How to train for speed in cold weather

There is no replacement for sprinting. That is: there is no replacement for accelerating up to top speed, then sustaining that powerful, purposeful posture for as long as your coordination allows.

Since the target time for a speed development stimulus is 5-8 seconds of maximal effort, quality sprinting requires between 40 yards and 80 yards of running space. To avoid a series of high-impact braking steps, it also requires a minimum of 15 yards to come down from full speed. (For track athletes and metric unit users: 35 to 75 meters of running space; still 15 meters to slow down.) Since sprinting effort is only productive if it is maximal, quality sprinting also demands a thorough warmup, high neural activation, and full confidence in your safety while training. Since sprinting effort is only effective if it is at actual peak output, quality sprinting demands long rest periods, often 3 – 8 minutes.

These space constraints can be a big problem in areas with snow. Few indoor training areas can provide nearly 100 yards of clear running lane. These effort constraints are a big problem in every area with cold weather. With temperatures never exceeding the freezing point in some places, it’s hard to feel excited or to stay warm enough for big efforts while passing long rest periods in the cold. So what’s a Fast Kid to do when winter is often the best time to schedule regular speed work, yet apparently the worst time to actually sprint?

Four options for keeping up your speed training in cold conditions:

1. Look Ahead
2. Layer Up
3. Break It Down
4. Approximate

Option 1 for a Sprinter in Winter: Look Ahead

Your first option for keeping up sprinting in winter is to be flexible with your training schedule. I’m based in Colorado. In any given week of winter, we could get several inches of snow overnight one day, frigid temperatures and high winds another day, then two relatively warm days in a row before that wild cycle repeats (or a different weather cycle starts). If my block starts over hurdles day is scheduled for Saturday but weather is projected to be 10 degrees below freezing after a night of snow…I might check the 7-day forecast to discover Wednesday is projected to be 35deg F and sunny. It just makes good sense to move that hurdle day to Wednesday!

I may need to shovel some snow. I may need to wear spikes for traction. I may need many, many layers. But I can do my speed work on the nice day rather than suffering through awful conditions to ultimately have a mediocre session. As a self-coached athlete, I have to know what other work complements speed work without interfering with it; that’s the work I pull into Saturday to avoid just taking the day off. Active recovery, mobility, power, and strength are all simple to train indoors.

Whatever structure of training you’re using, whether that’s a meticulously planned custom training plan or a few guidelines for what to get done each week, you can choose to be flexible to take advantage of your fairest weather for outdoor training. If you don’t have that flexibility, change your training plan to get it. For adult athletes, life happens. Better to train in a way that gives you options for adapting to it rather than trapping yourself in a rigid plan that falls apart when conditions interfere with “ideal” training.

Option 2 for a sprinter in winter: Layer Up

I learned from fellow hikers in Germany the folk wisdom “there are no bad conditions, only bad outfits.” In principle, I agree with this wholeheartedly. In practice, some conditions really aren’t okay for sprinting. If you’re at risk of slipping, don’t sprint outside. If you’re at risk of hypothermia from exposure, don’t sprint outside. Seriously, don’t be stupid by compromising your season just to get one day of sprint training.

Since many adult athletes are also adventurous types, I won’t bother specifying my favorite layers for different conditions. Such a list is just a promo piece for outdoor apparel and it quickly goes out of date as new clothing technologies emerge. Instead, I want to talk principles:

• your only tight layer should be directly against your skin;
• layer in such a way that any single layer is easy to remove;
• layer such that you could remove the outermost layer to get about the same change in insulation as any other layer.

Personally, I wear cold-weather athletic tights, tall socks, and loose sweats on the lower body. If it’s too cold for only those layers after a full warmup – specific only to my body and sense of comfort, about 12 deg F – I just don’t sprint outside! But what that allows in warmer temps, especially right around the freezing point, is I can remove the loose sweats once I’m steaming yet still feel comfortable if a cloud rolls by or a breeze blows through.

Same concept for upper body layering, except I like to keep as much of that stuff on as possible. Even though sprinting is full-body beautiful violence, arms and shoulders aren’t burning fuel like legs are during sprint reps and they are quick to chill during rest periods. Keep them insulated. Plus, the warmer your head, hands, and torso, the warmer you feel overall.

If you have outermost layers which are easy to don and shed, then you can pull things off for your rep then put them back on quickly for your long rest. That’s the appeal of having your exposed layer create roughly the same change in insulation as any other layer – you can adjust to your heat output across the session.

Side note: keep your feet dry. Do whatever you must to achieve this, ranging from buying less-ventilated shoes to spending an absurd amount of time shoveling snow out of your running area so you’re not stepping in slush. And keep dry shoes in your car for after.

