Sprint Training

I put my student, Matthew, on sprint training yesterday. He broke his right tibia and fibula (shin bones) 7 months ago in a rugby game. Since recovery, he has been doing strengthening exercise under my care.

He received a piece of good news last Wednesday when his doctor cleared him for running. Immediately he went for a jog in Bishan Park despite me telling him not to do so before Karen and I saw him. Typical of 14 years old boy! We wanted to look at his running gait so that he would not develop bad running style and come back to us with ankle pain or knee pain.

Luckily his running style was alright except that his right leg has a slightly smaller stride than the left. This is not unusual since the right leg was the injured leg. We told him to consciously take a bigger stride for the right leg and the anomaly was thus corrected.

As his rugby team was short of players, the coaches were eager to get him back. I conducted 3 shorts sprints of 50 metres and 2 long sprints of 80 metres for him. I can see that he was knackered after the sprints, with his heart rate going up to 195 bpm. This is expected as his cardiovascular fitness has dropped after a period of 7 months without running. In any case, we need to build this up quickly although he has been doing step-ups and cycling regularly before he was cleared to run.

Sprint training or interval training is a quick and exhausting way to build up cardiovascular and anaerobic fitness. It involves sprinting for a distance followed by a period of rest or slow jog (which is an interval before the next sprint). If your stamina is low, you will tire after only 3 sprints. Thus, Matthew did all right with 5 sprints.

You can also do interval training on a stationary bike. Try sprinting on the bike for 5 intervals and you would look like you have just showered, with your sweat of course. I did that regularly when I am still not confident of running due to my slipped disc. It did my cardiovascular fitness a hell lot of improvement!