Yes, they sure do. I know a girl who ran for a well known University in Texas. The coach made the girls team run so many 600s through the whole year it was sick.
As I was told from this girl the head coach does not believe in pure speed work and only uses SE2 type workouts as there meat and potatoes. As a matter or fact her old HS coach got into a small argument with the coach at the university because he said the university would see better performance if this girl would do some speed work but it never happened.
Anyhow, I remember being on the phone with this girl and she would be crying because practice was so hard but she had to put herself through it because she was on scholarship. She ran about a 53-55 sec 400.
I have been under a coach like this myself but not as bad as her. Anyhow, I’m now on Charlies program and ONE of the MANY things that is awesome about his design is that you feel fresh every time you step on the track for a workout and you WANT to give it your all instead of arming yourself up just to get through practice; there is a difference.
Did you ever do / consider using running A’s for the back up on split runs? Example week 11 of S-L instead of 200+200 doing 200 @ above race pace then 25 seconds running A’s?
It’s for quickness of the foot contact but that will result in reasonable height as well. You need to concentrate only on a sharp foot contact as air time needs to be completed before the next ‘pop’. If you rush the air time, you’ll spend too much time on the ground.
You have a GPP as well and a comp period which could stretch out for 6 to 8 weeks possibly. If your season ends in May, work backwards and see where that takes you.
If you start Nov1st and have an 8 week GPP, that would be pretty much it for the year. Entirely depends on your set up. You need to think this through for your own purposes.
I have done this session for the past 5-6 years and it is very effective. The only caveat is that the athlete needs to have developed competent bounding technique.
Beige is a light tan/light brown sort of color (kinda the skin tone of a caucasian).
It is the portion on the graph that is right below Power Speed I and directly right of Power Speed II. It is weeks 5-7 and it is 80, 60+80, 60+80 respectively.
Once the athlete begins to dread going to practice, it’s as good as over. Of course there are tough days, but a regular does of 600’s will make the typical sprinter/hurdler hate track. I say this from my personal experience and from speaking to former teammates. At the time none of us said a word. It was the 70’s and you simply didn’t speak up.
Look at programs with poor athlete retention and that is often the answer.
In one of the videos (SPP?), Charlie makes it clear that there shouldn’t be sharp lines of demarkation between GPP and SPP. Rather there needs to be a relatively seamless flow from one to the next. The applies to SPP to Comp as well. When you count back weeks, there may not be enough time to fully adhere to one of the plans. You often need to start with some methods from SPP a little earlier than you like. The jump/run/drill circuit can often be started during GPP for example.
My season is 12 weeks long. 6 of which have meets 2x/wk. I follow the template with the modifications for the first 6 weeks, then the meets serve as speed and SE for the remainder of the season, usually 5 weeks, with 7 day taper.
A s-L progression for SE would be
wk 1 ( ) x 60 30+m
wk 2 ( ) x60 40+m
wk 3 ( ) x 60 50+m
wk 4 ( ) x 60 50+m
wk 5 ( ) x 80
wk 6 ( ) x80
wk 7: meet 100 early, 200 later week
etc
for Speed, we’d follow the EFE and FEFs and finishing drills, then use 100s for speed work.
A SE meet would be either 2x200 or 100, 200, where a speed meet would be 100 100
400 runners would run an early 400, then focus on 200,200 in meets, with a 400 race on weekend for most of season. We peaked early with this template which goes back to one of my previous posts about the new charts.
Sfff, you guys are good at programing. I’m just a self trained athlete who is trying to make sense out of all this. It’s not difficult to understand but it’s just that when you start from zero knowledge, over the internet, you wind up reaching more road blocks on your path to understanding vs face to face dialog.
Charlie this is great stuff - the programme and the discussion around it. A few questions about the programmes (S-L & L-S) for anyone to answer…
On the L-S the green colour box indicates that this is HILLS ON GRASS - I take it that all boxes this colour are done as HILLS ON GRASS?
The saturday Strength Endurance has two distinct boxes - how are these reps performed? Are they displaying two separate sets eg one set grass hill and the other on the flat? What recoveries would we look for here?
Where do the volumes come from as I have tried adding up a number of different ways and dont seem to get the same vol figure? Maybe Im missing something obvious here!!
Looking at the GPP differences for 400m athlete compared to 100/200m athletes in preparation for this as a SPP programme, what differences would you see there being?
The saturday Strength Endurance has two distinct boxes - how are these reps performed? Are they displaying two separate sets eg one set grass hill and the other on the flat? What recoveries would we look for here?
Recoveries would be as long (and as short) as you need to be able to perform the next rep.
Two distinct boxes generally mean two distinct reps.
Where do the volumes come from as I have tried adding up a number of different ways and dont seem to get the same vol figure? Maybe Im missing something obvious here!!
Are you including the tempo?
Looking at the GPP differences for 400m athlete compared to 100/200m athletes in preparation for this as a SPP programme, what differences would you see there being?
I think Charlie said the GPP would be quite similar (ie if you have seen the GPP DVD and materials, the general outline would be the same), but with a greater focus on fitness obviously. To do this, one could have greater volumes of extensive tempo, medicine ball work, etc. That is the general idea since even 400m runners need a base of acceleration and speed work to build from in a S-L plan.
