352: Ryan Banta on A “Centrist’s” Approach to Speed Development and the Critical Mass Philosophy

Today’s guest is track coach Ryan Banta.  Ryan has over two decades of experience, is the author of the Sprinter’s Compendium, and is a MTCCCA Hall of Fame Coach. He is a frequently appearing podcast guest and writer on many popular track and field, and athletic performance platforms.  His teams have achieved substantial success, including winning the 2022 girls Class 4 Missouri State Championship. One of the beautiful things about working with human beings is that there are multiple ways to train athletes towards their highest physical potential.  Different coaches achieve success with different training parameters and exercise selections, mannerisms and personal styles.  At the same time, there are also some core philosophies to the entire process of training that are foundational to progression, and can make training more understandable.  Some of the over-arching principles that are helpful to study are those of core training cycle setup, training the “ends” vs. the “center”, and principles of progression and variety in a program.  By better understanding these core ideas, we can have a better idea of where we are starting, and where we are heading in a program. On today’s show, Ryan gets into the core philosophies and principles of the Critical Mass training program in track and field, which is a broad-spanning path of development from freshman to senior that incorporates a span of abilities ranging from hurdles to the 400m.  Ryan then gets into his speed training philosophy, taking a “centrist” path to speed, and how that differs from going “ends to middle”, or taking a block-based approach to a training season.  Ryan goes extensively into concepts around his 14-day speed training cycle, how he adds variety into his program, how he utilizes resisted sprinting, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, Strength Coach Pro, and the Elastic Essentials Online Course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com. Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:35 – How Ryan’s recent track seasons have been coming along, and some of the recent successes of his track and field group 14:40 – The core components of Ryan’s speed training blocks and cycles, particularly his 14-day training cycle 24:18 – How Ryan includes the hurdles early on for his freshmen athletes, to help set up their skills throughout their high school career 42:15 – Ryan’s take on a balanced an athletic approach to 400m training, and his approach as they progress through high school 46:29 – Philosophy of going “ends to middle” vs. being more of a centrist in training 54:38 – How to avoid staleness over time while using a “centrist” system that is regularly training all main athletic qualities, and how to use constraints and novelty to improve one’s sprinting technique 1:03:50 – Ryan’s take on Tony Wells training system 1:12:16 – Ryan’s take on sled training and resisted sprinting Ryan Banta Quotes “I never build my sprint program around 7 days, we need to go 14 days” “Throughout the program, I believe in resting the system, but not necessarily resting the athlete” “I like to start in the middle, so I am going to start in the 200-400m area in my training, and then play with systems below that (100-200 focused days), and above that (more 400-800m days)” “Monday we might do max velocity and acceleration, Thursday of week do I am going to have something like looks like that again, but in the meantime there are going to be other sessions where those qualities get ticked off of the box” “You are either race modeling or competing every Saturday; competitions are your best practice” “I think that hurdles,