The blue ribbon event at the Olympic games is the 100m sprint. For anybody that does a competitive race, they want to improve their 100m sprint time. If you are a male, you will generally want to break the 11-second barrier. Elite male athletes will aim to break 10s.
Many women will aim to break 13 seconds over the 100m with many of the elite-level sprinters breaking 12 seconds and the very top sprinters breaking 11 seconds.
How can you run a faster 100m sprint that will allow you to crack those times?
Build a strong core.
The core is the most important aspect that you have to develop. It will ensure that your back muscles aren’t being used when they aren’t supposed to and it will also help you improve your technique and stride performance.
Some of the exercises that you can do to improve your core strength includes:
- Squats
- Deadlift
- Medicine ball
- Lying leg raises
Develop the strength in your hip flexors.
You need to develop strength in your hip flexors so you can increase your stride length when you are running. You can do this with the following exercises.
- Lying leg raises
- Knee raises
- Resistance bands
- Reverse crunch
- Single leg raises
Develop more power in your legs and glutes.
You can increase the power in your glutes by doing plyometric exercises.
- Box step ups
- Box jumps
- Power squat
- Snatch
- Power cleans
Develop your speed endurance.
One of the things that many new athletes underestimate is the importance of speed endurance. Speed is the main factor that will determine an athletes success in the 100m, however their rate of deceleration comes in at a close second. The longer the athlete can hold their velocity, the quicker they will run and beat the other athletes.
There are a few ways athletes can condition their bodies so that they improve their speed endurance.
Interval training.
This is key to improving an athlete’s sprinting time. You want to conduct several interval runs at 60-90% of your maximum sprinting intensity. For example, if you know that you can run 60m in 7.5 seconds. You will be aiming for intervals of 8 seconds or less.
However, you want to build up your speed endurance, so the interval training at speed needs to be longer than the 100m that you will be running.
If you run 150m, 200m, 300m or 400m and you can hold that top speed without having your body decelerate, you will be able to run a faster time in the 100m.
Your goal will be to run 8 or more of these in a session with minimal recovery time and at an intensity that prepares your body to maintain its top speed. In the first phase, you may end up doing each repetition with a walk-back recovery.
As the season goes on, you will minimise the recovery to a few seconds (30-45 seconds) between each repetition.
Stamina training.
You want to improve your body’s cardio as well. You can do this by doing tempo runs over a long distance or duration. For example, you can incorporate a 1-2h run once a week into your training routine. The aim is to just keep moving during the session and not to do it at a high intensity. As your body becomes more conditioned with the exercise, you can increase the intensity in your running.
Use this videos for inspiration.
Below is a video that features Yohan Blake and Warren Weir, two of the fastest men in history training in Jamaica.