Sprint training
Fast sprinting is often an innate gift, or a skill that comes from years of hard training. We’ve all met gifted kids in school who could sprint 100 and 200 meters very quickly without any training. Give these boys and girls a few spikes and they’ll rocket off the start line, but they’ll struggle to keep up with the quarter mile.
The gift of these gifted kids is often destroyed by overtraining and stretching. Their remarkable abilities are slowly but surely destroyed over two or three seasons of games and hours of practice, as well as the wrong form drills that are so popular these days.
Here are some examples: Houston McTeer, a schoolboy who could run the 100 metres in 9.9 seconds, dropped his time to 10.6 seconds and eventually lost all his ability. Another example is the New Zealand school champions Henley and Smith, who suffered from constant injuries and were subsequently unable to reach the level required for adult running.
A sprinter can best be defined as an athlete who trains only two or three times a week. He spends a lot of time playing various games, such as American football, basketball or soccer. When he trains, he runs very short distances, but it is all sprinting at high speed, in light competition spikes and, of course, without the use of starting blocks. As a rule, he cannot run more than 200 metres, but with the right training he can become a champion in the hurdles or the long jump.
At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Jesse Owens shared many of his secrets. He always tried to be fresh and energetic, never trained too hard, and only jumped long in competitions. His philosophy was: “If I can push off at 10.2 when I run, I’ll jump farther than anyone else.”
A sprinter goes out on the track, jogs around, does a couple of drills, puts on his spikes, and sprints 20 or 30 meters easily a few times. After that, he gets down to business, running half a dozen full sprints, and goes home. He does this about three times a week.
Olympic Champion Alan Wells said that he doesn’t jog at all because he doesn’t believe in the benefits of training at a slow speed. He started with an easy sprint at distances of 20 - 50 meters, returning on foot between runs.
Before the race, the sprinter begins internal training. He begins to mentally warm up, wind himself up, filling himself with adrenaline and excitement. If you want to kill the inhuman power inherent in a sprinter, convince him to warm up for 45 minutes, and then do unnecessary exercises for half an hour. After that, he will not have any adrenaline left for the competition.
It is essential that the sprinter always runs in competition shoes. Immediately before the race, he should not try to start from the blocks, all his strength should be saved only for the race.
Thus, sprinters are a special breed of people. Keep them in good shape, develop strength with weight training. Do not waste their strength, let them explode in the competition. If a sprinter is running at full speed for a few bursts, don’t turn them into interval training—it will destroy their pure speed and start to turn the sprinter into a long-distance runner, developing endurance at the expense of speed. Rest intervals between sprint bursts should be at least 10 minutes. This should be followed by a short warm-up, such as an easy 100-meter run with 3-4 bursts. The athlete is now ready for the next burst at full speed.
An exception to this rule is a workout that consists of practicing the start with a 10-20-meter run. After each exercise, the athlete walks 20 meters behind the blocks and waits for the coach to ask him to start. In this case, the rest intervals are relatively short because there is no need to stretch the technique practice.
During training, the sprinter should move easily on the forefoot, like all runners, maintaining a rhythm of at least 3 steps per second. To compete at the highest level, the frequency must be much higher, reaching 5 steps per second. For many runners, this becomes a stumbling block because they cannot learn to move their limbs at this speed. This is because they have never trained to move so fast, and their practice has included completely different exercises - a large number of slow movements, which have destroyed their abilities.
As with any other athlete, everything a sprinter does on race day has a direct bearing on his performance. In Tokyo, Bob Hayes practiced his start the morning before the 100-meter final. He worked quickly and energetically, not sitting in thought. Before the race, a sprinter must prepare himself psychologically. He must get involved. He must think about the race as a matter of life and death. However, it is necessary not to cross the permissible limit. A sprinter must raise himself to a level above physical and psychological readiness, but also not overwork himself from long hours of training. On the other hand, an athlete must be able to relax, get a good night's sleep and abstract himself from the competition. This is how I tried to relax before big competitions. I would come to the stadium early, look for a quiet place where I could lie down and read a book. I could even take a short nap, but I didn’t forget to set my alarm clock in that case (Mike Larabe), the Olympic Champion in Tokyo, once fell asleep in the stadium in Warsaw, and when he woke up, he only had time to run out onto the track and stand at the start! He lost the race.
