Tom Schwartz – Run College: 6 Weeks to a Faster You

Description of Run College: 6 Weeks to a Faster You

Speed is a skill that you can master! By improving your strength, power, and conditioning you can switch to cheetah mode and conquer your most ambitious PRs. Speed master Dr. Tom Schwartz shares his insights and insider tips from three decades of coaching national champions. Spend six weeks using his exclusive program and you’ll see results — no matter what your initial skill level. All runners can benefit.

What you will learn in Run College: 6 Weeks to a Faster You

In Run College: 6 Weeks to a Faster You, you’ll Learn

• How to develop your speed skills
• How to increase your strength and power
• What it takes to master sprints and short hills
• How to win the mental game to stay motivated
• What it takes to stay injury-free and healthy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Getting Started

Welcome and thank you for joining us. Whether you’re a cheetah or a turtle we can help you get faster in just six weeks.

Sound too good to be true? Like some late night infomercial? No, we’re serious.

We have complete confidence in you! We see your inner speed demon

• Technical Drills

Running quickly for a long time requires both fitness and proficient technical skills. As a model for excellence, elite runners demonstrate skilled movement patterns that reflect quick rhythm, relaxation, and exceptional coordination. The drills in this program provide purposeful practice to teach you to run smoothly and skillfully; thereby lowering energy cost while running, reducing injury rates, and increasing the enjoyment obtained from gliding along effortlessly as a runner.

Warm up thoroughly before doing drills, just as you would before strength, sprint, or hill rep training sessions.

• Strength Training

Runners who develop strength to a sufficient level are less prone to injuries that can occur during hopping, plyometric, sprint, or hill rep training. If you cannot do 30 lunges on one leg while using only your body weight, the strength of the muscles around your hips (especially the glutes, upper hamstrings, and quads) are insufficient to stabilize your body upon ground contact. Without stability, you cannot generate the forward and upward propulsive force needed for speedy running.

Every strength session will include 11 key exercises. Long-term success depends on the use of a systematic

• Hopping & Plyometrics

If you’ve never included hopping in your training before, this might seem a little strange at first. But rabbits are pretty fast, right? And so are the elite runners who hop and bound their way to more powerful strides.

There’s plenty of science to show that the biomechanics of hopping increases your nervous system’s ability to generate rapid force. That’s because it combines muscle strength with power. These exercises are quick, which is important because research shows that strength gains from slow movements provide minimal change in strength at faster speeds. Bummer, we know.

• Sprinting & Hills

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to push it into high gear. To bust past prior PR limitations, it’s important to work on your top-end speed, and the best way to do that is with sprinting and hill work. Hate hills? You won’t — after you feel the power and see the speed they produce. Hills are your friends.

Sprint Speed: It’s possible to simply run by feel during sprint training. If you want a more precise estimate of how far you should go during each timed sprint

• Getting Faster

Congratulations! How do you feel? Stronger, faster, ready to take on any challenge? We thought so. Thank you for taking this course. We hope you got a lot out of it and that you’ve seen major progress from just six weeks ago.

Tom has some final thoughts on how you can keep seeing improvements from here.

About Tom Schwartz

Dr. Tom Schwartz is a USA Track & Field Level 3 and International Association of Athletics Federations Level 5 Endurance Coach, with over 30 years of experience coaching runners and other endurance athletes. His winning strategies combine the latest training science with 20 years of personal competitive running experience.

He earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in exercise science, a master’s degree in business administration, and has recently finished his PhD. Schwartz has coached numerous National Qualifiers and World Championship Qualifiers, by focusing on optimal training to improve performance and minimize injury and burnout.

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