Tempo Running - All you need to know
Tempo Running is not for just sprinters.
Check below to find out how you’re team and athletes can benefit.
Tempo runs became popularised by legendary track coach Charlie Francis, trainer to Olympic medalists Ben Johnson, Angella Issajenko, Mark McKoy and Desai Williams. Despite his troubled history within the sport, there is no denying his contributions to the training world. Francis’s training principles and concepts are still highly regarded and widely used by top coaches and trainers internationally.
Regardless if you’re a volunteer underage coach or a world renowned sprint coach, we all know recovery days are vital. Sprinting 7 days is most certainly off the cards. Francis found that for his athletes to improve they needed to be working at 95% of their best and that they would perform below this mark if not fully recovered. Through his own trial and error, Francis found that athletes needed 48-72 hours recovery after a High Intensity sprint session.
So, remembering what was said, that would suggest that we can get 3 sprint sessions in a week. Now, for a pro athlete, training just 3 times a week seems a bit wasteful right? What could these athletes do between sessions that wouldn’t interrupt their recovery?
Tempo Runs!
Tempo running is a form of intermittent training, which performs efforts of usually 100 meters at roughly 70% of their maximum. The work:rest ratio is generally 1:2 (20 second run with 40 second recovery), but this can change depending on the phase of training you’re at. The significant rest period allows for the accumulation of high quality runs. The goal of tempos is to develop the aerobic system without the build-up of lactate.
“Lactic training is too slow for Speed Training and to fast to recover from in 24 hours”
Francis found many benefits:
Opportunity for athletes to work on technical aspects of running.
Develops aerobic capacity – allows for higher volume of training.
Increased robustness – accumulating a high volume of high speed running decreases injury risk and also promotes soft tissue recovery.
Avoids negative impacts of slow sustained running - such as negative fiber type adaptations.
Improves athletes work capacity rather then endurance.
These workouts are not taxing on the central nervous system (CNS), unlike sprinting, and would be labelled as a low intensity session. With 2-3 High Intensity training days used for sprinting, performing a low intensity workout like Tempos between sprint days still allows for complete recovery as it doesn’t fatigue the CNS greatly. This is what’s known as a High-Low training model which needs its own write up to explain further but can be summarised in the table below.
Implementation
Implementation can vary depending on the needs of the sport, level of athlete, time of year, and even the surface you perform the workouts. I’ll do my best to cover all aspects and give you the tools you need to implement Tempo Runs to your own athletes. It’s important that all your athletes understand the reasons behind certain training modalities, it gives them justification to perform them well. Particularly because Extensive Tempo efforts can sometimes appear easy. Simplify and list the benefits to your athletes, tell them why we need to stay away from lactate build-up, educate them and tell them to think more in terms of work capacity rather than endurance - That the key to aerobic development is to focus on accumulating volume rather then running faster.
When?
Tempo runs are appropriate throughout the season, the only variable that changes is the volume. During the Pre-Season, athletes should build an appropriate work capacity for their sport. This is the opportunity where players can achieve huge fitness gains. Further down the page you’ll find a table which suggests roughly the volume of runs that should be completed for some sports. If a player requires 12,000m of volume per week, Pre-Season should be used to slowly reach this target and to train at this weekly volume for a number of weeks before the season starts. Once your weekly volume target is reached add new stimuli - shorten recovery, add tasks to be completed at the beginning of each rep, this is talked more about later.
During the competitive part of season volume needs to be managed. Volume should be lowered to a point where it maintains fitness levels throughout the season and I suggest using off-weeks as a chance to increase volume to ensure work capacity is preserved.
For amateur athletes Tempos have a huge advantage. Due to the nature of tempos, they can work well alongside speed work in the same session. Most amateur squads train 3 times a week, most will sacrifice speed and agility training for more fitness work. A lot of teams will adopt MAS (Max Aerobic Speed) runs into their training, which do in fact improve fitness levels in a shorter period of time then tempos, but they can’t coexist with speed training during the same session as the heavy fatigue factor from MAS runs causes an interference effect. MAS runs are performed at a slower pace but are tiring due to short recovery. I will write up a piece comparing Tempos and MAS, but for now lets focus on Tempo runs. So for me the added benefit of Tempos is that I can perform 10-15 minutes of high quality speed work before and will get a lot of the benefit.
What Speed?
