Greek Sprint Training (Ivan Abadjiev)

[Velocity7]

Good day, gentlemen.

I don't know if asking sprinting questions here are allowed or if anyone here will have any info anyway, so please be gentle, but here goes...

I have questions, and would like to have more information regarding the Greek's methods of sprint training (based on Ivan Abadjiev's methods with weightlifting, where they trained everyday, twice a day. Maxes only. Only competition exercises etc), specifically Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou's workouts that made them world class.

The following is what I know (obtained through vigorous web searching and Charlie Francis' "The Classics"):
They trained 3on, 1off, 2on, 2off, 2on, 4 off. 2x3x100/200 (depending on your event). One set in the moring and one set in the afternoon, usually more than 6 hours apart. 30min rest between each run and aparently a very quick qarm up because "If the rabbit had to warm up before escaping the predator, he'd be dinner". No weights or plyos or jumps. Although Christos Tsekos said he had a "special method of strength and stretching exercise". Also, some say they were allowed to have one upper body strength exercise like the Press or Bench or chins etc. Someone else also said that it's a 3 week cycle, not 2, and starts of with only one set of 3x100/200 everyday from Mon-Fri, with one hour between each rep, after this week, they move to the 3on, 1off, 2on, 2off, 2on, 4off etc.

I would like to know more in depth what they did and what else (if there was anything else) and what type of (if any) periodised scheme they followed etc.

Any and all help will be MUCH appreciated.

Kind Regards

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

I think this board might not be your best resource for researching how to train elite track athletes.

My experience with speed training is largely limited to high school and collegiate athletes from a variety of sports - most of which are non-track and field. Mostly football, baseball, etc.

The practical reality of working with this population is that the strength coach in private practice (most of us here) have almost no control over the training of our athletes outside of the weight room and sometimes even then we have to work around the interference of sport coaches who do their best to undermine the athletes progress under the bar.

The typical high school kid who comes into my gym presents with a 135 lb squat about 8 inches high with the bar on his neck and his weight on his toes. Until this is fixed I'm not terribly concerned about the specifics of his sprint training. From a training standpoint, getting his squat to 315x5 at parallel is the best thing I can do for him. Aside from that, some technical work (i.e. practice) on basic sprinting mechanics will improve his time marginally and after that lets hope his parents passed on some decent DNA.

The typical college kid comes in with a 455 lb squat, also with the bar on his neck, and also squatting about 8 inches high. The biggest challenge here is being there for emotional support when I reset his squat to 315.

So I have had some experience with improving a kids 40yd dash time, but the improvements tend to be made under the bar, with actual strengthening of an athletes posterior chain, and some technical refinement of his sprint mechanics. This can actually help quite a bit at this level because most of these kids havent been taught basic sprint mechanics (i.e. they stand up straight when the gun goes off, etc) just like they haven't been taught basic squat mechanics.

At the higher levels of the sport then programming of the sprint workouts becomes more important, but this isn't who 99% of deal with.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Strength is trainable, in the sense that long-term systematic progress can be obtained, while sprint mechanics is not trainable -- it is merely teachable, and once it's 95% that's about where it stays. So, it's pretty easy to decide where time should be spent. It has been my experience that for untrained kids the deadlift provides the most immediate and measurable improvement on sprint times, sometimes to a surprising extent.

[Velocity7]

Thank you both for your time and trouble replying and sharing your knowledge. Really appreciate it. Couldn't ask for better.