The past 3 weeks have been long!
The runner had a few days where tightness led to stopped workouts. There was a small spasm and his muscles were slightly “tight” for him. He’s never been fully loose/ideally toned as Charlie and Waldemar might say. So I made time for him to get treatment from me, for free. Unfortunately, a week was wasted due to the parents.
After a few days wasted, I finally had to tell him to go see someone and pay them. Everyone go my point and he then made the next 4 times I had available, and the issue was resolved, but 3 weeks went by with minimal training.
In the process, he was invited to a national race, the Brooks PR Invitational in Seattle at the end of February. This certainly had him more motivated to get better.
Today, Jan 25, we started up training again. The plan for now has shifted away from the S-L progression and will work more on focusing through 30m of speed while getting quality hurdle work in. The focus is still increasing frequency between hurdles.
I took Ange’s advice and used a progression I feel went well, but time will tell. We start with 3 hurdles half spaced (5 yards) at 36" (39" is comp ht). We work on first touchdown to last touchdown times. Every few reps, I move the hurdles out 1 foot. We eventually got to 8 yards apart (10 yards is comp distance for those who don’t know). This moving of the hurdles out gradually looked to naturally put him into a nice shuffling stride needed to run sub 8.
We ended with 2 standing 30m (first at 85% effort, and second at 95% effort in a new workout best time). Then finished with 2x 60 30+m, again both records for that given distance and accel zone. Those 4 days I was able to really get his tone optimal and he know sees what it feels like.
The massage work was not easy. One thing I learned from Waldemar, and observed in watching Charlie work, was sometimes you might only work one muscle for an hour if it’s that tight. The first 2 sessions were 1 hour on each hamstring where I would started using techniques seen in the Taper video by Charlie. Sessions 3 was more a waldemar technique/shaking to loosen up hamstring, and then began to work on the quads, which were also tight, but no issues with them. Session 4 I finished one small spot on the hamstring and finishing the quads. He was obviously much too tight, and considering he ran 6.99 this way, says he has much, much more in him, but that isn’t the goal right now.
He is currently ranked #8 in the US for HS 60H times.