How much and how how often should athletes sprint?

A general rule of thumb for sprint or speed training is about 300 meters (or yards) of good quality speed training per session with 72 hours recovery… This means 10×30 yards all out, or 5×60 all out intensity, or any combo adding up to roughly 300 meters or yards.

The 72 hours doesn’t mean train and then do nothing for 72 hours it just means take about 72 hours between ALL OUT intensity speed sessions.

Funny, the recommended time between Max Effort strength training is also 72 hours…

Of course there are a lot of variables such as surface, resisted or un-resisted (UR is more demanding because speeds are greater), footwear, timed or un-timed, weather, etc… all these have an effect on intensity and how much volume one can handle before breaking down.

The volumes or workloads that are suggested come from coaches that have years and years of training experience with the fastest athletes on the planet.

The same holds true with lifting volumes…. The volumes that we adhere to come from the top coaches training the best weightlifters on earth for decades.

So does playing basketball or soccer or football or baseball take athletes past the recommended volume? No, because although they are “sprinting” its not an all out effort all the time like running a race or a 40 yard dash with scouts timing them.

Now, with that being said you can how all the soft tissue injuries come about as athletes practice then coaches will have them do “conditioning” or work on speed after usually with insane volumes of work.

All of us make mistakes but if you don’t learn you’re a stupid athlete or coach.

Sometimes we have to do some dumb shit to be reminded of why we have guardrails in place for our training…

For example just this weekend I was training myself on the track it was a nice warm day, I was wearing spikes, and coming out of the blocks, timing myself with auto timers. Basically the only thing more intense would be racing people…

Well I ran 3×30 with full recovery 3:00 (1:00 per 10 meters), then 1x 70m, 1x80m, 1x90m. I was happy with my times and I felt great. I was at 330 m of intense work. Normally, I’m pretty good about cutting it and walking away to live to train another day as we say but the jackass that I am wanted to video a few of my starts for this coaching group I’m in so I ran another 30, then another 30, then a 3rd 30.

I could feel neural fatigue setting in and it was on the last 30 I got tweaky in my hamstring and luckily didn’t tear or pull it bad and I woke up Sunday ok but I was probably 1 sprint or a few steps away from setting myself back a month.

Moral of the story is that training should be good quality and when volumes are hit walk away both with strength and speed training. If you are not adhering to any specific volumes you will overtrain and eventually injure yourself or your athletes.

Always QUALITY of QUANTITY with the intense work.