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What are your thoughts on how much running should you do? Some coaches put a lot of value into running and some not as much. What works best for you?

My coach at the club doesn't make us run very much at all, we'll do our warm up laps and then we'll either do some stretching and get right into the pit, or we'll do a few accelerations through a speed ladder or mini hurdles. My coach at school....well, we have "event days" and "running days", I think this is totally stupid... but the jumpers run with the sprinters, but we don't do anything that's beneficial to vaulting, I don't know why we can't do our own separate workouts, I'll have to see what I can do. I mean at school they'll have us running like 500's and 400's, and they only give us really wussy workouts, I don't know, see, I love all kinds of running, but I'd rather be able to focus on the vault. I don't know, I run all the time, distance and sprints, but for vaulting, I like doing a LLLOOOOTT of the shorter ones for some reason....

yeah, running to me is extremely important, but if the only sprints you're doing off the runway are 400 to 500...thats just blah in my opinion....i mean it's not as bad as running like 1600's or anything (which would build slow twitch muscles and be a waste) but i mean, to me i like working out with my normal vaulting practice, then after go do a running set of some sort...typically it's something like 10 30-40 meter sprints, accelerations, and then sometimes, some like 50 meter full sprints and such....it's fun stuff

My program is broken into 5 periodization phases.
Base: 2500 meters total. 2 x/week from Oct to Nov.
Strength Endurance: 2000 meters total. 2 x/week from Dec. to Jan
Speed endurance: 1500 meters total. 2 x/week from Feb to Mid March
Dynamics: 1000 meters total. 2 x/week from Mid March to April
Speed: 500 meters total. 2 x/week from May to the end of the competitive season.

Add to this:
3x/week in the weightroom
2x/week Vault training with gymanstics
5x/week

any questions?

Rick

what type distances are they running to = 2500 etc... in each period?

Running is really my weakest link, so I try to do something with my legs pretty much every day. I either run, do a Nordic Track, or a stationary bike. Perhaps because of my age (45), I'm really prone to gaining weight too, so for me running (or some kind of cross-training substitute) is really essential.

Oh lets see:
@ 60-70%
2500 could be
2@ 500
2@ 400
1@300
2@ 200

or
@ 60-70%
2500 could be
4@ 400
3@ 300

or
@ 60-70%
2 x 5 @ 250 w/ 5 min rest between sets

Lots of other possibilities too.

Rick

thanks for the reply