Thoughts.

Brief but intense:

8 sets of
20 seconds hard running, 10 seconds jogging/rest

aka Tabata sprints. More details below for those who are interested.

Stay Strong,
Mackey

Notes:
-This workout takes 4 minutes. That’s all! Push as hard as you can.
-You will tire quickly. Focus on form (relax your upper body and face, swing your arms straight forward and backwards)
-I do this with a watch I can set a timer on–set the timer for 10 seconds and repeat, run for two beeps, rest for one beep.
-Make sure you warm up well! Dynamic stretching is great (blitz me if you’re not familiar with them), as is doing some fartlek running–jog, run, jog, run–to get your body ready to sprint
-Think just faster than 200 pace (or just slower than 100 pace) as a target speed
-Warm down well. You’ll get pretty tight in a hurry if you don’t.
-I got through 3 1/4 laps or so on the track, if you want a standard for comparison

How it works:
The point of this workout is to progressively overload your body’s energy systems. Starting out, your body will be running anaerobically on its short-term energy system (the phosphagen pathway), which is good for about 10 seconds of hard work (it’s also what you use when doing any kind of explosive activity, like jumping). It takes a while for this system to recover to full though, so after a few reps this system will be drained and you’ll be working primarily in the other anaerobic system, the glycolytic pathway (if you’ve ever noticed a drop in energy from the first couple points of a game to the rest of the game, it’s because you’ve used up your phosphagen and have switched to lower-power glycolysis). This is the single most important energy pathway for playing ultimate frisbee; it powers any moderate-powered efforts (anything above jogging) up to a few minutes. Ultimate by and large consists of these sorts of sustained high efforts. The 10-second break is just enough to get your wind back and prevent your body from forcing you to slow down considerably/stop.