Sprints

I’ve been doing the german body comp program for a few weeks now. I’m seeing good results, but I was thinking about incorporating sprints into it. Would it be best to do them on off days, early morning or after a workout? Right now I work out 4 days a week. Usually monday, tues, thurs, fri

[quote]overdrive570 wrote:
I’ve been doing the german body comp program for a few weeks now. I’m seeing good results, but I was thinking about incorporating sprints into it. Would it be best to do them on off days, early morning or after a workout? Right now I work out 4 days a week. Usually monday, tues, thurs, fri[/quote]

Whats your goal? Fat loss I assume.
I would do high volume sprints monday & thursday mornings. Maybe add some easy tempo runs on your other days (runs over 100-200m at 60-75% of max effort with 30-60 sec recoveries).

Early morning, empty stomach. Do 10-15 100 yard dashes, walk back. Repeat. Twice a week, I like to do them on off days. On an empty stomach, when you do sprints you get a great growth hormone release which in turn helps burn fat.

[quote]BCFlynn wrote:
Early morning, empty stomach. Do 10-15 100 yard dashes, walk back. Repeat. Twice a week, I like to do them on off days. On an empty stomach, when you do sprints you get a great growth hormone release which in turn helps burn fat. [/quote]

Ok first off - I’m a big fan of both sprinting (ie. use it or lose it) and fasting periods in general and based on my experiences, I’ve strenuously DISAGREED with combining the two. Instead, I’ve often recommended a fueled sprint session with the goal of performance in mind. Basically, get out there and push yourself and make progress and let the fat loss take care of itself (and it certainly will). Or to put it another way, feel free to focus on ‘fat loss’ as often you want, EXCEPT when you’re actually training!

But I’ve said all that before in previous sprint/fatloss threads and I’ve been overdue for some experimentation so I went ahead and got in a fasted sprints session earlier this morning: 16 x 110yds on the local highschool’s fieldturf, mostly fasted (only BCAA’s + caffeine beforehand)

What I found: fasted sprints worked just fine. My concerns of “hitting the wall” or of feeling hypoglycemic (this happened the only other time I had tried fasted sprinting, though to be fair, I was also eating every 2-3hrs in those days and very much riding the blood sugar rollercoaster) never surfaced at all and I was able to breeze past the 10 sprint minimum I had set for myself.

What this means for you: no idea. So much of this game is “finding out what works for you (and your biomechanics & genetics)” but I strongly suspect that someone with little sprinting AND fasting experience would run into some issues, at least initially.

And as to whether fasted or fueled sprinting is better: whichever way gets you doing the damn thing more often.

(edited)

Sprints = HIIT = Weight training

You do HIIT to raise your metabolic rate for 12 -24 hours post exercise and that’s where fat is burnt. Your not doing sprints to burn fat during the exercise - although that will happen to a degree. Long constant state of cardio burns more fat during the exercise compared to HIIT but that’s because your comparing a 30,45,60 min long exercise to a 15 min one, however the post exercise burn is very limited, not even close to HIIT.

So how does the above tie up to your original question?

Well now that we have cleared up the reasons for doing sprints we can decide pre workout nutrition and when. Definitely, do not do sprints fasted. Others may have seen gains but they probably would have seen better gains from feeding pre workout. I’m not saying just before as the last thing you want is food and liquid swashing around as your trying to bolt along. It’s HIIT - it’s intense like weight lifting. To keep it intense you need energy so eat.

When? Well since it is heavily taxing on your body try and do it on non-weight training days. If that is not an option then separate the two by at least 2 meals so as to allow your body to recover between the session somewhat, at least enough to keep the intensity high.

Hope it helps.

2 Random things :

-Low rep/heavy weight training (1-4 rep range) makes you feel like you got the rocket boosters. You can sprint more during the week.

Intense high-er rep training on the other hand, you just feel like a lazy mar far, and dont want to do sprints, and when you do, you dont sprint as fast…so its not as fun.

-I gotta quit field sprinting in the morning cause you think theres just a little bit of dew on the grass but after just a couple sprints your shoes are pretty much soaked through with dew.

Lots of great points above…Keep in mind that when your really “sprinting,” it has a high draw on the nervous system. if your sprinting on your rest days, you might see some quick fat loss results, followed by an abrupt burnout. which means lethargy and fat gain.

