I don't know, because I am not a sprint coach. Acceleration takes place at the front of the sprint, and then stride mechanics take over. We'll ask.
Are sprints even worth doing in a athletic setting. I feel acceleration is like the vertical jump (not trainable), but what about top speed. Can one take his top speed from 15 mph to 21 mph by doing 200 meter sprints. Obviously training the squat and keeping a healthy body fat ratio will help.
I don't know, because I am not a sprint coach. Acceleration takes place at the front of the sprint, and then stride mechanics take over. We'll ask.
Griffin - to what end? Just like with specificity under the bar, there are gains to be had by specificity while running, but there's a raft of limitations that could/would prevent your hypothetical runner from achieving that.
Using your example, what's the likelihood of your runner going from a 30-second 200m pace (15mph) to a 20-second 200m (21mph), even for just an instantaneous measurement? Highly unlikely, unless they are already world class. BTW, your hypothetical is a 33% improvement, which is absolutely massive for those distances/times. That 20-second pace is just shy of Usain Bolt's pace for his world record 19.19 second 200m set back in 2009. Again, it's highly unlikely that sprinting 200m repeatedly would lead to that pace, even if for just a brief moment.
As Rip mentioned, mechanics is a huge limiting factor after that explosive acceleration off the line. Before that, specificity, volume, stress management, recovery, etc., in training are some of the others. Professor Jack Daniels (really) digs into the meat of these issues in his book Daniels' Running Formula, a book to running like Starting Strength is to strength training.
So to answer your question without the numbers you offered, yes, you can get faster by doing 200m sprint repeats. To a point. That's your NLP. After that, Intermediate and Advanced programming will require that you adjust variables to see an improvement in the runner's top-end speed. During those phases, running will take more of a priority in that athlete's life.
caveat: like Rip, I am not a sprint coach, nor did I ever play one on TV. But in my pre-SS life, I ran like I got paid for it, even though I was typically a middle-of-the-pack runner for 5K-70K distances and front-of-the-pack for the shorter distances, even into my 40's. But I haven't done much more than a very rare shuffle since finding Starting Strength, much preferring a rower.
Griffin, I suppose the usefulness of the sprint and sprint length would be dependant upon the sport...Long, long ago I was a D1 college athlete, played football. Off season training would include a lot of horse shit , sprints, and sprint mechanics. As coach mention you cant take a 10" vertical and turn it into a 30" vert, but you can slightly improve. Acceleration from my experience can be trained, possibly slightly more than the vertical through mechanics, head location, eye focus, step count, targeted acceleration zone, but some people just have the gift. Comparison... I was 6'2" 253 with a 36" vert, kid from Lodi Texas was 5'9" each thigh weighed 100lbs and maybe upper body weighed 20lbs, verticle somewhere in the 35-38 range...you get the picture. We ran 100 yards sprints.... he was like an electric car... whistle blows, this fucker is 10 yards down the field before I get my first step.... something happens at about the 40 yard line and I could close distance...I was never gonna beat the kid but the closer my form was in check the closer he became....I would love to hear some science behind this as well.
I've seen folks improve their 3 mile time extremely, 2 mile and 1 mile time drastically, 800, 400 decently, 200 somewhat and their 40 yard dash time a tiny bit (if that). What I'm getting at is the shorter the distance, the less trainable the improvement in speed.
i've seen a guy take his 3 mile time from 35 minutes down to 17 minutes in 15 months of training time. A 200m dash, maybe a few seconds? And a 40 yard dash would be similar to an SVJ- You'll see a bit of benefit from tripling your force production, improving your clean, and getting the svj technique down, but not much. In a similar way, for improving your maximum speed, generating more force, improving technique, and Running will improve it a bit, but you won't be beating the guy with Usain bolt genetics any time soon. Those types of guys will beat you without training in a sprint, unfortunately.
Dr. Ken Clark has done some pretty cool research on differences in elite sprinters versus team sports athletes. He boiled the main contributing factors to top end speed to three main contributing factors (of which we can potentially have some effect on through training): thigh angular velocity, stiffness (peak vertical force/peak vertical displacement) during impact, and vertical force application. Faster top speeds require shorter ground contact times, greater vertical forces, and also greater vertical stiffness (more vertical force with less vertical displacement during ground contact). To achieve this, the athlete requires an aggressive (more powerful) strike down into the ground and a stiff contact into the ground...basically more force production that goes towards bouncing along the ground versus being dissipated into the body.
Achieving this is tricky and there is certainly a genetic ceiling on top speed. The factors that come into play are mechanics and force production. Effective mechanics allow for high rotational velocities of the limbs prior to touchdown, and which can lead to an efficient transmission of force into the ground. Both aspects of top end speed need to be trained, so you would have to look at improving mechanics at top speed and then the ability to create more force with each efficient step at top speed.
What I see this boil down to is that athletes need to work on getting stronger, which gives them the ammo to train their top end speed mechanics at a higher level, and as a result develop a sprint model that is more effective at the aforementioned qualities when maximally sprinting. Despite this, there are always going to be morphological and neuromuscular genetic qualities that come into play here as well. Elite, springy sprinters benefit from top end sprint mechanics to a higher degree than lesser athletes. They have the resources to produce more force in a shorter period of time at a greater level than their donkey counterparts. As such, the payoff from the top end sprint mechanics goes further with them. They still need to get stronger, but they need to practice sprinting to get faster. Bad athletes benefit more from just getting stronger. They can work to maximize their mechanics as well, but they are limited in their ability to produce/transmit force quickly and they are hamstrung by this genetic limitation at top speed. Honestly, I think these athletes benefit more from getting really strong and focusing more on acceleration than top end speed. That's another issue though.
Long and short of it: training for increased maximal speed involves getting stronger and finding ways to use this strength with each step in a more efficient manner at high velocities. If you are already fast, lift heavy, do some explosive work (Olympic lifts), and practice getting faster. If you are slow, lift heavier, make sure you aren't sprinting at top speed looking like a vulture, and hang your hat on going from zero to twenty meters as fast as possible.
I feel acceleration is like power not very trainable, but top speed is like strength a more trainable variable. That's why I was wondering if it was worth training. If both variables are not really able to be improved you might as well just strength train. I'm too lazy to conduct that experiment myself which is why I ask. Mind you I could be dead wrong.
Acceleration is trainable. The launch, the steps taken/methods/mechanics at launch and the forward lean are all contributors to acceleration. Without those elements, an athlete will have poor acceleration from the start. You can have great squat numbers, but if you launch with heavy feet and cannot maintain body lean and the mechanics involved with the lean during the sprint until finishing off, your times will be considerably slower. FYI....not a running coach, just a guy that hung out in the back pocket of a track coach/former olympic runner.