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We follow the exact same protocol that Barry Ross created in terms of only performing five concentric-only reps or fewer, only as many sets as you are stronger than the last set, plyometrics immediately after the deadlifts and five-minutes rest between sets (which we fill with non-metabolic skill training with a rope). Barry Ross revealed his breakthrough weight training and deadlift program in his book Underground Secrets to Faster Running. In ten months, Allyson’s deadlift went from 125 pounds to 300 pounds. As a result, her 200-meter sprint time improved, and she ran the fastest 200 meters in the world (without resorting to drugs) for all women.
- Barry Ross Sprint Training
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How can you become a better sprinter? What are Tim Ferriss’s tips for becoming a great sprinter?
In The 4-Hour Body, author Tim Ferriss trained with top athletes and coaches to understand performance science applied to his body. He learned some tips for sprinting during one of his endeavors.
Read on for some tips for sprinting Tim Ferriss learned.
Training Tips for Sprinting
Now that we understand the value of strength training for athletes, it’s time to look at training for specific sports. First, we’ll look at tips for sprinting. The author spoke with two different experts about how to increase sprinting prowess: Barry Ross, who coaches track athletes, and Joe DeFranco, who teaches football players how to ace the physical tests in the NFL Combine, part of the tryout and drafting process.
Barry Ross and Track and Field
Barry Ross is the expert coach who trained Olympian Allyson Felix. He spends a lot of time developing his athletes’ strength—most of his trainees can lift more than double their body weight, and they achieved these results in fewer than 15 minutes of lifting time a week. Among the tips for sprinting, strength is important because athletes slow down when their muscle fibers aren’t strong enough to maintain tension during impact, such as when a runner’s foot hits the ground. (Previously, coaches believed that athletes slowed down because muscles ran out of fuel.)
Ross uses a three-step process to train his athletes, and you can use the process too:
Step #1: Get in Shape
You need to be able to run a 100-meter dash in less than 23.8 seconds before you can start training to compete. To get to this baseline, walk 7.5 minutes in one direction and then walk back to your starting point in another 7.5 minutes. Walk as fast as you can—it should feel inefficient and you should want to switch to jogging (but don’t). Do this three times a week, and each time, walk farther. It will take about four weeks to get in shape and be capable of running the 100-meter in the required time.
Step #2: Get Stronger
Once you’re in shape, to build strength, follow this program three times a week (an earlier version of which Allyson Felix used):
Exercise #1: 6-7 reps of over-under dynamic stretching. Using two power racks, set one bar at waist height and the other at 30-32 inches off the ground. Squat and step sideways under the lower bar and then step over the second one. If you don’t have access to a power rack, use benches or ropes. This exercise should take less than five minutes.
Exercise #2: Do either 10-12 push-ups OR the following bench press sequence:
- One set of 2-3 reps of bench presses. (The weight should be 95% of the heaviest weight you can lift once (one repetition max, or 1RM) To estimate, multiply your 5-rep maximum by 1.2.)
- 4-5 bench-press plyometrics. To do this, find two boxes that are between 6 and 12 inches high and put them outside your shoulder width. Do a push-up between them, and when you’re at the bottom of your push-up, push off your arms and jump them onto the boxes. Jump back down to the fully-lowered position. As soon as you land, take off again—the landing phase should be as short as possible.
- Five minutes rest.
- One set of bench presses with 5 reps at 85% 1RM.
- 4-5 bench-press plyometrics.
Exercise #3: Deadlifts sequence. To deadlift, use a sumo stance. Keep your back straight and keep your shoulders in the locked position. After lifting to knee height, drop the weight instead of lowering it to avoid hamstring injuries (if you’re not also training sprinting, which involves a lot of hamstrings, it’s fine to lower the weight). You shouldn’t spend more than 10 seconds under tension—spending any longer leads to lactic acid production, which creates muscle soreness. Do the following sequence:
- One set of 2-3 reps at 95% of your 1RM.
- Plyometrics. Ideally, sprint 10-15 meters for 2-4 reps. The next best option is to jump onto a 12-18-inch box for 5-7 reps. As soon as you land, take off again—the landing phase should be as short as possible.
- Five minutes of rest.
