High School Sprint Training

Dan Pfaff has a lot of info out there, can’t find a single instance of him telling sprinters to forgo sprint training, play basketball and lift, but he’s the ultimate appeal to authority here so if he said it, I suppose there was a reason…can you explain the reasoning behind it, or the context/link to a video or article where he explains it?

It’s from an interview he gave where he talked about when he coached high school. If you go through all his stuff you will find it. If I were to give you the link my fear is that you would pick it apart in an attempt to discredit what I wrote. However, if you go through all of his interviews and come to it on your own, in context, after listening and reading things he says you will likely see how it is something that is worth considering (which is all I said), and to look for the value in what could be gained from doing something like that.

Some random thoughts for when the situation gets back to normal.

  1. The comment about strength not making them faster. That is incorrect. There are plenty of papers showing a correlation between sprinting speed and squatting strength.

I will agree that there are some sprinters who are not strong, Kim Collins who ran in the 9.8 without ever touching a weight, comes to mind. I find that people who are naturally freakily explosive don’t need strength training to run fast BUT that’s not to say that they wouldn’t be even faster if they got stronger. And we are talking about 2% of the population.

For those who fall more in the normal range or high-normal range, getting stronger is one of the fastest way to get faster, provided that it’s done the right way.

I’ll use myself as an example. at 18 I ran a 5.31 seconds / 40 yards (36.6m), which is slow. I had been doing training for a while but more bodybuilding-style. At 20, after two years of heavy training and olympic lifting, where my squat went from 365 to 525lbs my power clean from 185 to 335lbs and my power snatch from 135 to 265lbs my 40 yards dropped down to 4.54 WITHOUT EVEN SPRINTING. For track reference, a 4.54/40 would give a 3.71/30m (18.09 miles per hour speed). My vertical jump also went from 28" to 40". I did use jumps in my warm-up, so lifting wasn’t the only contributing factor.

A bobsleigh athlete I train had his 30m go from 3.71 down to 3.58 by increasing his squat from 485 to 550lbs, another one went from 3.9 down to 3.68 by taking his squat from 495 to 550lbs.

A lot of elite sprinters squat in the high 400s, some in the low-to-mid 500 and you even have some exceptions doing in the high 500 to 600 (Ben Johnson, Lindford Christie).

When you sprint, you are essentially applying force on the floor, the more force you can produce the more force you can apply on the floor. This is not the only component of sprinting but it plays a big role.

  1. Getting stronger will help, but it’s not all that matters. And spending too much effort on getting stronger might hurt speed training by depleting neural ressources. If strength was all that mattered, powerlifters would be super fast. Most aren’t.

So, the way you lift is likely more important than adding weight to the bar (which is still important). A sprinter should always try to produce as much acceleration on the concentric phase. Especially on lower body movements.

  1. Jump training is also super important. It will help them transfer the strength gains to the sprinting action. Show me someone who jumps high (or far) and I’ll show you someone who runs fast.

  2. With sprinters you have to use a minimalist approach to strength training. They need to preserve their neural ressources for the sprint sessions. That’s why I favor doing sprints and lifting on the same days, do allow for recovery on the off days. If you sprint monday, wednesday, friday and you lift tuesday and thursdays, the wednesday and friday sprint sessions will be negatively affected.

Something like:

Monday: Sprint / heavy lifting (all relative off course)
Tuesday: off / recovery methods
Wednesday: Sprint / jump & throws
Thursday: Low intensity running technique
Friday: Sprint / Explosive lifting
Weekend: Recovery methods

Would be pretty good. I would use 2 maybe 3 movements per session. Personally with the speed athletes I work with we do a power version of the olympic lifts (normally power clean from the hang or power snatch from the hang), a squat variation and an upper body movement. If an athlete can’t do the olympic lifts or if you can’t coach them they can use a high pull or a Romanian deadlift.

  1. I personally prefer a short to long approach to sprint training. Meaning that you start by building the capacity to accelerate (10-30m), while using the technique work to build form over the full distance. The next block you work on top speed (40-60m), still using the technique day to work on competition distance(s). The next block is on speed-maintenance (up to 100-120m) and the last block focuses on competition distances (the athlete could have a 100m day and a 200m day… or a 200m day with a 400m day depending on the events he does).
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Wow, thank you for the detailed response. This is very helpful.