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. 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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, by far is one of the best things. Our distance girls at the end of every one of their aerobic runs does hurdle mobility, our sprinters hurdlers and jumpers every Wednesday does hurdle mobility. We teach them to bounce, they don’t just step over” “This is the point of the critical mass system, I want to make decathletes, I want my athletes to be good at everything” “I want to make sure I’m honoring the athletic experience by stimulating them like they are a heptathlete, like they are a decathlete” “Running 24x200’s is an abuse of a developmental athlete” “I have two days in a 14 day micro-cycle where we are going really really fast and then two competitions” “With short-to-long the psychology is that I don’t want to go run a 150 now, while my philosophy is lets rip the bandaid off on all of those things” “You flip flop the key performance indicator workouts the following week; I have a week that’s built around speed, a week that’s built around power, a week that’s built around endurance, and then a recovery week” “We’ll do a fly 10,20,30 with different variations of movement, for example we are going to do a run for 30 meters, and we are going to have you go with as long as stride as you can, then the next as high of frequency as you can” “We want to constantly require a kid to deal with something novel and new while sprinting” “We go from hills to a resisted sled, to vests, to a bullet belt, so we are constantly trying to go from basic skills to more advanced” “One of the best things about sleds is it teaches an athlete how to push” “(With sleds), I like to go heavy, medium, then light, we get potentiation and we are mindful of coordination. Early on, hills might be the best because you can get a lot of people in it at once… from a pure management perspective” About Ryan Banta Ryan Banta is a coach with over two decades of experience and the author of the Sprinter’s Compendium. At the high school level, his girls track team has had 7 top-five finishes at the state championships, a team state title in 2022, 7 district championships, 6 district runner-up finishes, 7 conference team titles, 248 state semi-finalist (sectionals), 174 state qualifiers, 3 state records (3200, 4×800, and 100HH), 20 national ranked events, 163 All-state Medalists, 16 state champions, 21 runner-up performances, and 2 Gatorade athletes of the year. He has been elected Missouri Track and Cross Country Coaches Association (MTCCCA) president and served on the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA) advisory board. Ryan is a frequently appearing podcast guest and writer on many popular track and field, and athletic performance platforms.