- One set of deadlifts with 5 reps at 85% 1RM.
- Another set of plyometrics.
Exercise #4: 3 sets of 3 reps of the torture twist. Sit on a bench and tuck your feet under a bar or another bench. Keep your body parallel to the ground. Turn to your left and stay there for three seconds. Then turn to your right and stay there for three seconds. That’s one rep. After each set, sit up and take a 30-second rest. As you improve, you can increase to 5 reps and increase your holding time to 15 seconds.
You can lift and then go directly to running practice, but don’t run and then lift—you might injure yourself.
Step #3: Get Faster
Tips for sprinting speed:
- Measure your baseline with two time trials:
- Run 40 meters but only time the last 20 meters.
- Run 305 meters and only time the last 300 meters.
- Enter your times into the Anaerobic Speed Reserve (ASR) algorithm. This algorithm predicts how fast you should be able to run any distance and will give you goal times.
- Choose a random distance between 15-55 meters and get the corresponding time from the algorithm.
- Run the distance in under the algorithm’s time.
- Rest four minutes.
- Continue running the distance and resting for four minutes. Stop when you can no longer make the time or when you hit 10 reps. If you can’t make the time on the very first attempt, you can try once more.
This is a departure from conventional sprint training, which usually suggests you run the distance you’ll be racing multiple times at different percentages of your maximum speed. This technique isn’t effective because no one knows the exact percentage of effort or speed they’re using.
Conventional running training also recommends running longer than you’ll have to in a race to improve your endurance, but Ross doesn’t recommend this. None of his athletes who compete at 400m or less ever run a training distance of more than 70 meters, and this doesn’t hurt their performance at all—his athletes do very well. For example, using the training, one of his 100-meter sprinters reduced her time from 13.35 seconds to 12.75 seconds.
Joe DeFranco and the 40-Yard Dash
Like Ross, DeFranco has his athletes run shorter distances than they’ll ultimately need to run. In football, as part of NFL tryouts, hopefuls have to sprint a 40-yard dash. Joe DeFranco has his athletes spend 80% of their training time on 10-yard dashes. In addition to Ross’s reasons, DeFranco finds that practicing shorter distances is effective because it gives athletes more opportunity to practice their starting stance and experiment with posture and stride.
DeFranco’s method is effective—for example, Dallas Cowboys’ Miles Austin ran a time of 4.67 seconds in the 40-yard dash even though he’d only practiced that distance three times, and had practiced the 10-yard distance over 100 times.
With the help of DeFranco, the author improved his 40-yard speed from 5.94 seconds to 5.61 seconds using the following tips:
1. Wear cleats.
2. Warm up properly, using exercises that include the same postures and techniques required for a sprint:
- 2 sets of skipping for a 20-yard distance
- 6 reverse lunges on each side
- 2 sets of backward cycling (pretend you’re riding an invisible bicycle backward) for a 20-yard distance
- 2 sets of squatting side shuffle (squat partway down, facing sideways, and replace your front foot with your back foot) for a 20-yard distance
- 10 roll-backs into straddles
- 10 fire hydrants (Shortform note: The author doesn’t describe the movement or provide an image or video. You can view a generic version of the exercise here.)
- 10 mountain climbers (don’t ever put your heels on the ground)
- 20 seconds of pogo jumps (jump on the balls of your feet as fast as you can with your legs straight)
- 2 sets of five seconds of wide-outs
3. Use an effective starting position. If you’re right-handed, set up behind the line with your left foot a foot behind the line, and your right foot right behind your left heel. Your feet should be hip-width apart. Put the thumb, index, and middle finger of your right hand on the line. Put your weight on your right arm so that your shoulder is forward of your hand. Bend your left elbow at a 90-degree angle. Look at a spot on the ground three feet in front of your left foot and keep your head down. (If you’re left-handed, do everything opposite.)
4. Start with good technique. Your right arm shoots backward. Your first step is with your left leg and it should land on the spot you focused your gaze on in the previous step. Your knee should be forward of your toes when you land.
5. Maintain good form as you sprint. As you run, your upper body should always be forward of your lower body and your chin should be down (if it’s up, your feet hit the ground heel-first, which can injure the hamstrings). Use as few steps as possible.
