Today’s show brings on Ryan Banta and Derek Hansen.
Ryan Banta is a coach with more than 19 years of experience and the author of the Sprinter’s Compendium. At the high school level, Ryan has numerous state champions and finalists, and he is a frequent contributor to many top platforms in athletic performance.
Derek Hansen is an International Sport Performance Consultant that has been working with athletes all ages and abilities in speed, strength and power sports since 1988. After a long career as a university strength coach, as well as track and field coach, Derek now serves as a performance consultant to numerous professional teams in the NFL, NBA, MLS and NHL, as well as major NCAA Division 1 programs throughout North America.
Both Ryan and Derek were very early guests on this podcast, and I’m happy to have them back to discuss a subject that I think has a lot of far reaching implications into one’s total performance program, which is “tempo training”. Tempo is an age old method of sprint training, and generally refers to repeated, submaximal sprint efforts, such as 8x200m, or 5x300m, on relatively short rests, with limited recovery. For team sports, it could mean running a series of shorter, but more numerous sprints, on incomplete rest intervals.
Pendulums swing in all fields, and the sports performance field is no exception. As with many tools, tempo has been abused by track and team sport coaches alike to the point where athletes do not make beneficial adaptations in power or maximal speed, so a reversal (such as what we see in systems such as Tony Holler’s) was well warranted. It’s always important view training constructs from all sides, and talking with these two wise coaches is important to gain a greater understanding of this element of training, and its proper use. Derek and Ryan get into the usefulness of tempo running for both physiological and technical adaptations, and then get into appropriate training prescriptions for track and team sport alike.
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Timestamps and Main Points
7:42 – A Question: “If you were running a sprint program for building absolute speed, would you pick strength training or tempo running outside of your short sprint practice?”
10:25 – The benefits and misconceptions of submaximal (60-70%) effort running
18:03 – Experimenting with volume and intensity in tempo running
24:12 – Building structure and capacity through circuits vs. submaximal running & Safe training for injured athletes
31:30 – Flooring/surface dependence for tempo running and circuits
33:47 – The significance of the type of athlete in volume in tempo running
40:51 – Implementing tempo running into team sport training
46:28 – Why coaches and trainers have moved away from tempo training in their sport preparation
50:23 – The role of specificity in tempo training
52:49 – Speed development in tennis preparation and the role of tempo sprint training
54:46 – How Derek prescribes tempo volumes in track and team sports
1:00:55 – Incorporating muscle dominance and intervals in tempo running & Making it relatable to the athlete
1:08:10 – Final advice on tempo running
“Basically [tempo running] is just running with incomplete recoveries at a submaximal pace and, as we all know, this method is very frequently abused by a lot of coaches.”
“Working at different velocities obviously gives you some flexibility around the effect you’re going to have in terms of energy systems and building foundations around the athlete.”
“A tempo run with short recovery allows for the body to use that hydrogen ions or lactate as a fuel. It allows the body to increase its ability to buffer the waste so that you’re not necessarily using that workout to get better at your absolute efforts, but you’re supporting the body to be able to withstand those absolute efforts.”
“The BCDE workouts are critical when you do have somebody injured and then you also have to take in the nature of where is the injury located and what are they capable of doing? Not having that stuff set up ahead of time is, in my opinion, pretty dangerous.”
“If I have a compressive athlete, then yeah, my length of my efforts is going to be shorter, my intensities are going to be lower, and it’s going to look much more like a high-low day, but I don’t take that stuff out because I feel like there’s a lot of value there.”
“It is a complicated process of going through each sport and understanding how much of what tempo work they need based on what their practice or their game is fulfilling versus what you could provide. It’s not easy.”
“I would rather work with, what I feel comfortable with, is the minimum effective dosage of everything and then build a more robust athlete through repetition and maybe an increase in volume as you move through the season as opposed to starting with this monster volume, and just like a train, moving your way down the tracks.”
“As soon as you flip the switch and make it a game or just give them something to distract from what they’re actually doing, just everything changes and I’ve always taken that to heart.”
“Just know what you’re doing and understand the context… before you’re willing to criticize or cut someone or to reject someone’s ideas, I think you need to understand their environment, their situation, and what is the competitive ask of the sport that makes them choose the choices they make for training.”
About Ryan Banta
Ryan Banta is a coach with more than 19 years of experience and the author of the Sprinter’s Compendium. At the high school level, Ryan has produced 135 All-State medalists, including 10 state champions and 15 runners-up. His teams have won 12 district championships and 5 top five state finishes in the last nine seasons.
He has been elected Missouri Track and Cross Country Coaches Association (MTCCCA) president and served on the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA) advisory board. Ryan is a frequently appearing podcast guest and writer on many popular track and field, and athletic performance platforms.
About Derek Hansen
Derek is an International Sport Performance Consultant that has been working with athletes all ages and abilities in speed, strength and power sports since 1988. His coaching career started in Track and Field, providing instruction to sprinters of all ages eventually working with collegiate sprinters, hurdlers and jumpers. His career evolved rapidly working closely with some of the top performers in the world as a coach and a consultant – including Olympic medalists, world record holders, Canadian National team athletes, and professional athletes from numerous sports.
Derek worked as the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Simon Fraser University for 14 years, the first non-US member of the NCAA. He also serves as a performance consultant to numerous professional teams in the NFL, NBA, MLS and NHL, as well as major NCAA Division 1 programs throughout North America, specializing in speed development, strategic performance planning, return-to-competition protocols and neuromuscular electrical stimulation programming. Derek is asked to speak on speed development and high performance training on a regular basis for major events around the world and has also authored a number of books, chapters and journal articles on these subjects.
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