Okay so I’ve been playing rugby for the past few seasons and now that I am taking a break from the sport I have decided to focus fully on training to run a faster 100m. My goal is sub 11 seconds which would allow me to compete in track meets. I have bought Charlie Francis’s book, Structure for Speed Training and created a 3 month training regime based on that. However, I’m not sure if my training is the most conducive to running a faster 100m.
Based on my statistics below, could you advise me on what I should be focusing on training-wise to run a faster 100m?
Stats:
Age: 22
40 yard dash: 4.85sec (Electronically timed)
100m: 11.6sec (Electronically timed)
150m: 18sec (Hand timed)
Vertical Jump: 34″
Bench: 120kg (265lbs)
Front Squat: 125kg (275lbs)
Back Squat: 160kg (350lbs)
Deadlift: 160kg (350lbs)
Weight: 86kg (190lbs)
Height: 6ft (182cm)
My weekly training program looks like this…
***Mon & Fri***
–Speed (1040m)–
Dynamic Warm-Up
Flying Sprints: 4x30m
Power Sprints: 5x30m
Longer Sprints: 5x50m
–Plyos (216 foot contacts)–
Bounding 3×12
Hurdles Jumps 3×8
Box Jumps 3×6 (up to 42″)
Depth Jumps 3×4 (12″)
Drop Jumps 3×6 (36″)
–Weights (strength)–
Front Squat 5×5
Bench 5×5
Pullups 3×8
–Abs (360 reps)–
Captains Chair: 3×20
Bicycles: 3×20
***Wednesday***
–Speed Endurance (600m)–
3x200m (5min rest)
–Weights (strength)–
Deadlift 5×5
Shoulder Press 5×5
Dips 3×8
–Abs (360 reps)–
Captains Chair: 3×20
Bicycles: 3×20
***Sat***
–Tempos (2200m)–
Charlie Francis Big Circuit
100-100-100 (16sec 100)
100-200-100-100 (32sec 200)
100-100-200-200
100-200-100-100
100-100-100
(50m walk/rep, 100walk/set)
Road to Sub 11
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Participant
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Participant
I used Charlie Francis’s system in college. We would do tempo tuesday, thursday, and saturday as an active recovery from the day before, cycling between big circuit, 10×200, and 20×100. It looks ok, but running fast has a lot to do mechanics as well as just doing the workouts. Do you have someone to watch/film you?
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Participant
What are ‘power’ sprints?
To be perfectly honest, this isn’t anything close to resembling the CFTS. You need to work into those kinds of volumes. I think the Wednesday workout is far too much and probably too soon. I think you are on the right track, but need some serious adjustments. My general advice is below:
1. Try to keep as much of your volume as you can on softer surfaces. Grass, turf fields, etc. This will make it so that it is easier for you to build and maintain volume over time. As a newbie, one of the biggest pitfalls I see athletes and coaches get into is excess volumes relative to the conditioning of the athlete and the surfaces available. While I think the ‘CNS’ is rarely overreached from these volumes, I think the lower legs take a beating that make it hard to recover from. Be careful of this. Don’t do your tempo on the track.
2. Your plyometric volumes are far too high at this point. I would keep the contacts closer to 50-70 than 200, which I think is far too much for the types of plyos you have in the program on top of all the sprinting. One progress I have seen work is skips & bounds –> STJ, 5 bound –> depth jumps.
3. Re: lifting: Ditch the front squat. It is extremely quad dominant and judging from your poor deadlift numbers, you need more posterior chain work. I would focus on back squats and/or some sort of olympic lift variation (clean pulls are great for a newbie IMO) as your primary lower body lift and do more accessory work for your posterior chain (reverse hypers, GHR, hypers, 45 degree hypers, RDL, etc.).
4. I would personally lower the speed slightly of the extensive tempo in the context of using the CFTS. There is a lot of debate on the appropriate speeds and whatnot, but it is a fact that he had his athletes run those reps much, much slower than you see most people do. Guys were doing 18-20 second 100s on grass. If you want to follow what he did closely, I would aim for that. I am not sure, however, if that is ideal.
5. Your Wednesday session is way too voluminous and there is no way you are ready to have the kind of quality in your program yet. I would either drop the speed a bit and maintain the volume in something like 5×120, walk around rest and then slowly extend the rep distance, rest time, and increase the speed, or possibly even do something like 3x5x60m with walkback with 90 seconds between reps and 5-10 minutes between sets. Again, do this on a soft surface if possible.
6. Everything Roswell said is great and very important. If you are inefficient mechanically, you will see yourself up to run slower and possibly get injured. Make sure that your sprints are always as mechanically sound as you can reasonably go. If that means you have to sprint at 90% effort instead of 95% or 100%, then so be it. In the medium and long-term, there will be better carry over from training to competition than if you try to run a PR every rep of practice.
7. Take more rest (both during and after workouts) than you think you need. Take more days off than you think you need. Every 4th week, be good at deloading. Lots of stretching, watching your body, making sure you are recovering well. The program you posted is quite high in volumes for a person new to sprinting and while I am an advocate of high (even very high) training volumes, I think a lot of people run into trouble because they do not put enough effort into recovery and deloading when it is appropriate.
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Member
Everything Davan said is great advice. I personally wouldn’t do the same thing week in week out because your body would adapt and I’d assume you’d get bored. I just think you need more variety in your training.
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