To illustrate how the warm-up of a winner differs from the warm-up of a loser, I will give the example of Alan Wells again. Before a sprint race, Wells warmed up by performing light accelerations for 10 minutes, while other runners wasted time on exercises and excessively long sprints. Wells won them by a huge margin, mainly because other runners stood at the starting blocks already tired, and he was fresh as a young cucumber.
A sprinter differs from other runners in more powerful hand work. Like all other runners, he must use the maximum transfer of kinetic energy.
A very common misconception is that sprinters need to take long strides. This is nonsense. If you take 3-5 meter strides during the 100 meter race, your cadence will drop below 3 steps per second. You will have to jump too high. As a result, your running speed will decrease, because you will spend too much time on vertical oscillations, instead of moving forward. In fact, the fastest runners take a series of shorter and faster strides. Carl Lewis took about 50 steps in 10 seconds, and Marlise Gehr from East Germany managed to take 55 steps in 11 seconds of the 100 meter sprint. This is equivalent to a cadence of 5 steps per second.
To win a sprint, you cannot lose the start. You must not fall behind. You need to sharpen your senses and react as early as possible to the shot of the starting pistol. At the same time, the explosive starting effort in the first 20-30 meters should not take all your strength. A smooth set of speed, control of effort and full acceleration in the second half of the distance - this is the correct tactic in the 100-meter race. The sprint is often won in the last meters of the distance and very rarely at the very beginning. The most striking exception to this rule was Armin Hari, the 1960 Olympic Champion, who won many races, breaking off from the starting blocks like an electric discharge. Many rivals took this for false starts. An example of the passage of traditional tactics was demonstrated by Carl Lewis, the winner of the 100-meter final in Los Angeles. At the start, he remained last, gradually winning back the advantage and snatching the lead in the last 30 meters of the race.
Another important factor is the correct posture in the starting blocks. If you look at the athlete from the front, you can see that in the “attention” position, the hands on the left and right balance the weight that falls on the front leg. The body weight rests on the front leg and is ready to be transferred forward with the first step. If the hands at the start have not balanced the weight, then with the first steps the athlete will swing, looking for balance and losing energy and speed. The front leg should be two or two and a half palms behind the starting line (different athletes may have individual differences, but the main criterion is that the athlete should feel comfortable at the start and be ready to start a quick movement from the starting position). The back leg should be positioned in such a way that at the command “to start”, its knee is next to or slightly ahead of the toes of the front leg.
When the starter gives the command "attention", the sprinter must rise and shift the weight slightly forward, maintaining balance. Almost all the weight falls on the front leg and arms. The rear leg easily rests in the pads. Her job is to move forward as quickly as possible during the starting shot - not push off the pads as some say! If you do this, you will be left behind at the very first step! Isometric pressure should be applied to the front pad, and moving to the "attention" position, the athlete should inhale. At the shot, the runner exhales powerfully, and the back leg takes a quick first step. At the same time, the hands simultaneously make a sharp and fast movement (pay attention: not a wide, slow swing, which delays the athlete's progress). The first quick step should occur simultaneously with the unloading of the front leg. Do not waste time, the next steps should go very quickly than the first. This is achieved by strong, quick and powerful movements of arms and legs. You need to take a series of short strides for a more efficient acceleration (5-10 depending on your strength) before you can go into a full running stride.
How high should the body be raised in the "attention" position?
The height of the lift is determined by the position of the legs. If the pelvis is raised too high because the legs are straight, the runner will not be able to develop much power at the start. If the runner sits very low, then he will be forced to spend strength on lifting the body, and in addition, sitting on the butt, he will not be able to add a moment of forward movement to the body!
If you want to check how correctly the athlete performs the starting position, try to lightly push him forward. If at the same time he loses his balance, then everything is fine, but if the athlete in the "attention" position is stable, then he should move the center of gravity forward. Too many runners are delayed at the start because they move their body forward after the start shot. While they are doing this, the other runners are already starting their first step.
If the coach gives the athlete exercises on the speed of movement of the legs, then he leads him on the right path, because every step that is run during training must be done in a competitive rhythm. If you do not strive for this, you will gradually destroy your skills. Once I heard how Rodney Dixon, after losing another race, made an excuse: "I didn't work out the speed of my legs", he understood that if he did the right thing with his legs, he would beat all his opponents tomorrow. So it is.