Tips for Sprinting Without Hamstring Tears
Hamstring injuries are common in sprinting. There are some prehab exercises you can do to reduce your chance of injury:
- Practice the natural glute-ham raise.
- Strengthen your hip extension using hyperextensions, kettlebell swings, sled dragging, or supine hip thrusts.
- Stretch your hip flexors. If they’re tight, they constantly pull on your hamstrings.
If your hamstrings start to feel tight while training, they’re close to tearing, so stop your workout and rest. Don’t stretch (the muscle is already overstretched). Instead, ice the muscle and apply arnica montana.
Tips for Sprinting From The 4-Hour Body & Tim Ferriss
There’s almost nothing worse than a plateau. We all are training as hard as we can and it sucks to hit the preverbal wall. Well, guess what? It’s going to happen to all of us at some point. I’ve been a strength coach at the college level for over sixteen years and have coached thousands of athletes (likely now in the tens of thousands) and I can tell you with confidence that each of those kids encountered a training sticking point at some stage of their eligibility.
If your eating is dialed, you are busting your ass in the gym, and getting your rest, but for some reason have stagnated, I might have a solution for you.
The Deadlift as Training Triage
Our deadlift program here at Cal Poly has taken on many roles to serve my athletes. Ideally it pushes my more elite kids into a new stratosphere of strength and work capacity. But we’ve also found it can be used as an intervention for athletes coming back from injury and even shoulder surgery. These athletes are able to shoulder pack, their upper backs are strong enough to stabilize both the spine and the rehabbing shoulder, which allows us to work at an incredibly high level on their reentry back to full activity.
Most notably, I had a starting offensive linemen on our team who spent the entire offseason in a cast due to a broken forth metatarsal. When they removed the cast, the fracture had not healed and he had to have surgery to fix the issue. After six months of being completely immobilized, he was handed to me at the end of June to “get him in condition” for the season. We had to stay completely closed chain for his conditioning. Think about that. I have to get guy in shape cardiovascularly, but he can’t have any impact on his foot. Long story short, he was indoctrinated into our deadlift program and came out the other end starting every game that year and ended up being an anchor on the offensive line.
We Must Go Back Before We Can Move Forward
In 2007, I met Gerard Rush. I was working an RKC kettlebell instructor course in San Jose, California and the morning of our first day I was introduced to my team for the weekend. In the crowd was this massive Australian guy who looked like Tormund Giantsbane from Game of Thrones. Needless to say, it was love at first sight. We became fast friends and since he was a local guy, we ended up doing a significant amount of training together for years to come.
'This guy was grizzly-bear strong and had an otherworldly work capacity.'
That said, I quickly found out I was way out of my league when attempting to train with Gerard. This guy was grizzly-bear strong and had an otherworldly work capacity. It took next to no time to realize I wasn’t going to be able to hang with him because of the insane volumes he worked at. Every time we would lift together, he would inevitably want to make the decisions for the day and no matter what we worked, all of our sets would be in the twenty- to thirty-rep range. Yes, twenty to thirty.
Now, I know what you are thinking: we were probably doing sissy weights and a bunch of single-joint exercises, right? No. Back squats, front squats, deads, all different pressing variations, and pulling work of any kind. And Gerard insisted we go heavy on everything. I came to find out this is how he trained his entire life and to this day, he was one of the strongest guys I have ever known.
Deadlifting for Sprinting Speed
All of the strength programs I write are put together with the intent of my athletes getting faster. Anyone who knows me understands my speed program is my baby. A few years prior to meeting Gerard, I discovered some of the work Barry Ross was doing with amateur sprinters.
If you don’t know his resume, Barry received some notoriety with what was considered an unorthodox approach to training, with the deadlift being the centerpiece to his program. His thinking was based around the idea of mass-specific force. Simply put, if you can get stronger, and therefore create greater ground reaction forces when your foot is in contact with the ground without increasing bodyweight, then in theory you will run faster.
I spent a couple of years tinkering with that idea as I trained my teams, but the difference being I wasn’t chasing strength and trying to avoid weight gains. I needed my guys (particularly my footballers) to gain as much weight as possible.
