Pre Pre-Season Workout
by Steve McGill
Usually at this time of year, the monthly workout would be one that is designed for peak performance prior to a major competition, as anyone competing in July is preparing for a big meet. The youth athletes I coach would be preparing for Junior Olympic Nationals that would be coming up at the end of the month. But such is not the case in 2020. Although there have been a sprinkling of meets (I saw where Noah Lyles and Justin Gatlin raced in a meet in Florida, and there have been a couple Diamond League virtual meets), most athletes have no choice but to begin preparing for the 2021 season with the hope that by the time the spring season rolls around the worst of the coronavirus pandemic will be behind us. I kind of thought it would be by now, but that’s another topic of discussion for another time. This month’s workout is the type of summer workout that is usually reserved for athletes who don’t compete beyond the end of the school season and want to stay in shape before beginning to crank things up during the fall. The purpose is to strengthen the muscles the athlete will need to use when it’s time to go faster.
Here’s the workout:
[am4show not_have=’g5;’]
[/am4show][am4guest]
[/am4guest][am4show have=’g5;’]
16x200m at 70% of race pace.
Jog/bounce 200m between reps.
This workout should definitely be done in flats because the speed that spikes provide won’t be needed, and the heavy volume means that the athlete will need more support.
The goal is to maintain the pace for the entire workout. Someone who runs the open 200 meter dash in, let’s say, 24 seconds, will be running these somewhere in the 35-36 second range. That sounds like the pace is too slow, but when doing 16 reps all in one big set, that’s the pace the athlete will want to keep. The temptation, obviously, will be to go out too fast on the early reps. So it might be best if the athlete times him/herself and checks the watch at the 100m mark to make sure he/she isn’t going too fast. Or, if a coach or teammate is doing the timing, that person should stand at the 100m mark and yell out the time in addition to stopping the watch when the athlete crosses the finish line. The benefit of this type of workout is that helps the athlete to begin to develop a “body clock,” as Jean Poquette (Renaldo Nehemiah’s high school coach) used to call it. When you get to the point where you can feel what 35 seconds feels like, you can feel for how to turn up the pace a bit and hit 33 seconds, then 31, 29, etc. as the season goes on.
The athlete should stay on the balls of the feet the whole workout–during reps and between reps. If the athlete starts running flat-footed or heel-toe, that defeats the whole purpose. Even though the athlete can probably hit the times without sprinting on the balls of the feet, the last thing we want to do is develop and ingrain bad sprinting mechanics.
Variations: for those athletes who “don’t like running,” as is the case with many sprinters and sprint hurdlers, this workout will feel like it’s a bit much. It’ll feel like a distance workout. And it is. It consists of two miles worth of sprinting and two miles worth of jogging/bouncing, which adds up to four miles total. For such athletes, you could break the workout down into two sets of 8 reps with 5 minutes rest between sets, or 4 sets of 4 reps with 3 minutes rest between sets. If the temperatures are really high and/or the humidity levels are very high, then breaking the workout into sets with breaks in between would be a wise move. Or you could keep it as one set and do just 10-12 reps and work up to 16 reps by the time fall training starts.
[/am4show]
