Track and field is a sport that filters important concepts over into any other athletic endeavor. Even athletes and coaches who aren’t involved with track and field have a lot to learn from its methodology. The principles of improving speed, strength and biomechanics in the process of making athletes faster transfers to virtually any sport improvement program.
In this interview, we are back with more great questions and answers with Ryan Banta, author of the upcoming “Sprinter’s Compendium”. For this part of the interview, Ryan shares with us his thoughts on the hotly debated “intensive tempo” implementation, and also his thoughts on strength training for high school sprinters.
Just Fly Sports: What are your thoughts on the “nether region” of intensive tempo? How would you go about incorporating this into the weekly training load since you can’t do true speed work the following day?
Ryan Banta: All training can be justified depending on sport, event group, environment, and genetic makeup of the athletes you are training. I know there have been a lot of discussions (some heated) on a number of different forums about percentage of effort for tempo work.
Charlie Francis influence is evident on people who support the concept of keeping tempo percentage of energy down to 70 to 75%, so those days lay down capillary beds, and enhance recovery between workouts.
However, if you train at 85% then you are training the body to adapt by creating buffers to hold the performance crushing waste product back for an increased amount of time. As stated in my last post, your tempo training should hinge upon what event you are trying to train for as a competitor. I never put tempo training at the beginning of the week. Depending on what type of sprinter you are training will dictate what days tempo will be a focus:
Short Sprinters 100/200 (no meet)
Monday- Acceleration and Maximum Velocity.
Tuesday- Tempo (longer interval)
Wednesday- Active Recovery, Visualization, Goal Setting
Thursday- Race Modeling Special Endurance
Friday- Tempo (short interval)
Saturday Speed Endurance I
Mid Sprinter 200/400 (no meet)
Monday- Special Endurance
Tuesday- Tempo (longer interval)
Wednesday- Active Recovery Visualization, Goal Setting
Thursday- Speed Endurance I or II
Friday- Tempo (longer Interval) or lactic stacking or active recovery if there are durability issues
Saturday- Race Modeling
Long Sprinters 400/800 (no meet)
Monday- Special Endurance
Tuesday- Tempo
Wednesday- Aerobic Run
Thursday- Lactic Threshold Run
Friday- Aerobic Run
Saturday Speed Endurance I or II
One of the greatest aspects of tempo workouts is that you are going to get something out of running at 70 to 75% or 85%. Additionally, your sprinter can still maintain better mechanics in training tempo then pounding out aerobic work. Protecting the biomechanical model from the midrange intensity is good so they don’t learn bad motor skills. Trudging through horribly awful workouts with no value is just a waste of time. Everything you do should have a purpose.
If the 400 is your event you probably want to run faster during tempo training. If you are a 100 sprinter specialist and can bring your “A” game on high-intensity days, then lower intensity tempo days are required. Lower intensity tempo days for a 100 meter specialist makes sense due the nervous system needing 48 hours to recover before it can provide you the 95% efforts necessary to achieve positive training effects for the highest velocity sprints. As you can see above, in the themes I provided we try to build in recovery for our sprinters depending on their strengths.
If the weekly structure is too much for an athlete you are working with I would move my weekly structure to a 2/1/1/1/1 system. For example, a sprinter would be on a fairly heavy load for 2 days (M/T), off for 1 (Wednesday), on for 1 (Thursday), off for 1 (Friday), and on for 1 (Saturday).
Just Fly Sports: What type of strength work do you like for high school sprinters?
Ryan Banta: Honestly, we train our sprinters in a global perspective when it comes to the weight room. Training high school athletes is fun because they make enormous gains training nearly everything. However, that success can be dangerous for a coach because you might think you are giving the right training but in reality you could be hurting their development in the future.
As a coach, it is important not to be too aggressive. If you get an athlete that is a junior or senior in high school with no strength training experience then you must start at the beginning. Your first phase of strength training should teach the basics. Young people are dangerously uneducated when it comes to weight training. I tend to be very conservative when working with youth because a coach is often the only line of defense between the athlete and catastrophic injury. One of the things we do with people who never squatted before is the Wall Facing Dumbbell Goblet Squat.
This squat is performed by placing a dumbbell an inch away from the wall. Then have your athlete stand facing the wall and have them squat down to pick up the dumbbell without letting their knees touch the wall. If the athlete squats down incorrectly they will hit the wall or stumble slightly backward. When done correctly the athlete will make space between their legs for the butt to follow down during the squat. We often cue the athlete to pretend they are sitting back on the toilet. Most people sit correctly on a toilet, or they would have real problems. This signal seems to make the connection for most athletes. However, if they still don’t get what we are looking for I discuss with the athlete that they need to “move first at the hips, then the butt, and finally the knees. If they bend the knees first, the athlete will look as if the squat is going forward instead of down and back.
Imagine this exercise being done, not with the hands overhead, but instead picking up a dumbbell for an idea of how the wall squat with the dumbbell is performed.
Our typical phases that do exist in our program are hypertrophy, maximal strength, stability training, ballistic, and transition/general strength. If an athlete has no experience in the weight room, they never move past the maximal strength phase. We teach the essential movements for our key lifts. The key lifts we teach at the start of the season is the “Hell Raiser”, bench press, and squat. The Hell Raiser is an essential lift because it requires a large number of movements the athletes will see again later in other Olympic lifts.
