Speed is a skill, so train it that way. If you were trying to become an elite dancer, would you spend your non-performance season spending a lot of time doing huge volumes of mis-timed and fatigued steps, hoping that it would somehow get better when you finally got on stage? Probably not. Why would you treat a skill like sprinting differently? Because your coach trained you that way? In the modern information age, this type of reasoning is becoming less of an excuse to train athletes in the manner they are truly meant to be developed.

I had a conversation with Chris Korfist a few weeks ago on the topic of running mechanics, and subsequent corrective strength and activation work. After that ran its course, we started chatting about Chris’s fall training for his sprint athletes. Chris doesn’t train his athletes in the fall like most coaches. Chris’s athletes run very fast in the spring.

In a paragraph or two, what is your general overview/outcome goal training of sprinters in the fall vs. their training in the spring?

In a perfect world, regardless of the season, we keep training to 2-3 days a week. We would do 2 days in the summer or fall and 3 days in the spring or track season. I always like to have one of those days a fly day. The second day would be an acceleration work.

My focus during the off-season period is purely top end speed and acceleration. I don’t worry about building volume or endurance. If speed is a neural activity, I want to do it as much as possible with taking recovery into consideration. I have found that athletes come back rested if we keep the training load to 2 days a week. Their reps numbers will be dictated by their fly and acceleration times. When they slow down 3-5%, we stop.

When track starts, I add a third day. During the indoor season, we would do drill work. In outdoor season, the third day world be block/exchange and meet days. And acceleration would be change to speed endurance.

You’ve mentioned that “The weather is your periodization plan”. What are your thoughts on periodization and planning in regards to fall training?

I live in an area where weather can change in minutes: rain, snow, wind, and cold. We can’t always run outside and I don’t have access to a permanent indoor facility. Those are rare in Chicago. So my periodization is to run when we can.

On a rare December day, it may be 50 degrees. I will drop whatever we are doing and go outside to sprint. In the same vein, it may be 38 degrees in May and we will not go out to run. That would be a great day for plyometrics, using the cold to help stiffen the muscles. So whatever the weather is giving us, we will use.

That doesn’t change during track season either. I no longer have a 200m track. I have a 40m hallway. Once the school play is over, or they are not practicing, I take the 50m hallway and change my workout. I go with what I have. I don’t want to make some long, micro/meso cycle program to build whatever, if the weather is going to change and wreck my program. Additionally, there are too many factors in a high school athletes’ life that could alter a coaches plans.

(Chris will be speaking in more depth on his work with his sprinters in a lack of facility setting in the 2015 Track-Football Consortium on December 11-12 in the Chicago area)

What are your thoughts on training maximal velocity year round in a speed development program? Is there ever a point where this type of training would be a drawback? What would you say to the argument of athletes burning out early from training speed too early in the season?

I will do max speed as much as possible. As mentioned above, I never know when I can or can’t. But, even if I had perfect conditions, I would still stick with it. I would add other aspects of training along with the running.

I think we get so focused on one aspect of our training, that we miss the bigger picture. Think of a workout like a pizza. If I have a cheese pizza, it has a certain taste, texture, etc. If I add, sausage, again it changes the pizza. Add pepperoni, again changes. Add pineapple and bacon, well, that’s not pizza. My point is that if I do a fly, that workout taxes the nervous system in a certain fashion.

If I add kBox RDL’s or box jumps to the workout, the neural sum would tax the system differently. I can change the surface or have an athlete wear shoes on different feet; that would have a different neural impact than the previous workout. What if I change the visual stimulus? I could have you run with colored glasses or prism glasses, something that I have been experimenting with, I can change how your foot contact occurs. That would changes the neural experience.

Or another favorite of mine, is using my sprint 1080, I tow the athlete at 3% over their top speed, but to challenge their system, I put pieces of track randomly over their course so their body will have to respond, quickly, to the slightest changes on the ground. I hate it when they miss all of the pieces.

My point is that just because the exercise looks the same on paper, the sum at the end of the workout will be different. Even sprinting in different temperatures requires different parts of the body to respond differently.

My argument is for speed training year round is that it is a neural activity. You can change the stress loads by changing exercises surrounding the flies, changing the ground, vision, sound. That is what the pizza analogy is about. I can change the ground and it is different to your brain. You can run in different shoes and it might be different.

You don’t believe in strength training sprinters in-season. What do you feel the role of strength training is during the fall/off-season component of the season. What general things are you are looking for during this time period?

We strength train in the off-season. That is what I use as the pepperoni in my pizza. In January, we do a ton of isometrics (the Bulgarian split squat type) because it is usually 10 outside and athletes are tight. It seems to fit in with what the season brings. The goal is to use what their bodies knows and add that knowledge to their training.

Think about this, and this may just be my and the people I know, but if my bedroom temperature stays 68 degrees year round, why do I feel the need to have a heavy blanket in the winter and lighter ones in the summer? Or when I visit my brother in LA in the winter, it is 70 but everyone except the Mid-western visitors are wearing winter coats. I think those kinds of things need to be factored in when planning a workout.

As for lifting, I don’t have much running room from November to March, so we concentrate on Isometrics and eccentrics. This is why I like the Cal Dietz’s Triphasic stuff some much. Of course, kBox takes care of all of that in one exercise. We also do positional drills so the body learns to find different positions. We call it running slow to run fast.

Are there any tests/monitoring that you like in the fall that you feel correlate to spring success on the track?

I like to train to the test so we do flies and block times. A variety of verticals from different positions (ankle rocker jumps, shin/torso parallel jump and fast CMJ). I measure bar speed in squat jumps with gymaware. I keep the bar speed over 1.5 m/s and add weight accordingly. I keep track of power output on the kBox as well.

What is your definition of a training “base” for a speed/power athlete?

I don’t think I have a base. We have a starting point and a direction of where we want to go.

Do you treat activation means any differently in the fall vs. how you do in the spring?

No. I do it all year. I treat every activation like we are about to go into the biggest competition of the year.

Chris Korfist has been coaching track for 22 years in Illinois. He has coached at Hinsdale Central, Downers Grove North and York HS, producing 59 All-state track athletes, 3 individual state champions, 2 team state champions, 3 second place team finishes, and 2 3rd place finishes. He owns the Slow Guy Speed School which is a gym that focuses on running and athletic development from which other All-state athletes have trained. He used to run the Inno-sport website and wannagetfast.com with Dan Fichter. He also had the opportunity to work occasionally with some Olympic sprinters and other professional athletes.

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