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Athlete: Christian Parr

Prescribed: 6 x “flying” 40m at 80%/80%/85%/85%/90%/90%, with at least 4 minutes of rest.

Result: 6 x 40m at the prescribed effort

Percentages are based off Max speed. When I’m asking Christian to run at 80%, that’s 80% of his maximum-velocity. This is completely based off effort. Right now Christian’s training is very simple. He’s hitting two workouts a week, one that is similar to this, with a more speed development focus, and the other has been threshold based. The reason for this workout in particular, is that we want Christian to be working on his pure speed. This is his third workout that is “similar”. We’ve been either progressing through speed, quantity of reps, or the distance of the rep. The reality is, it is very difficult for humans to run at max-velocity. Once Christian has done 4-6 weeks of varying speed development stuff, a common workout for him may be 2-3 x (30m) at maximum capacity. Christian will take large amounts of walking rest between each rep and set.

Some people may gawk at the idea that 80% of full speed being called speed development, and perhaps they are right – but we tend to take a conservative approach as we build speed. It’s not that we are running at 80% in an effort to develop speed, it’s just part of the warm-up process as it is anything else.

Right now we aren’t focused on 800m pace, or even any type of speed endrurance. For Christian to accomplish his goals, we are needing to improve both his overall endurance and his pure leg speed. This workout is part of our process in developing one of those extremities.

Drew