Posted In: Sprints
I’m a 100 (10.87), 200 (22.07), 400 (48.83) runner that just finished my season. Normally, I compete in football but I decided I would want to concentrate more on track. My coach suggested doing cross country but I’m worried that it will affect my speed. I’m not so much worried about the 100, but I really want to focus on the 400. Will it help/hurt/do anything?? any advice would be great
thanks :spin:
You are going to get both answers. I believe XC is not bad for sprinting. The main thing you need to do when running XC if you do so is not go over 35-40 miles a week in your training. This means you’ll be less likely to be highly competitive, but your speed will carry you a long way. Another thing is that your coach should focus 2 days of your weekly training on running 200m,400m, or 600m intervals in season. 20 200’s, 10 400’s, 6 600’s. A lot of people will say don’t do it, but I can guarantee you will start next season at 49 point in the 400m and you will be able to stress yourself with better quality in your early track season quantity workouts. Meaning sub 48 or even 47 is quite possible. It can be done, but you have to train the right way in XC for it to be beneficial. Meaning that every run, race, and training session should be hard and exhausting that is alot to bear over 3 months.
Let me add this, if done properly XC practice will be a lot more harder and stressful than football will ever be.
danimal is right about one thing- most people will say don’t do XC. In fact, Chances are Danimal will be the only one who will say do XC. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong, he just has a different approach then pretty much everyone else . If you want to focus more on track instead of football, then I’d recomend you do track workouts instead of running XC. You can find ideas for that all over the boards.
As to why XC will probably not be beneficial and may hurt is because it develops your slow twitch muscle fibers. Sprinting depends on fast twitch muscle fibers, and XC will force your fast twitch fibers to adapt to a slow twitch type of workload. While your fibers can’t convert or anything like that, they can function in a way thats more like slow twitch (distance running) then fast twitch (sprinting). You can develop the fibers back to a more fast-twitch behavior with training, but you’d be putting yourself through more work then you have to.
I might suggest doing extensive tempo interspersed with acceleration and maybe a little maxV work instead of XC.
If you want to focus on the 400, maybe try making those extensive tempo runs anywhere from 200-400 meters, with 300m being your standard distance (and then you can play around with distances and exertion %’s from there).
The benefits of doing extensive tempo over XC are that you’ll be working the energy systems that are more actively used in your events, you’ll be able to maintain good running form (XC tends to degrade form in a hurry), it’ll be easier for you mentally because its something you’re more accustomed to.
However, all that being said, if its a choice between XC and nothing, then go with XC. Anything is better then just sitting around.
i would suggest doing track workouts instead of XC as well. that said, i dont think long distance running will necesarily be a detriment to your speed. this is especially true for a 400m runner, where fitness is very important.
thanks a lot
I’ve seen plenty of great workouts for the 400…my sprinting coach is going to be the new CC coach and in practice he says he trains all the sprinters as if they were 400m runners (track practice that is) and I’m sure he would be able to modify some workouts…I wonder though, where should I draw the line when it comes to how much distance and sprinting I would combine? How should I balance them out well enough?
Lets not oversimplify this, because I love this topic. The benefits of XC will come from the increased mitochondrial density, metabolic and contractile enzymes, and a greater csa of capillary bed within the muscle of type IIa fibers (fast oxidative-glycotic). Another benefit is you will strengthen auxillary muscles in your feet, ankle, legs, and thigh along with there corresponding bones and joints. This tends to lend itself decreasing the chance of injury when your workouts in track become fast. Any extra unwanted weight that you have will be shed during this period as well.
The difference between sprinting and running (oversimplified version here, Mike can and has given a more detailed version somewhere in this forum and he can certainly correct anything I have wrong) is neuro-muscular recruitment of fibers, arm swing, foot strike and contact time. That is basically everything, except the form, and by this I mean knee drive and heel lift. Any race up to a marathon requires a high knee drive and high heel lift throughout the race in order to be ran fast. So what does this mean? Arm swing, foot strike and contact time are functions of the speed at which you are running. The sprinters arms are farther in front and back and don’t cross the body while a distance runner has less forward and backward movement and most cross their bodies. The distance runners heel will strike the ground throughout most of the race, while a sprinters heel will almost never strike the ground. If correctly done both plant somewhere on the ball of their feet. With their heel striking the ground the distance runner has a greater contact time than a sprinter. These create the mechanical differences between sprinters and distance runners. With a greater contact time, the less force and elastic energy you can use, which gives you a shorter stride, which means your arms are not swinging as far out in front or back as a sprinter does. Which leads me to one conclusion, all of this is based on neuro-muscular fiber recruitment. This a learned skill which has to do with increasing myosin ATPase within your muscle fibers and motor-neuron enlargement.
Properly done, XC training will increase the oxidative potential of fast twitch fibers while more importantly increase the myosin ATPase activity within slow twitch fibers (increasing contractile speed). This is why I believe so strongly in XC for sprinters, especially 400 and 800 meter types. I don’t believe in specifically training for energy systems involved in a competition. I train my kids in terms of strength and fiber recruitment as well.
As for distance running hurting form, extensive tempo and continuous tempo are aerobic in nature and they allow you to concentrate heavily on form. I personally find a good distance run improves my sprinting form as does a good high intensity strength-endurance workout.
this thread here:
https://elitetrack.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=1317
is this whole topic covered previously. Read over this entire thread to get a good idea of why XC can be bad for sprinters.
And just because I have a feeling its gonna come up- Running XC isn’t a bad idea for all 400m runners. However, from your times, its apparent that you are at a level where XC won’t provide any benefit to you. If you were running say…around 52s as your PR, then it might help out, but since you’re running 48’s (I’m too lazy to check that number) you’re beyond the point where XC will give you a better return then doing track training in the fall.
Quinn, you just have to make up your own mind. I coach sprints (I include the 800 in that category) in track and also coach XC. I am also a big promoter of my own screwball ideas. I have seen much success with relation to XC and 400m. Our Class A boys all-state XC runner ran a 50s 400m and a 23.7s 200m, he was a state medalist at 800m. He was no where near that fast last year. Our top 2 girls XC runners were our lead-off and anchor on our 4×4 team. One girl ran a 58.4 split and the other ran a 62s both top times on our teams. The top 2 returning girls on my XC team ran 63s and 65s respectively in 400m in only 2 races as 7th graders. The main thing is these kids worked their butts off, The top boy on my Middle School XC team ran a 54s 400m he finished 35th at the State XC meet, he had to scratch the 8th grade state meet 400m because of Pole Vault which he won by clearing 13-0 feet.
That said as KW would say “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”