The Hell Raiser is where a lifter pulls an Olympic bar from the ground like they are doing a high pull. On the third pull, they flip the bar into a power clean. Once the power clean is racked they move the bar into a double leg jerk. When the bar is placed above the athlete’s head they lower in a controlled motion to rest the bar on their shoulders behind their neck. Once racked on the shoulders behind the neck the sprinter then quickly squats down and then fires the bar backup into a jerk position. Then the athlete racks the bar back to the shoulders flips it down their hips and then sets it on the ground. A Hell Raiser is repeated up to five times a set. The key to this lift is the weight must be heavy enough for them to feel the pull of the bar, so they don’t get lazy moving the bar into position. The bar must be light enough to complete the lift through each phase till the bar is placed back on the ground. I like the ability of this lift to teach the positions over and over to someone who is a novice lifter.
Joel’s note: The “bear complex” is similar to the hellraiser. You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to wade through the crossfit bear complex videos with 2 minute introductions before I found this one!
When a young person joins our program we partner them up with a “big sister” or “big brother.” These partners are to help me teach the new athlete our expectations, culture, and technique. Starting a new phase with new lifts our athletes cycle down to one set per exercise for day one of that phase. The next day we do two sets, and the third day we do a complete workout (all reps and sets).
The process allows the athletes to have some recovery cycled into their training but at the same time we want to avoid delayed onset of muscle soreness (D.O.M.S.). D.O.M.S. can be useful if you are trying to create significant improvements in a truncated timetable. However, for long-term growth, development, and amidst a competitive season it is best to avoid DOMS as much as possible.
We try to change our lifting program every three weeks minimum and every six weeks maximum. The timeline we choose when making the switch depends on a number of factors including the length of the season, competitive age, sport, sex, and event. For example, the athlete’s attendance to winter conditioning is sporadic then we try to stay in that phase for as long as possible. Due to their issues with attendance their growth curve will be slow. Worse they could get injured if you rush them. I also don’t want to reward those who cannot make a commitment with more advanced and entertaining lifts.
Just Fly Sports: Do you alter the amount of strength work based on race distance?
Ryan Banta: When it comes to distance runners, the focus of our training is of course distance training. However, I maintain a lifting program three days week for our distance kids. This program is a full-body routine involving a large number of lifts that can take up to 45mins to an hour and a half to complete. We do shorten recoveries between lifts because distance runners don’t get to take breaks in a cross country race. I make sure always to include a number of eccentric hamstring strength training drills to reduce the potential for injury to such a critical muscle. In the peak phase during the last four weeks of the season before the state meet we change our strength program. We move to the uses of a medicine ball plyometric routine to build off the different phases we go throughout the year. In the off season, we lift every day. In the summer, we can lift every day because we are not limited by after school hours only. In the winter, our mileage is not as important. Mileage no longer the emphasis it allows more time for ancillary work. Strength becomes more important in training, and we add in more speed sessions for our distance runners to turn their focus to track season.
A lot of high school coaches have difficulty being competitive in both the summer and fall. Balance is a challenge for us too as athletes, and I have preferences as their coach. However, I challenge my kids every season to be the most balanced running program in the state. More importantly as a coach I feel it is my job to give all my athletes variety skills as they develop globally. It is not job to paint them into a corner because of my training. A lot of distance coaches focus on higher mileage in my opinion because it is a simple way to make gains aerobically. Eventually, a distance runner that keeps withdrawing from the aerobic bank account will leave them physically bankrupt. A distance runner needs to diversify their investments on other critical aspects of elite running that allow them to be successful in the critical zone.
A distance runner can face a number of critical zones. At the lower levels in every distance race, someone goes out too fast. There are a number of surges in the middle of a long distance race. Finally, most major championship distance races in the professional ranks men finish the last lap in the low 50s. To produce positive results in these various situations, your athletes need to train fast, lift, and have developed motors. What we do in the weight room is not that different in structure to my jumpers, sprinters, and hurdlers. My distance runners do Olympic lifting, squat, and bench press. The loads will be different, but strength training crosses all events. I have been blessed to coach five Gatorade athletes of the year for Missouri, and all of them have been distance runners. All of these distance runners have continued to be successful in college in large part due to their talent not being sapped from high mileage training in high school.
Speed Training Interview with Ryan Banta: Part 1
Speed Training Interview with Ryan Banta: Part 3
More about Ryan Banta:
Ryan Banta is Parkway Central High School Girls Head track and field coach 2003 to the present, and Parkway Central High School Head XC coach 2013 to present. Ryan’s coaching tenure has yielded 84 school records. 2 top 4 finishes in 2008 and 2009, District Champs 2007, 2008, and 2009, four runner up finishes at districts 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, two state records 4×800 and 3200 meter run, 14 nationally ranked events, 34 all state performances, 7 runner up finishes, 8 state championship events and 70 state qualifiers(track and xc). Ryan is the MTCCCA Vice President and MSHSAA advisory board member. He is a writer for elitetrack.com and speedendurance.com and has his USATF Level II in Sprints, Hurdles, Relays, and Endurance, as well as a USTFCCCA technical certification.
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