Is it better to sprint then jog with a work to rest ratio of 1:3

Or is it better to sprint then completely stop for a work to rest ratio of 2:1 or 1:1

It depends on your goals. 1:3 works well for fat loss and lactate days. I have great results with 3 to 5 minutes depending the volume. The reasoning for my rest ratios is that i’m going for full or close to full ATP replenishment. if the rest period is too short, your not really sprinting. Sprinting performance is really about working smart not hard.

[quote]Pullproject wrote:
Is it better to sprint then jog with a work to rest ratio of 1:3

Or is it better to sprint then completely stop for a work to rest ratio of 2:1 or 1:1[/quote]

Depends on the duration of the sprint. The shorter, and thus more intense/faster speed the sprint, the longer the rest relative to the time it takes you. Also, as mentioned, it depends on goals for the sprinting. A lot of people are misinformed when it comes to sprints. People looked at sprinters’ bodies vs distance runners’ bodies and came to the conclusion that sprinting is best for conditioning (vs LSD/steady state) if you want to maintain or gain muscle while burning fat. The problem is that people just took an arbitrary approach to sprints. That is, sprinters have very detailed and specific track workouts. They just don’t do a few sprints and call it a day. Sprinters do not train for fat loss. They are lean as a by-product of their training, diet, genetics.

The point being that sprinters train to get faster not to look a certain way so you need to plan your workouts accordingly. Ask yourself if you are doing sprints for fat loss and/or general conditioning or for improved sprint performance. If performance is a priority then rest must be longer with more intense sprints because each one needs to be done as best as you can. You also don’t want to get hurt. The rest may be from 5-15 minutes depending on the distance. It’s just like weightlifting with low reps: you take a longer rest so you can perform each set well. So maybe that type of workout is not the best for fat loss and it will obviously take up a lot of time. If you are interested in conditioning and fat loss then the tempo runs that sprinters do would probably be best. These are shorter distances (200m for example) at less than full speed. 400m runners who can run the 200 under 21 seconds will do multiple 200s at 30 seconds, with 2 minutes rest in between, to start to give you an idea of what less than full speed means. They will, as they get in better shape, reduce the time and rest in between.

I would say to pick a time or distance to sprint. Since this is HIIT and not steady state aerobics it would probably be less than 45 seconds which would mean for most people 300m or less. Run it hard but not at full speed (or what you think is full speed as it takes a very high degree of fitness to run 200-300m at close to full speed. This is why I laugh when I read how someone claims to have hit the track for the first time in a while and they ran a few 400s all out. They admit they were dying and the times were slow but, there is no way the went all out as they would be dead after one. In fact, they wouldn’t even complete one. There is a difference between running a certain distance as fast you can and running as fast as you can over that distance. Not even Michael Johnson could run 400m full speed). Anyway, after each sprint (or rather tempo run) rest long enough to do another in the same time. Take note of your rest times and see if they improve over time. Take note of the run times as well. If you find you can also run a little faster then you know you are getting in better shape. Basically you need to individualize the workout. You can’t follow a strict rest ratio that sprinters might use or try and emulate their times. Look to them for a template or conceptual approach. You can always do more intense sprints but be careful because you can burn out quickly and/or get hurt. Maybe, every few workouts, add a few 100m or shorter sprints at full, or close to full speed, after doing the tempo runs when you should be warmed up. I stick with the tempo runs and add a few harder sprints at the end every third workout.

One more thing: I notice people asking about 400m times. The thing is that if you want to compare yourself to an elite 400m runner you would be better off comparing how you can run 45 seconds. An elite 400m runner’s time is not the result of how conditioned he is but his conditioning plus his foot speed (which is faster than the avg person). If you are not as fast as Michael Johnson you will never run a 400m close to his time, regardless of how fit you are. What I’m getting at is a person could be in “better shape” than MJ but still not be able to approach his time in the 400. There are probably a lot of athletes out there who are in better shape than Usain Bolt yet none can run faster. So if you want measure your fitness against a 400m runner, if that is the standard of fitness you have for yourself, then you need to be able to work at close to 100% for around 45 seconds. If you can manage that then you have a level of conditioning that is similar to the best 400m runners. It’s also a lot harder than it seems in writing. One way to measure it would be to run a 100m as fast as you can. Look at that time and then run 200m and see if the time is double that first time. You can even test yourself at 300m. This will give you an idea of where your conditioning is.