Tempos are usually performed at 70% of max velocity. Measuring max velocity isn’t always accessible or important to everyone and often requires timing gates to measure. Fortunately a very simple assessment can figure this out – 100m time. If an athlete can run a 100m in 11 seconds, they would do 100m tempos in 14.5 – 17 seconds (65-75% of their best). Make sure that the 100m time being used was performed on the same surface you plan on performing the tempos. Taking your best 100m time from a track and then running tempos on the grass wouldn’t be an accurate measure.
More experienced athletes may begin right away at 70% effort. If Tempos are new, hit 60%-65% to be safe until feeling comfortable to get to 70%. Emphasise to athletes that running quicker for extensive tempos will be of no use and it will impact their sprint adaptation due to lack of recovery. Keep all runs consistent all the way through the sets. If an athlete starts to slow during the set, the starting velocity is set too high or the athlete is not in good enough shape for the volume of work.
How Much?
Most tempos are 100m efforts, but can be anything from as short as 40m to an upper limit of 200-300m. The length of efforts and the volume will depend on the sport. If in your sport athletes cover large distances during the game, the volume of tempo runs will need to represent this. The same can be said if the sport covers small distances. Sports like Soccer, Rugby and Gaelic games perform a large volume of low intensity running. A high level athlete in some of these sports would cover 10,000m on average during a game. Running distances of 4,000m to 5,000m per tempo session and totaling up to 15,000m per week would be appropriate in the off-season for these athletes. Sprinters tempo volume is based on their events length. 100m athletes during competition phase, 2,000m for three sessions a week seems good. While 400m athletes will cover 3,000 to 4,000 per session, performing 3 times per week.
For field sports, like the ones mentioned above, players should build slowly to a target total volume. Once competitions begin volume needs to be lowered, while maintaining the intensity. I would suggest during a game week, performing around half the volume of the max total volume to maintain aerobic qualities. E.g. 3 Sets of 8 reps reduced down to 3 sets of 4 reps.
Team Sports
Keep it simple – I would stick with 3 sets and build the number of reps as you progress. Once you’ve reached the maximum number of runs or the total distance you need to run in a session (e.g. 3 Sets of 10 Reps or 3000m run), adding additional stimulus is easy. You can shorten the recovery (eg. 50 seconds down to 40), performing a task at the start of each rep like a shuttle. Both will result in some build-up of lactate which is important to come exposed to in the few weeks before competition. But I wouldn’t go crazy, small sided games is more than enough to build a tolerance to lactate and shouldn’t be the priority of tempo’s.
The trouble with team sports is that there are athletes with varied abilities. If you pick to run 100m tempos this could see times as quick as 15 seconds and up 22-23 seconds for others resulting in varied recoveries. Instead of running 100m, run for a set time, like 20 seconds intervals. All athletes start and finish each rep at the same time both running varied distances.
Gather all your players 100m times and simply set up a spreadsheet on Excel. Input all the information, carry out some basic math and you’ve suddenly got the whole squads tempo running distances for varied intensities, 60-70%, for different time intervals, 20-30 seconds, and of course you still have the time they should run set distances too, like 100m – 300m.
Example:
· 100m in 14.3 seconds
· 100/14.3 = 6.99 m/s (meters per second)
· 6.99m/s x 0.7 (70%) = 4.90m/s
· 4.90m/s x 20 seconds = 98m meters
The above table was taken from a sample of players from an amateur Ladies Gaelic football team.
Above is the pitch set-up for a linear Tempo Session.
As most team sports don’t rely solely on straight line or linear running, tempo runs provide a good opportunity to introduce multi-directional movements at the start of the season. This can improve work capacity for movements that are more relevant to the sport which could definitely help prevent injuries as athletes get more exposure to multi-directional movements. Each rep is still performed at 70% effort which is important to emphasise to your players, as performing multi-direction tasks will lead to some players getting a bit keen and wanting to push themselves too much. It’s important to remember that this is a tool for conditioning and not agility.
Need a Tempo Running Program?
Hit the button below to access the Coaching Matters Tempo Running Program. A 12 Week, 3 sessions per week program that will get you fitter then ever heading into the season. Watch warm-up routines and have additional speed work to maintain your speed qualities.
I hope this has given you an insight on how to program tempos for your athletes. If not that, it has educated you and potentially opened your mind on aerobic development. I’ll leave you with another quote. This one from world renowned strength coach, Mike Boyle.
“ I have indicated that the concept of aerobic base was flawed and the development of an aerobic base is in fact counterproductive. Numerous studies have proven exactly this over the past ten years yet we still continue to have exercise scientists advocating a
period of general aerobic training to “develop the aerobic base”.”
