Speed Ladder Workout

by Steve McGill

I’m a big fan of ladder workouts for sprinters and sprint-hurdlers, as they add a layer of challenge and combine for the athletes and also combine the elements of speed and speed-endurance in a lot of cases. My coaching philosophy has evolved a lot over the years; in the early days of my coaching career—back in the 1990’s—I gave my athletes the kind of workouts my high school and college coaches had given me, which placed a heavy emphasis on volume, with the belief that if athletes can do a lot of reps at a relatively moderate pace, they can turn on the juice and sprint really fast when it came time to race. Another reason I followed that model is because it was the approach taken by Jean Poquette—high school coach of my hurdling hero, the legendary Renaldo Nehemiah. But now I put a much heavier emphasis on speed, in all times of year, as heavy volume with short recovery periods doesn’t mimic what athletes must be able to do on the day of a meet, which is to go all-out a handful of times with usually lengthy recovery periods between races. That doesn’t mean I’ve eliminated the speed-endurance element for sprint-hurdlers, but I have reduced it considerably. As one of my coaching friends once told me, “the best way to run faster is to run faster.” Which means, the best way to run faster in races is to run faster in practice.

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With that thought in mind, I’ve come to feel that running the distance of the race in practice is a good way to get accustomed to running the race distance in meets, even if the practice session doesn’t involve hurdling. So, here’s this month’s workout:

For males: (70m, 90m, 110m) x 3
For females: (60m, 80m, 100m) x 3

Recovery: walk-back recovery between reps, 5 minutes rest between sets.

The reps can be done from a falling start or three-point start, with the stopwatch starting on movement, and stopping when the torso crosses the line. 

In ladder workouts like this one, where the athlete goes up the ladder, the athlete learns to hold his or her speed as the distance increases. Holding speed, or maintaining speed, they will find out, is not a matter of trying harder, but of staying relaxed in the upper body, maintaining proper mechanics, and maintaining stride length and stride frequency. 

In regards to that, the goal is always to run within two seconds of the time run for the previous distance. So if the 60m rep is run in, let’s say, 9.0, the goal for the 80m will be 11.0, and then 13.0 for the 100m. That’s a tough goal to reach, especially in the second and third sets, as fatigue becomes an increasingly significant factor. For me, once the drop off goes above 2.5 seconds (as opposed to the goal of 2.0), it’s time to add more rest—between reps and/or between sets. As I’ve said in regards to ohh the we workouts, sacrificing quality is the last thing I want to do. If the athlete finishes her workout but the 100m rep on the last set is something like 16-17 seconds, we wasted our time. I’ll always give more rest in order to give the athlete the opportunity to keep hitting the times. I don’t want to give more rest, but I will if I have to.

For guys running the 110 distance for their last rep, it would make sense to do all the reps from the 110 start line. 

His workout would probably be most fitting to do in the early part of the outdoor season, but it also is a good workout to do this time of year so that the transition to the longer outdoor race is a smooth one. And besides, in the age of covid, any workout you can get in is a good workout.
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