Today I'm going to speak why "speed endurance" is misunderstood and how we can implement it effectively. This training method can be very powerful if used correctly but in most cases, it damages the speed of athletes.
Specifically, I'm going to talk about:
What is speed endurance?
Common mistake
How to implement
Speed Endurance
Endurance is best trained when your speed is well trained
"Speed Endurance" can be defined as the ability to maintain speed after an athlete has hit their maximum top speed.
An olympic sprinter running sub 10, will typically hit top speed around 70m. A college sprinter running sub 10, will typically hit top speed around 60m. Everyone else will hit top speed around 40-50m.
After the point a sprinter reaches their maximum speed, everyone begins to decelerate. This is where speed endurance training can help an athlete reduce the amount of speed they lose.
For example, let's say an athlete with poor "Speed Endurance" loses 5% of their speed after they reach top speed.
Now let's say they correctly implemented "Speed Endurance" training and instead they only lose 3% of their speed. That would be an example of successfully improveing SE.
COMMON MISTAKE
I've analyzed lot of programs in last few months and here is one of the most common mistakes....
Doing speed endurance at the beginning of the week. If you exhausted your body on monday, you will unlikely hit top speed later in the week.
This isn't a theory or something we read in a books or research.
Speed Endurance at the beginning of the week will decrease your ability to run faster later week by 5-10% at minimum for most individuals.
The solution is simple, focus on quality "Pure Speed" training at the beginning of the week, and save the complex exhausting stuff for later in the week.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT
Speed is very simple for the most part if you are not running competitively at the college level yet.
However, Speed Endurance is a bit more complicated than other types of speed work.
A simple way to improve your endurance in 100m, 200m, or 400m is by using the rule of 20's. This means you can add 20m to your event to work on the ability to maintain speed.
For example in the 100m, you can do 120m. In the 200m you can do 220m. In the 400m you can do 420m.
There'S obviously a whole lot more to training " Speed Endurance" but these are some foundational concepts to getting started