Second side note: heated seats and a quick A/C unit and remote start in your car are awesome, but don’t underestimate having a big thick blanket and those dry shoes waiting in the car after your practice. Being a little cold at practice is more tolerable when you know you’ll be warm on the way home.

Option 3 for a sprinter in winter: Break It Down

If conditions are truly awful or are obviously unsafe, accept that you just can’t sprint outside. Instead, break down sprinting into components which can be trained separately. In other articles, I’ve described how sprinting is about posture, power, and purpose. Choose drills and exercises which work in the indoor space you have to develop those elements.

Posture is what your Speed Drill Warmup addresses. Some gym exercises reinforce sprint posture wonderfully like marching in place with a weight overhead, fast step-ups on a low box, and all braced core strength exercises like hanging and plank.

Power is what your strength training and jump drills address. No sprinter will ever be “too strong” so commit a little extra time to explosive lifts (snatch, clean, jerk, push press, jump squats), heavy lifts (squats, deadlifts, presses, rows), and reactive exercises (rebound push press, drops and drop jumps, partner med ball throws). Every sprinter benefits from jump development so get creative with your extensive and intensive plyometrics or your concentric and reactive jumps. Be explosive and bouncy in everything you do, especially when you’re substituting gym exercises for real sprinting.

Purpose runs through everything you do if you’re committed to becoming a Fast Kid. Be explosive at every opportunity. Work against huge resistance at every opportunity. Study great sprint technique and visualize yourself executing it. Purpose is simple to incorporate in your training but difficult to sustain because it is cognitively taxing, even just while imagining yourself doing speed work.

Training qualities doesn’t directly make you faster. Instead, training qualities increases your capacity for sprinting better and longer once you get back into a running lane.

Option 4 for a sprinter in winter: Approximate

Before we dig in: it’s possible to overdo these drills. They don’t make you faster and they don’t make you more powerful. They are good for keeping your body ready to do powerful things quickly, but they are not sufficient to build higher top speeds by themselves. You must run fast on flat ground in order to become better at running fast on flat ground. Don’t kid yourself that these do the whole job.

This final option isn’t really an independent option. You can take advantage of approximating sprinting when you rearrange your schedule for the fairest weather of the week. You can approximate sprinting when you’re layered up against the cold. You can approximate sprinting when you train indoors with limited space. The intent of approximating sprinting is to break down the mechanics of sprinting into drills which fit in the space you have, then work those drills with extreme attention to details.

Approximations of sprinting include:

• sled push or sled pull accelerations
• hill sprints
• stair runs (especially 2 or 3 stairs at a time)
• jump rope runs (A Cycle drill but with higher stakes from the swinging rope)
• high-velocity treadmill running (for short durations per interval only!)
• wall march, A March in place, and visualization

These approximations only work if (1) you attack them with maximal intensity and (2) you deeply understand the technical cues of sprint mechanics. If you train these approximations with sub-maximal intensity, they will make you slow. It is the nature of all proxies for sprinting that they have longer ground contact times, lower peak forces (both concentric and elastic), and reduced coordinative demands compared to taking a 5 – 8 second effort from a dead start up to top speed. Because of these limitations, you have to bring extra intensity to each drill in order to benefit from it.

In a similar way, if you do not understand sprint mechanics and the specific positions you are trying to attain at each phase of sprinting, approximations of sprinting will not teach you those mechanics by default. Hill sprints, for example, are great for developing extension power. But they only work if you know to “tuck the ankle” before foot strike, can consistently feel complete hip and knee extension, actively and quickly dorsiflex your swing ankle as it moves to the front, and are acutely aware of your body angle relative to the ground (once the angle changes, stop the hill rep). Building power is great but building power in the wrong positions means hill sprints won’t transfer to flat ground acceleration. Learn your mechanics! This is the burden of the self-coached athlete. Accept it.

One More Thought For Sprinters In Winter

If you’re convinced that winter is going to stop you from becoming faster, it will. These tips won’t do anything for you if you don’t believe you can get faster in sub-ideal conditions. Speed development demands consistency: improve posture, develop power, train with purpose. If you can’t sprint, build the qualities which allow you to sprint later. If you can sprint with some planning or by embracing the suck of cold weather, go do it.

Speed is a skill. As a guitar player, I can play my guitar, practice fretting or picking independently, play air guitar (with attention, focus, and purpose, not just for the headbanging good of it), use a finger trainer, watch instructional videos or breakdowns of professionals playing tough licks, or I can just imagine myself playing. There is no moment where I cannot do even one single thing to improve my guitar skills. As a Fast Kid, you have to approach speed development (and technical development in your event or sport role) the same way: sprint, practice a piece of sprinting, train qualities relevant to sprinting, study the technical model of sprinting, or visualize yourself sprinting. It’s true that there is no substitute for accelerating up to top speed then sustaining that posture for as long as possible. But there is always something you can do to get better. Show up fast come spring!