How many times should you be sprinting a week?

[winkywrjj]

I was reading a joe defranco artile and it said to only sprint once a week! This cant be right?

"1. The faster you are, the LESS often you sprint. Sprinting at 100% places great stress on the CNS. The faster you are, the longer it takes to recover from workouts. Sprinting all-out in your event should only be done once every 7-10 days for advanced athletes. "

[Cheetah]

It isn't right....

[winkywrjj]

It isn't right....

so why did he say it. and how many times should you sprint a week?

[teriyakisaki]

defranco knows his stuff, but i just don't know about that. post the whole article. its kinda hard to know what hes getting at when its taken out of context like that.

either way, im sure the difference he is talking about is only seen in world class athletes, and even then its relatively small (<.001) for average joe, no biggy if even noticeable.

[Footballstar]

I was reading a joe defranco artile and it said to only sprint once a week! This cant be right?

"1. The faster you are, the LESS often you sprint. Sprinting at 100% places great stress on the CNS. The faster you are, the longer it takes to recover from workouts. Sprinting all-out in your event should only be done once every 7-10 days for advanced athletes. "

What he said is right sprinting the track and field athletes EVENT will pose great stress on an advance athlete (sub 10.5 100m, sub 21.2 200m, etc...) In training sprinters rarely sprint there full race but most of them work on the weak area of there race, it could be there start, acceleration, max velocity, or finish...

I will say that a general 1-2 days should be given in between sprint workouts, it varies among athletes.

[kronik85]

none of you know what sprinting at 100% is like...

[Rob878]

why wouldn't we know what sprinting at a 100% is like. During the course of a game (rugby) i might be flat out for about 20-30 metres 7-8 times a game. My hundred at best might be only in the 12-13 second region (don't know never felt the need to measure) and compared to a professional athlete (actually compared to most kids) my running form might be poor but the effort i put in to catch up players and tackle them or make the most of a break is definately 100%.

winkywrjj: i think you have to look at the statement in it's component parts
"the faster you are the less you sprint" basically if in a rugby game (use football if thats your sport) you are running to try and tackle me and say my hundred is 12.5 seconds and yours is in the 11'seconds, to catch me then you will not need to sprint at 100% to catch me. So you wont be exerting yourself as much as i will be.

The third sentence "The faster you are, the longer it takes to recover from workouts" means that taking the game analogy from above and taking into account sentence 2 that states "Sprinting at 100% places great stress on the CNS". In the process of running me down you will not have reached 100% of your sprinting capability therefore not put your CNS under the same amount of stress as mine so i therefore should take longer to recover than you after the game. Inversely should you have had to put a 100% sprint effort in during the game, due to your higher speed there would have been a greater stress placed on your CNS than me at my 100% so in this case your recovery time should be longer than mine.

Well that seems as clear as mud

hope this helps

rob

[YoungnTrainer]

Ok, there are definately many factors to consider when wondering how many times you should be sprinting a week.

Depends on what phase you are in for your training, is it gpp, season, offseason etc...
If you're in season then obviously you would be sprinting less to conserve energy for your games

Next how much volume do you have in other areas? If you already got all these different days where you're working on maximal effort, dynamic effort, conditioning, etc then it would be pretty hard to squeeze in multiple sprinting sessions a week.

Also kno the distinction between percentage of performance, and percentage of effort. In track when they refer to 80% or whatever its usually 80% of your PR not just a "feeling" of 80%. because somedays it will be harder to duplicate certain times. Having a day where you're doing sprints at 90% of your PR is going to be lot more stressful on your cns then lets say a day where you're feeling off and you're placing "90%" effort

hope this helps, I'm just saying some stuff that popped into my head; not really my specialty lol. Defranco knows his stuff so you can trust him. But don't take what he says out of context certain advice applies to certain situations.

