How often should athletes sprint to get faster? The answer may surprise you.
Is More Better?
Many athletes assume that, in training, more is better.
I’ve heard athletes and lifters talk about training seven days a week to reach their goals. Many people find this mindset admirable. But it is actually misguided.
Let me make this very clear: you do not need to train every day. Your true growth from your training occurs when you are recovering. In today’s training culture, many athletes often overlook rest days. They’re passed over like a skinny nerd at the prom.
You Must Recover
The ideal training split for lifters is 3 to 5 days per week. It will give you consistent results.
This split assumes that you are following a progressive lifting program. Showing up at the gym to take selfies or wasting time in the “cardio” section does not qualify. Now, when it comes to sprinting, the frequency of training is even less than it is with lifting. Pure speed training taxes the CNS more than any other exercise.
Because of this fact, you have to know how to create the proper balance within your training program. You have to know how often you can perform sprint workouts.
Built Different
Muscular fatigue from lifting weights is one thing. But nothing in training feels worse than having a drained central nervous system (CNS).
A spent CNS leaves you in a state of mental exhaustion and physical fatigue. Imagine walking onto the track and feeling like you have a 100lb weighted vest strapped to your body. And then imagine losing your confidence because you feel like a slug. If you cook your CNS, you can’t generate the power that you need for speed work.
You will feel like Superman when he is near Kryptonite. If you train too often without enough recovery, you will be in bad condition. Your central nervous system will suffer. You will feel as if you are in a deep malaise when this happens.
I have been in this state before. And I do everything I can to avoid it by any means necessary. This is why creating balance within your training program is so important.
As an immature sprinter, I always tried to train through the malaise. But that plan got me going nowhere fast. As a mature, smarter veteran of the track game, I know when to ease off the gas before I drive off the edge.
How Often Should Athletes Sprint?
To get faster, I recommend that you sprint 2 or 3 days per week with 48-72 hours of recovery between speed sessions. You can still lift during that recovery period. But don’t sprint during that time or you will defeat the purpose of recovery.
If increasing your speed is your top goal, you have to pay attention to what you are doing in the gym. Certain exercises pull from the CNS like how that sprinting does. If you want to be faster, avoid these exercises and training ideas for now:
1) Performing heavy squats and especially heavy deadlifts (over 90 percent of your max)
2) Performing max effort jumping
3) Doing lifts to the point of muscular failure
All the things above are great in their own right. But not when speed development is your top goal. Ultra-heavy lifting, max effort jumping, and exercises to failure all drain the CNS.
Check out this sample 2-day speed program below. This program can help athletes sprint faster in three races: the 40, 60, and 100-yard/meter dashes.
Sunday: OFF
Monday: Speed
Tuesday: OFF
Wednesday: Upper Body Lifting
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Speed
Saturday: Lower Body Lifting
Notes:
* All the exercises in the lifting sessions would be 2 or 3 sets and in the 6 to 10 rep range.
* No sets would reach failure. I would tell the sprinter to leave at least two reps in the tank on every single exercise.
* We won’t do conventional deadlifts in this phase. But we can do RDLs since they use lower weights.
Conclusion
Less is more.
I’ll holla at you next time.
The People’s Trainer,
Fitman
