Interval Training on the Track

Ready to head out to your local high school or college track and do some track intervals?  There is no doubt that track training provides awesome fitness results as evident by track athletes who have chiseled, rock hard, muscular physiques.  Track running is also a great alternative to the treadmill for performing intervals.

The object of interval training is to push yourself during the work intervals and back off during the rest intervals.  You'll notice that each work interval gets a little harder than the last one and completing the last few of them will be tough if you're pushing yourself hard enough.  Always warm up before performing intervals and cool down afterwards.

You can use timed intervals for track, by the way Tabata intervals work great on the track, but for these track intervals we are going to use distance instead.  The work interval will be sprinting/running and the rest interval will be walking.  For something different give these challenging track intervals a shot.

Track Intervals for Speed:

Track Intervals for Fitness:

Track Intervals for Endurance:

Ladders

If you ran track in school as I did you will be very familiar with ladders.  Ladders combine speed, fitness, and endurance into one workout to improve your overall conditioning.  Ladders are a form of interval training with mixed up distances.  For example, a basic set of ladders is where you run a 100m dash, a 200m dash, then a 400m run with walking rest breaks taken between each distance.  After you covered all the distances you have performed one set of ladders.  Ladders can stretch from 60 meters all the way up to a mile or more but I am not going to stretch my ladder example out that far.  Since we are concentrating more on the basics I am going to stick with basic ladders.

Perform two sets of ladders in the order shown below: