Post by admin on Mar 25, 2008 19:27:10 GMT -5
Downhill sprints
Towing
Wind aided sprints
(please read guidelines below)
Towing generally can be dangerous as well as useless sometimes, depending on method of towing and all, I would call this one a useless one overall.
Wind aided sprints generally arent too much overspeed really, you should always do sprints with wind behind your back, therefore you're still doing regular speed work.
Downhill sprints are the most famous one. Now the thing about this is the decline level. General rule for this is it MUST be on grass and a good surface, no rocky and bumpy free fall hill.
Two things wrong with overspeed:
Safety
Counter productive to sprint mechanics
For the safety part, a nice soft and grassy downhill + track spikes to allow for grip is pretty safe.
The sprint mechanics part can be easily gotten rid of by using proper decline as well as having proper mechanics before doing overspeed. Overspeed running causes your feet to land ahead of the hips when in max velocity form, you want feet always landing beneath center or mass (below hips), therefore to prevent this from sticking in, one must have above average sprint mechanics before doing any sort of overspeed work.
Guidelines to overspeed
Only go to 105-110% speed max, anymore is dangerous, useless and counter productive.
Use very small decline on downhill, so technically not what you'd describe as a hill, but just a field with a small downhill decline which allows for faster than max speed running by just 5-10%.
Only on grassy and soft hill.
Proper mechanics irst then overspeed.
Low volume work, 3-4 runs max per week over 40-50m distance.
Proper warm up to prevent injury from hgiher speeds.
Full recovery inbetween sprints, (7-8 mins per 40-50m run).
The benefit of overspeed training is it increases max speed. The icing on the cake as so to speak. It develops max speed by allowing neuromuscular system to adjust to higher than 100% max speed when in max effort. Downhill would be best as it allows for firing of motor units by one's individual choice rather than being forced to do it by something which is making you do it (towing).