[quote author="Jay Turner" date="1241251191"][quote author="Mike Young" date="1240913932"]When?
Based on some casual observations of various training systems I think it’s fair to say that for many athletes it’s probably best to start off on one side of the spectrum and move towards the center as there career progresses.
Based on your when, here is my question…
How do you determine WHEN to move to something else? And I guess this can be asked for any sprint event, from 100 and beyond regarding training. How do you know when they’ve had enough of one thing, and have them move on to something else? What should you look for in training/races?[/quote]It seems that in most of the cases I’ve observed that it becomes fairly obvious because performances actually start to DROP off. They don’t even maintain. There are TONS of great collegiate 400m runners who never progressed beyond there junior year. I’m guessing that it’s basically a case of being away from one end of the training spectrum for too long so those qualities can no longer be maintained through indirect training stimuli.[/quote]
So basically you’re saying you’ll see your times get WORSE over time? Is that to say that the answer to my question would be to train one side of the spectrum until you see these drop offs in time, or should you try to be ahead of the curve?
Also, is what you’re saying pretty good evidence as to why a “both ends…” approach is usually the better way to go in sprint training, simply because it allows you to keep all aspects of training involved from micro to micro, meso to meso, and year to year?