Flying 30's

[Cpvault]

It's a a pure sprint. Using cones or a finish line on the track, mark a zone of 30 meters--start 10 meters back from the 30 meter zone; build into a full sprint (hopefully by the time you reach the start of the zone), and have someone time you through the 30 meter zone. It's very simple. Do not use a pole; this is to help work on pure top end sprint speed. Make sure you log your times each time you do them to make sure you're improving. Run as fast as you can through the zone (just on the verge of being out of control--but, maintain form). My former coach Dean Starkey was a huge proponent of flying 30's, and he always stressed the fact you need to be right on the edge. Don't do these drills more than once or twice a week. And, I wouldn't do more than 3 in a practice session (1 warm-up doesn't count).

--Cpvault

[jumpbackin]

Great post CPvault,

You're the first person I've run into who has even more of a "all quality" training philosophy than I do. I'm curious why you think flying 30's should be limited to three. I usually do 5 or 6. Is it to reduce the chance of overtraining or simply to make sure each 30 is done at max velocity and none after times start falling off? Is it something else?

I'd also like to say, I need way more than 10m for a build up. Last time I went with about 25m.

[Cpvault]

jumpbackin,

You don't want to do more than 3 flying 30's (one warmup--4 total), because each one is maxed out at 100%--after about 3 you risk injury (assuming you're doing them at an ALMOST uncontrolled speed). In addition, the quality of your flying 30's will start to diminish after 3 or so. We usually did them twice a week. Always have somebody time you--it's the only real way to guage the quality of the sprints.

--Cpvault

[PaulVaulter]

Just a general rule of thumb:

Make sure to rest for at least 1 minute for every 10 metres sprinted.

Thats at leats 3 minutes between each flying 30.

You need to be running at over 95% of your maximum velocity in order to improve your top speed, and to do that you need to make sure all of your energy systems are fully recovered. Quality rules in sprinting.

[Cpvault]

Absolutely agreed, PaulVaulter! We always took a good amount of rest between each one.

[Carolina21]

We used to do a max of 3-4 as well. We would go for near full recovery which would amount to 7-10 minutes rest between. It is very important to get a real good warm up and cool down after you do these, because although a sprint for 30 meters doesn't seem like much if you are doing these correctly (all out) it will really put some stress on your muscles and joints. The rest in between is just as important, force yourself to take a long break don't get cold but get a full recovery the point is working on your max speed, so you need to be near 100% for each one. As a side note, one of my teammates who went to the Level one certification recently said they talked about how Ben Johnson(even though his WR has been discounted due to his failing drug test and all he was still an amazing talent) would do a workout consisting of 8-10 30M's all out with a 1 hour break between each one to ensure 100% recovery. I know most of us don't have 10 hours to do a work out, but I think it goes to show you proper recovery time based on what you are trying to achieve is just as important as the actual running. For the rest of us 7-12 minutes has been shown to get you 97-98% full recovery for sprints.

My PR's

Best without pole:
2.78
Best with pole:
3.00 (could I have planted that.....nope, other wise I would probably have jumped 20')

The ideal thing is to have a speed trap like at Earls then you know it is accurate and there is no human error involved. I am sure if I ran through an electronic system I would not post near as fast of times.

[PaulVaulter]

Iv read a lot of the Charlie Francis training literature and Ive never heard anything like that, the full recovery thing is a good idea but an hour?

I can't see a top coach giving an hour full recovery between reps for 30m. As well as the obvious warming up and cooling down required, the hormonal ups and downs of doing the equivalent of 10 separate training sessions in a day just wouldn't be conducive to good quality work, let alone probably taking a long time, several days, to recover fully after such a draining session.

5-7 minutes is fine but even that may be slightly over the top, considering 30m, 3 seconds of flat out running, is not going to fully deplete your ATP stores.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Paul

[Carolina21]

I can't speak first hand on this but two of my friends who went to the seminar told me about it and I was intrigued by it, one of whom is a doctor and has pretty good knowledge of the nervous system and its relation to speed etc. and he didn't seem to disagree with the idea and went into some long extremely technical medical info about why it worked? I was skeptical at first also but after they explained it to me it made more sense. I think they point was that your system recovers to about 95-97 percent after 5-10 minutes but with Ben Johnson who was trying to run faster than any human ever had before 95-97% was not good enough he needed 100% on each rep and I guess some scientific evidence have pointed to our bodies needing nearly an hour to reach a true 100% recovery. The difference between a 2.40 and 2.41 (don't know how fast he really ran his but it must have been blazing probably in the 2.4 range) may not seem like much to us but at his level could make all the difference. It would without question be way over the top for the average vaulter and probably over the top for all but maybe the 1-2 top guys in the world even in the 100M. I just thought it was very interesting. I doubt they would teach or even mention something like that at an NCAA Level One coaching certification if it were false, but I guess you never know. Anyone else ever heard this, or was present at the certification? Maybe less reps were involved?

Anyways I agree the important thing for a vaulter is to keep the reps low and get a good rest between each 30. Also, I am totally with you and Dean about being on the edge of control when you run these and also when you vault. I know all my PR's have come on approach runs where I felt like at any moment the last few stride before the box I was barely keeping it together long enough to throw my hands up and rip it.