Being able to run fast is one of the fundamental athletic qualities. Fast athletes are coveted all over, my track coach helped kid after kid go on to compete in division one sports including football, baseball, and wrestling in addition to the track, almost with out fail they came to him plateued and over trained by their sport coaches who saw volume as the only way to force kids to adapt.
Coach mike went the opposite direction rarely using over 450 meters of total running a workout almost always using full rests.
With speed, quality is king, keep the reps relatively low the rest periods long and when you see any drop of in performance move on.
For obstacle course training I like to do a mix of pure speed flat land training with high speed course work.
To transition from the speed work to the coursing work relatively simple courses should be used at first, the more complex the course the slower the athlete will have to move the goal is to make this speed drop of as minimal as possible.
To build a good speed course, keep the individual jumps and techniques relatively easy, a good baseline is about 80 percent of your maximum in terms of difficulty or power out put on any given element. Similarly the transition between elements should not be to complicated and the course should have room between obstacles to develop speed.
For today’s challenge try this protocol, it should be done only by those with an intermediate level in parkour and who are not experiencing any groin, quad or hamstring strain issues.
General Warm up
Joint prep
Skipping and kick drills to warm up the hips
Light flow work
3×50 meter sprints 5 minutes rest between each sprint
5×1 approximately 8-15 second course, this should not be totally new course or speed development will not be optimal this should be familar and 80 percent or less of the max difficulty you can do a in a course finally make sure you have a 10 meter flat land start so you have to take the obstacles at near full speed
Light flow work
Joint Prep
For those less advanced in parkour, do 5 50 meter sprints, and do the course work but don’t time yourself and focus on safety.
For some coursing inspiration check out Amos Rendao’s competition sampler these courses are all a bit to complex for optimal speed development but it’s good inspiration.
