Uphill-Downhill vs. Resisted Sprints

What's good people!

Welcome to the first Speed Brief of 2025! I hope you've all had a fantastic start to the new year. Today, we're diving into some fascinating research that might change how you think about sprint training methods.

We've all been there - pushing sleds, running hills, using resistance bands. But which methods actually deliver the best results? A 2024 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine has some surprising answers about two popular training approaches: combined uphill-downhill sprinting (UDS) versus resisted sprint training (RS).

Let's break down what they found and what it means for your training.

The Research Breakdown

This meta-analysis examined 22 studies that measured sprint performance changes in straight-line sprinting speed. The researchers compared two specific training methods against flat-ground maximal effort sprinting (what they termed "traditional sprinting"):

1. Combined uphill-downhill sprinting (UDS)

2. Resisted sprint methods including sleds, cables/bands, weighted vests, and uphill-only sprinting (RS)

The key measurements focused on improvements in sprint times across various distances. Here's where it gets interesting: The data showed that UDS training led to better sprint times compared to training on flat ground, while resisted sprint methods, surprisingly, didn't produce significantly better improvements in sprint times than regular flat-ground sprint training.

Why This Matters

When we talk about the improvements seen in this study, we're specifically looking at changes in sprint times. The research used standardized mean differences (SMD) to measure these changes:

• UDS showed a small but significant improvement in sprint times (-0.41 SMD), meaning athletes got measurably faster

• RS methods showed only trivial differences (-0.14 SMD) in sprint times compared to traditional sprint training

To put this in context, the UDS advantage was consistent enough to be statistically significant, while the RS results weren't. However, it's worth noting that both methods were compared against flat-ground sprinting as a baseline, not against each other directly.

The UDS Advantage

What makes uphill-downhill training more effective? It likely comes down to how it challenges your sprint mechanics in two distinct ways:

• Uphill work forces greater power output and knee drive

• Downhill sections train your nervous system to handle faster leg turnover

This combination appears to create a more complete training stimulus than resistance alone.

Practical Applications

Before you ditch your sleds, there are some important nuances to consider:

1. Load Matters: The researchers found differences between various sled loads, suggesting that how we use resistance tools might be more important than whether we use them.

2. Distance Testing: The effectiveness varied across different testing distances, indicating that both methods might have distance-specific benefits we're still understanding.

3. Implementation Strategy: The key might be periodization - using different methods at different times rather than committing to just one approach.

What This Means For Your Training

Based on this research, here's how you might want to adjust your training:

1. Prioritize UDS sessions in your technical development blocks

2. If using resisted methods, be more strategic about load selection

3. Consider combining both methods in your program, but with UDS as your primary focus

Moving Forward

This research doesn't mean resisted sprinting is useless - far from it. What it does suggest is that we need to be smarter about how we use these tools. The goal isn't to find a single "best" method, but to understand how to use each tool effectively.

That's it for today's Speed Brief. As we kick off 2025, let's commit to staying curious and letting research guide our training decisions. Sometimes the most valuable findings are the ones that challenge our assumptions.

Got thoughts on this? Hit reply - I'd love to hear about your experiences with different training methods.

Have a great weekend.

Liam TSP www.thespeedproject.com