I am actually "team teaching" in my Cycle Abs class, which basically means I'm training a new instructor. She's awesome and she's an Alpha Gam, which you know, makes her double awesome. Anyway, my little padawan taught the second half of class today, and she started off with a bang: sprints. She alternated 30-second sprints with 1 min recoveries, for a total of 6 sprints.
Now, I've worked really hard to improve my sprinting game, because I used to be a straight hill climber. I couldn't hold a 10 second sprint to save my life. But with weeks of speed interval training on the bike, road, and stairmaster last spring, I actually turned it around. At one point, I found that I couldn't climb hills well anymore, but could hold a flat-out, fly-til-I-die sprint for, well, a helluva lot longer than 30 seconds. Totally unnecessary, so I backed off a bit on the speed training. And apparently I've lost my touch again. By today's 4th sprint, I was huddled over the bike, gritting out my sprints. Rather than pushing my legs, I was tensing my whole body and core to power through the dash. Voila! Core cramping. Time to get back to the speed training.
Which leads me to what my "Sprint Session" is:
30 sec spring
1 min recovery
...for 15 minutes, for a total of 10 sprints.
You can do this on the bike, stairmaster, or road. The treadmill doesn't work great because it has a long response time when you alter the speed, but it can be done. This is a killer workout, and will totally alter your speed capability within a few weeks.
I don't like it when people say, "I've never been a sprinter". Well, neither was I! I also used to think I would always be the slow and deliberate tortoise. I'll probably never wear the green jersey in Le Tour, but with a little simple tweaking to my cardio regimen, at least I'm not doomed to wear those awful polka dots forever.
Although they're kinda cute in sock form...
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