Barry Ross, I’d like to introduce you to Gerard Rush.
8-Week Combine Prep for the NFL
Back then I was working at San Jose State and I experimented for over two years with every set and rep scheme I could think of. My football kids got very strong and we had tremendous success with our programming. At the end of the 2008 season, I ended up prepping two of our stars, Jarron Gilbert and Jeff Schweiger, for their NFL Combine/Pro Day events. Because both of these guys were mutants, I knew I could push the envelope in their training - and my deadlift program was born.
For eight weeks we prepped for their showcases for the NFL, and both wound up overachieving in every testing category. Here is how we did it.
The Nuts and Bolts
The eight weeks are broken into three phases:
- Weeks 1-3 - three days of 3x20 deadlifts
- Weeks 4 and 5 - three days of 3x10 deadlifts with 10 Russian kettlebell swings immediately after each set
- Weeks 6-8 - back to three days of 3x20
The three training days are of the heavy/light/medium variety, respectively:
- Wednesdays – Light
- Fridays - Medium
All percentages are based off of 1RM
As you can see, the percentages escalate rapidly. The way we are able to keep this level of work going without the athlete bonking is that this is the only weight training they are doing. No other resistance training is allowed during this time.
We’ve had some kids attempt to maintain the notion of doing upper-body work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but in every case, they’ve stopped by the second or third week because of fatigue. In contrast, by following this program as written, because of the demands it has on every physiological system of the body, the athlete typically ends up with a new personal record in nearly every lift (including upper-body lifts) thanks to the massive load the body endures throughout the eight weeks.
Guidelines Before Starting
The single most important thing you must consider before attempting this program is your technique. This program is intended for intermediate to advanced lifters (newbies, don’t even think about it). And if you don’t have a coach - get one.
Your technique needs to be borderline perfect before entertaining the idea of trying this program. Have someone who knows what he or she is doing evaluate you prior to starting. Make sure you are given a passing grade, technically, before starting. This coach should also keep an eye on you for the first week or two of the program to make sure you are able to hold spinal position under fatigue. If you are getting any flexion whatsoever during any of the sets, abort the mission.
In execution, these workouts are sprints, not a marathon. What I mean by this is, the reps are performed unbroken, touch-and-go style. Kiss the floor with the bar and then go into the next rep. You must perform all prescribed reps consecutively. If you can’t, adjust the percentages down by 2-3% so you can string all the reps together (this is typically only a concern on the heavy Mondays). If you do have to adjust down, remember to adjust down for all the weeks that follow to create congruency. What I’ve found is those who can’t go unbroken (especially in the first couple weeks) lack work capacity or they realize around rep thirteen (when the clouds roll in) they have bitten off more than they can chew.
'Stretching, mobility work, and some self-myofascial work are okay in addition to this program, but no upper body, no cardio, and no sneaking in extra abs[.]'
Barry Ross Sprint Training
Take as much rest as you need between sets. In the later weeks, I’ve seen guys take up to fifteen minutes rest between sets because the demand is so high. Only begin your next set when you feel recovered (and when you get your nerve back, ‘cause believe me, this is going to test your moxie).
In weeks four and five, the ten kettlebell swings are to be performed Russian style immediately after a set is complete. Men, use a 24kg. Ladies, 16kg. Swing as hard and fast as possible.
Eat.
Sleeping won’t be problem during this program. Make sure to budget enough every night because your body is going to need the extra recovery.
Lastly, commit to only doing this for the eight weeks. Stretching, mobility work, and some self-myofascial work are okay in addition to this program, but no upper body, no cardio, and no sneaking in extra abs or any of the nonsense my athletes try and slip by me. Take my word for it - I’ve had about fifty athletes complete this program, and all fifty will tell you this is all you need.
Be Ready for a Challenge
This program is a very aggressive one, but if you are finding yourself in a rut and need something to jumpstart your progress, this is a surefire way to get the ball rolling. If you give it a shot and/or have questions about any aspect, please post them to the comments below.
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Barry Ross Sprint Training Dl Program Download
Photo 1 courtesy of Breaking Muscle.
Barry Ross Sprint Training Dl Programs
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Barry Ross Sprint Training Dl Program Online
Photo 3 courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.