By Michael Friess

Michael Friess is the Head Men’s and Women’s Track and Field Coach at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. He can be reached at: [email protected].

The 2009 track and field season was one to remember for our University of Alaska-Anchorage Seawolves. We set new school records with five All-Americans and 10 athletes qualifying for the NCAA Division II Championships. We also had three performances that broke Great Northwest Athletic Conference individual records.

Some may wonder–how can we produce so many successful competitors out here on the Last Frontier? Of course the athletes themselves deserve most of the credit, as I’m continually impressed by their dedication, enthusiasm, and willingness to make whatever sacrifices are needed to take their skills to the next level.

But part of their success is due to our sport-specific strength and conditioning program. We emphasize frequent performance assessment and encourage athletes to feel a sense of ownership of their customized workout regimens, with a few universal training principles mixed in to address teamwide priorities. In this article, I’ll outline what we do and explain how it helps keep our athletes strong, injury free, and performing at their best.

TEST & RETEST
Like most programs at the Division II level, our incoming athletes arrive with widely varying strengths, training histories, and weightroom experience. Some were regular lifters in high school, especially if they played multiple sports, while others have barely set foot in a weightroom before. To help ensure that everyone makes steady progress in conditioning, whatever their starting point, we rely on testing and performance assessment throughout the year.

One of our top priorities for our new athletes is finding muscle and joint weaknesses, which cause mechanical flaws that can lead to injury, wasted energy, and decreased performance. Two areas we find most frequently need attention in our runners are the hips and core.

Hip weakness, often seen in our incoming distance runners, is fairly easy to spot during initial evaluation of an athlete’s running mechanics. While observing running gait on a track or a treadmill, I’ll notice that one hip dips down too low during the stride, there is excessive swinging from side to side, or the athlete has trouble maintaining the natural, level equilibrium of the pelvic girdle. These are all signs of hip weakness, which hampers running and jumping ability and can lead to iliotibial band injury.

For runners who display weak hips, we will prescribe exercises that develop hip abduction with resistance bands or machines. Closed-chain work, such as single-leg pressing, lunging, and Bulgarian split squats, will also help build hip strength. We have athletes with weak hips avoid leg curls in favor of stiff-legged deadlifts, because we want to train the hamstrings more for decelerating the leg than for acceleration–working the hamstrings from an elongated position in deadlifts provides this effect while also helping increase active range of motion.

If an athlete has a weak core, one of the first signs is usually lower back pain during running, particularly hill running. We will also frequently observe “sitting” or collapsing movements upon landing during jumping and plyometric work, and problems with overall posture.

For these athletes (who are often the same ones who display weak hips), we focus on strengthening the core through stabilization and extension movements. We believe too many people overemphasize flexion alone when training the core at the expense of extension work, so we use ground-based stabilization exercises such as bridging, as well as training on a glute-ham machine to develop the extensor groups. Olympic lifting also helps to train core stabilizer muscles and build core strength.

Beyond fixing individual deficiencies, we test all our athletes roughly every three weeks when we’re not in-season to gauge their progress in conditioning. One of the main skills we want runners to develop is the ability to push into the ground to generate greater and greater force, and a great way to test that is through 30-meter weighted sled pulls. As athletes’ times decrease throughout the training year, we know they are building speed by generating more force from the ground, while also increasing their ability to run with proper mechanics as they accommodate a resistance load.

In the weightroom, we test the athletes on cleans, push presses, and squats to gauge overall strength development. These lifts are explosive and train multi-joint movement, which translates well to the demands of sprinting. The athletes also feel stronger and become more confident in their overall conditioning when they become proficient in squats, cleans, and presses.

THEIR OWN COACH
We believe strongly that athletes must take responsibility for their conditioning and strength programs to build confidence and motivation. Rather than have all the athletes follow a cookie-cutter approach, I encourage them to take ownership of their strength and conditioning strategy, set a few specific priorities or areas of focus, and then choose some of their exercise and lifting progressions to target the areas where they most need to improve.

For example, during strength tests in early fall, let’s say an incoming hurdler learns that her push-off leg is significantly stronger in the quads and hamstrings than her landing leg. This is fairly common, especially among athletes who have never consistently strength trained and thus developed most of their functional muscle simply from practicing and competing in their event. Once she learns of this strength disparity, she might realize it explains the soreness she sometimes feels on one side after training runs, and the uneven gait she experiences when fatigue starts setting in.

If everyone in our program followed the same strength training regimen, this imbalance might go uncorrected. But under our philosophy of athletes setting some of their own priorities and taking responsibility for their fitness, she can emphasize single-leg strength work to fix the imbalance.

We will of course guide her on which exercises to choose, make sure she learns proper technique, and help her to understand progression variables. But the main idea is for her to feel like she’s in control of her conditioning program and helping to shape her own training.