[kronik85]

why wouldn't we know what sprinting at a 100% is like. During the course of a game (rugby) i might be flat out for about 20-30 metres 7-8 times a game. My hundred at best might be only in the 12-13 second region (don't know never felt the need to measure) and compared to a professional athlete (actually compared to most kids) my running form might be poor but the effort i put in to catch up players and tackle them or make the most of a break is definately 100%.

winkywrjj: i think you have to look at the statement in it's component parts
"the faster you are the less you sprint" basically if in a rugby game (use football if thats your sport) you are running to try and tackle me and say my hundred is 12.5 seconds and yours is in the 11'seconds, to catch me then you will not need to sprint at 100% to catch me. So you wont be exerting yourself as much as i will be.

The third sentence "The faster you are, the longer it takes to recover from workouts" means that taking the game analogy from above and taking into account sentence 2 that states "Sprinting at 100% places great stress on the CNS". In the process of running me down you will not have reached 100% of your sprinting capability therefore not put your CNS under the same amount of stress as mine so i therefore should take longer to recover than you after the game. Inversely should you have had to put a 100% sprint effort in during the game, due to your higher speed there would have been a greater stress placed on your CNS than me at my 100% so in this case your recovery time should be longer than mine.

Well that seems as clear as mud

hope this helps

rob

you honestly think you're running 100% over and over in a rugby game? gimme a break.

like i said, you don't understand 100%.

[Rob878]

ok i 'll give you a break as clearly you have never played the game and therefore as you have asked for one you deserve it.

As you didn' t read my post properly and cherry picked the info i stated that" i might be flat out for about 20-30 metres 7-8 times a game". In a game of 80 minutes that hardly constitutes 100% for a game. The definition of 100% is also proportional to the amount of effort left to give. If i am fresh at the start of training session then clearly i can apply a greater muscular force to the sprint than i can give in the 79th (last minute) of the game. However in the terms of effort, i am still applying myself 100% to the task in hand, in this case running as fast as i can. Just because i am not running as fast as i can in a training session doesn't mean i am not applying 100% effort.


Hope this clears this up my definition for you if however you disagree then please elaborate.

rob

[kronik85]

i disagree because

1. you're not a sprinter
2. because you're not of the caliber defranco is talking about

because of these points, your argument is out of context of what he's talking about.

[Rob878]

There taking the tone of your replies you consider that you are an athelete of the caibre of the level defranco is talking about.

I do take you point that his is pointing out that at the highest level of human endeavour that you are pushing the limits of physicality and therefore will be endangering the CNS by repeated maximum ( as in at the limit of what the body can do rather than what the mind/training allows) sprints. But my point is still stands, in that a person with greater natural speed will take a shorter time to recover than a person perpetually pushing their limits.

have a rep point for backing up your arguement, rather than just leaving a provocative statement. I hope that you will see this as not an arguement but a constructive exchange of ideas.

peace out

rob

[kronik85]

There taking the tone of your replies you consider that you are an athelete of the caibre of the level defranco is talking about.

I do take you point that his is pointing out that at the highest level of human endeavour that you are pushing the limits of physicality and therefore will be endangering the CNS by repeated maximum ( as in at the limit of what the body can do rather than what the mind/training allows) sprints. But my point is still stands, in that a person with greater natural speed will take a shorter time to recover than a person perpetually pushing their limits.

have a rep point for backing up your arguement, rather than just leaving a provocative statement. I hope that you will see this as not an arguement but a constructive exchange of ideas.

peace out

rob

ya, im usualy pretty snappy about stuff.

i agree that if you have two people, one lets say runs a 11 second 100, and one runs a 10.5 second 100. if you have them both running 11.5s, yes the 10.5s runner will have shorter recoveries.

its the same as for the reason that you dont max out every workout session. because your CNS cant handle it. for the same reason you dont run all out every workout session when you get to a higher level caliber of training.

the elite sprinter doesnt max out every workout session, nor does the elite lifter, theyre counter productive to progress.