With athletes in team sports, there’s a misconception that in order to work hard, you shouldn’t be resting. I remember as a young athlete myself, and even as a young coach, thinking that rest times were just wasted time. The truth is, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The working hard part is important, very important in fact. But, when training for speed, or strength, or overall athleticism, rest times are incredibly important. Otherwise it’s conditioning, not speed training. And there is a big difference between the two.
Lactic Acid Build-up
Lactic acid is a byproduct of our muscles producing energy at a high rate and without proper rest it will build up in the muscles.
Weak Form
Our ability to maintain proper form, a crucial aspect to running fast, is diminished
Diminished Muscle Use
Our fast twitch muscle fibers fatigue faster than our slow twitch fibers, so when rest times aren’t long enough, we aren’t using the biggest and strongest muscles to produce speed
Slower Results
The intensities of each sprint goes down meaning the times get slower
Long rest times doesn’t mean you should just sit around for 5-10 minutes inbetween bouts of exercise. It just means we’re giving our body enough time to recover before the next bout. This is also determined by the length of the sprint we are doing. In speed training there is a general rule that for every 10 yards of a sprint, a 60 second recovery time is appropriate.
10 yard sprint= 1 minute recovery
20 yard sprint
=
2 minute recovery
It’s also important to not that no matter how much rest is taken between sprints, muscles will fatigue and speeds will be slower. So there is a top end of how much volume you should accumulate. There is really no hard and fast rule to this; the quality of each sprint is important to factor in. If speed starts dropping off by 5-10% it’s time to call it. Otherwise bad habits and poor running form can be reinforced.
Generally speaking a total volume of 150-300 yards is a good range for speed training. This may not sound like much volume, but it has been shown to be enough when performed at ~90+% intensity to improve speed. This could look like
10-12 x 15 yard sprints
8-10 x 20 yard sprints
6-8 x 30 yard sprints
4-5 x 40 yard sprints
Or any combination of those sprints to accumulate 150-250 yards of total volume
The take home to this is rest is important, shoot for 1 minute per 10 yards of sprinting. It’s just as important to keep the intensities of these sprints at a very high level while maintaining running form. Keep the total volume of sprinting to 150-300 yards in order to keep the quality and intensity high. If form and speed begin to deteriorate, speed training is done. Rest up and come back for another session on another day!
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