Our focus on responsibility in training also allows athletes to continue using methods and strategies that have worked for them in the past. For instance, one of our top sprinters two years ago came into our program as a sixth-degree black belt in karate. He had a battery of exercises that he felt optimized his functional strength, explosiveness, balance, and coordination, and once he explained the program to us, we allowed him to stick with it.

We monitored his progress in the same categories as our other sprinters and were satisfied that his program was helping him achieve his performance goals. While some of those exercises were unlike anything I would prescribe to the rest of the team, they worked for him and he was comfortable doing them, so we let him take complete ownership of those portions of his training.

Even though we give our athletes a great deal of freedom, that does not mean our strength workouts are a free-for-all. Each individual is encouraged to keep a basic training journal that catalogs the lifts and exercises they did for each workout, including sets, reps, and weight used. They also include any notes on progress, difficulties they are experiencing with a particular exercise, and other observations.

The journals are a great way to open lines of communication between athlete and coach. I look through them at least once a week and provide individualized feedback on how they can make adjustments to enhance their training.

For example, if someone appears to have reached a plateau with a certain lift, I will recommend switching to different exercises that develop the same muscle groups. If someone reports problems completing an exercise, I will observe them one-on-one to look for flaws. If I find they’re lifting their heels during squats, for instance, I’ll give them some range of motion exercises to increase flexibility, then talk them through proper squatting technique. Other times, I’ll simply help them find another exercise that offers the same benefits.

BEST PRACTICES
While our athletes have come to take pride in the individualized nature of their workouts and conditioning progressions, there are a few training principles that we like everyone to follow. I have learned through experience that these can pay off for virtually all track and field athletes.

For one thing, everyone incorporates the Bulgarian split squat into their training. If our athletes could do only one movement to build strength, I’d choose this one, because it trains each leg independently for the balance, stability, and power that runners need most.

In the Bulgarian split squat, the athlete begins by standing on one leg, with the other behind them with the knee bent and the foot resting on a plyo box, bench, or bar. The standing leg is positioned slightly forward, so that the heel is roughly even with the front abdominal wall (this typically requires a small forward hop once the back leg is in place). The athlete then performs lunge-like movements, bending the knee of the standing leg and lowering the body until the back knee touches the ground, then returning to the starting position.

Since the standing leg does practically all the work, athletes can use different weight loads for each side to address strength disparities. They can perform the squat with no external resistance, with a dumbbell in each hand, or in a power rack with the bar resting on their shoulders.

In addition to building quad and hamstring strength, this movement also engages the stabilizer muscles in the foot, ankle, and calf to maintain balance and keep the shin from moving laterally. Athletes who become proficient at this squat show improvements in sprinting, horizontal jumping, and ability to accelerate.

Another staple of our strength program for all athletes is Olympic lifting. Much like sled pulls, lifts such as the hang clean and clean and jerk train athletes to push with maximum force against the ground, which helps develop speed and acceleration. For sprinters in particular, we want to train pushing against the ground in as many ways as possible, and Olympic lifting accomplishes this while also requiring coordinated movement of the hip, knee, and ankle joints.

There’s also a psychological component to these lifts. They activate the entire body and leave the athletes feeling stronger and more powerful, particularly when they complete their first set with a higher weight load. It’s hard to quantify that benefit, but we believe it provides an extra motivational edge during tough workouts.

Outside the weightroom, there is one key aspect of our track and field conditioning that differs from most other programs: We pay more attention to cardiovascular work. We want everyone, even our sprinters–who sometimes have never run for distance before–to be able to jog steadily for 30 minutes. I might be slightly biased because of my own background (I was a distance runner in college), but I believe longer bouts of steady-state running can benefit any athlete. Distance running is the most basic form of plyometric work, and it promotes soft tissue and ligament integrity, which can improve performance and decrease injury risk in virtually any activity.

Our program’s emphasis on distance running began out of necessity. Until recently, we didn’t have an indoor track, and during the long Alaskan winters, all our runners used treadmills for speed training. Our fastest treadmill topped out at just 16 mph, so to make the sessions challenging, we had to increase running volume. We liked the cardiovascular benefits and noticed that our injury rates were consistently very low, so we’ve maintained that focus even now that we have access to a beautiful new indoor facility.

To reduce impact stress during longer runs, the athletes will often do their work on our artificial turf surface instead of on the track. And of course, those who struggle with compartment syndrome, alignment issues, or other special considerations won’t run for volume as much as their teammates. But overall, even those with no distance running experience have reported feeling that it helps them become better athletes.

For all of our program’s training philosophies and techniques, the true measure of value is meet performance. When we see our runners’ times steadily dropping, our long jumpers earning top spots in national competition, and our field athletes breaking school records, weíre confident that our strength and conditioning priorities are setting up our athletes to maximize success.