Further...
Sprint performance is the combination of several factors:
- Strength: How much weight you can move.
- Power: How quickly can you move an amount of weight (aka: force)
- Aerobic Capacity / Endurance: How well can you recover between efforts (recovery speed and recovery amount)
- Top Speed: Max velocity that you can sustain even if a motorbike gets you up to speed.
Having 1 of these isn't good-enough when your opponents have 2 of them.
Having 2 of these isn't good-enough when your opponents have 3 of them.
Having 3 of these isn't good-enough when your opponents have all 4 of them.
This doesn't really matter when you are at the local level. You can have 1 or 2 of these and still be quite successful. But, when competing at the national or international level (even for Juniors or Masters), if you don't have all 4, you won't be on the podium...
because 3 others will.
The skill in Programming is understanding that:
- All 4 components take a certain amount of time to train
- All 4 components have a finite period of effectiveness once fully trained.
- It is possible, but not optimal, for an athlete to train all 4 at the same time.
Aside:
There are micro, meso, and macro time scales for an athlete that has 1 big event a year.
- Micro: Daily/weekly training regimen.
- Meso: Monthly/Quarterly training regimen.
- Macro: Annual training regimen (for year over year growth gains over an athlete's career)
Main point again:
In order for all 4 component systems to be at peak levels for the big annual event (nationals, worlds, etc...) one must understand how long it takes to train that component and how long that training effect will be available.
Generally speaking,
- Strength takes the longest to make and it's the one that takes the longest to decay. Strength can take years to build over several cycles. This is also why there exists the concept of "old man strength". It's real.
- Power is built upon strength. "If you can't lift X lb slowly, you'll never be able to lift X lbs quickly. First you must be strong enough to lift X lbs then more than X lbs.". Power fades faster than strength but not nearly as fast as the others.
- Endurance is trained over the course of months and fades within months.
- Top speed can be trained within days/weeks but also fades within days/weeks.
So, it makes no sense to train top speed behind a motorbike in month 1 of a 12 month program. It's also just as senseless to
start weight training the month of your big event.
In an effort to use your time wisely, you should train Strength, then Power, then Endurance, then Top Speed will creating gains in each and doing your best to maintain them in a growing crescendo that's your Peak for the big race.
Note: There are some notable exceptions to that rule that are very effective. But, that is the general rule nonetheless, and the exceptions are...well...the exceptions.
A good read on the subject is
Periodization Training for Sports by Tudor O. Bompa
https://www.amazon.com/Periodization...s=books&sr=1-1