Ok, now I understand what you’ve written. I admit that I often have difficulty making sense of the written workouts that you and other’s list on the site. The way you wrote it I thought the 10, 6, 3 reflected the number of sprints, not the reps for the weights.
Makes sense now.
My intuition is distorted. I would often feel slower or weaker but actually be doing better than usual and vice versa. What do you mean with your last sentence?
I don’t have the ability to autoregulate. CF says to control volume of weights based on track workout that precedes it, and I am not prudent enough to make that decision. Because I don’t really have the ability to make the right decision, what is likely to happen is that I’ll probably do straight out 6x6 all the time and then soon start stalling out on weight and be overtrained because of lack of autoregulation.
Is this intuition something you have to be born with or is it something that can be learned under guidance of an intelligent coach?
I’m not a fan of intuition as the driver. I am a proponent of engineering a well thought out blueprint from which to work off of and only after this blueprint is engineered is there the possibility for changes in real time based upon any number of circumstances day to day. The point being that the pre-existing plan is the framework from which to perform the work.
For what it is worth, this strategy has proven unanimously successful in my experience coaching and consulting around the US and two other countries and distance coaching athletes all over the world.
Sorry Kwave. I meant that if basing a workout purely in percentages, you could be doing a different intensity to what was desired, depending on other factors( intensity of earlier training, health, diet etc), relative to your base. It’s not easy making calls on the feedback your body is giving you, especially when self coaching.
I don’t really know enough about your program structure but a simple 5x5 or 3x3 type of approach won’t really work unless you’re a novice in weight training (novice in terms of years of experience and where one is relative to that person’s genetic potential, not necessarily relative to world class performance)
I usually don’t make abrupt changes in training, but rather a smooth one, or at least I try. Health wise I’m usually healthy unless I have any digestive or sleeping issues that day, or have injury in which case I know that my expectation should be lower.
Diet isn’t perfect, but better than most people and is pretty consistent.
It’s hard to make judgement because of factors that I’m not aware of outside of recent training, health, and diet.
I understand, not everything is tangible here. I guess it comes down to what you do with the feedback your body is giving you. If you have done speed and know you are cooked, what do you do with that information if and when you hit the gym? Do you stick to what is on paper, or adjust?
I’ve done speed but I don’t know how it feels like to be cooked CNS wise. I’ve slowed down due to metabolic fatigue or sore muscle/shin, etc before, but I never experienced CNS fatigue knowingly. If I knew, I’d reduce volume, as lectured by CF in Weights for speed, for example, 6x6 would be more like 4x6 or whatever; maybe 2x6 with higher level of fatigue or even eliminate it completely.
I sorta know the principle, but I don’t know how to read my status to be able to apply it.
Kwave, I propose you dont do a weights work out directly after a track session. Consecutive sessions in the same day are suitable for experienced and high level athletes with time to train and recover, but a challenge/injury risk for the rest of us.
I suggest a 3 day train/1 day rest model.
Day 1 : Speed (or whatever the highest intensity running session within your current training phase)
Day 2 : Tempo
Day 3 : Weights
Day 4 : Rest
>> Repeat
This maximises the opportunity for good quality weights (or speed session) by preceeding the critical days by rest or low intensity. If weights were your focus just swap day 3 to day 1.
It would be really difficult for me to do that with the work. I can only do certain things on certain days of the week unfortunately.
Thank you for the idea.
In that case, it may be beneficial for your CNS to eliminate weights from the equation. Or at least modify/minimize it. In a lot of programs I’ve seen strength sessions done only every 7 or 10 or 14 days. That’s typically seen with more mature athletes as most of their gains are realized through the most specific work, and there may be less room for general work. But if eliminating such work altogether will enhance the specific workouts (sprinting) the most, then I would probably get rid of the weights. Lots of variables and individuality to consider, but I would err on the side of caution in respect to filling the CNS cup. However, strength could be such an issue for low level athletes that less sprint work and some strength work may end up being most beneficial. The type of strength that will best support speed gains could vary as well. There isn’t really a black-white or cookie-cutter solution. I would really try to figure out some of the variables - ex., what kind of weight work will be worth it in my case? Would I be best off using what’s left in my CNS cup to work on max strength work or more velocity based work, and/or SSC/plyo work? Or would some of those spill my cup over? …Of course, the variations, volumes, and intensities of any those will be factors as well. I would try to get to know myself better - my needs and strengths, what I respond best to, and take into consideration the level of athlete I am as well. …Obviously there will probably be some experimentation involved.
This obviously is a tough question to answer, as you also suggested. For myself, my strength level is much lower than it was in the past and I think I was doing better when I was a bit stronger. I want to at least go back to where I was strength wise, although my response to weight training at one point in time might not be same in another point in time, it’s tough.
By the way, I’ve never seen any program that does weight once every week or less. That’s surprising. If there’s any article about any program like that, I would like to learn about that argument for that.
Thank you.
This is James Smith (site error is listing me as t slow).
I would caution against an infrequent weight schedule, or infrequent schedule of any potentially high intensity stressor for that matter, because your system will continually be mandated to adapt to the stressor and, as a result, be much more likely to become sore and stiff (adaptation stiffness).
It is for this reason why Charlie advocated just the opposite…
The 3 high/3 low per calendar week schedule, as one example, provides the advantage of frequent exposure to high intensity stimuli which equates to frequent opportunity to make adjustments. In contrast, an in frequent schedule, aside from the potential to generate continual adaptation stiffness, prohibits one from making changes as frequently (ergo if you are lifting weights once every 10 days you have to wait 10 days to make the next change, if necessary, whereas if you are lifting weights every other day, you are only waiting 48 -72 hours to make a change if necessary).
All load elements of significance (intensity, volume, density) are fungible. For this reason, I’d encourage you to consider the frequency at which you feel comfortable training (all training included), and this will be based upon your recovery ability and tolerance for loading, and adopt a low volume approach to all moderate to high intensity components.
Provided your training environments are in close proximity to one another, you won’t have a problem performing a warm up of 20-30min, low volume sprint work, say a handful of 30m accelerations with 3-4min recovery, and then a few sets of some primary weights (squat, bench, row). Either that or alternate the weights that you perform after the speed work to upper one session and lower the next. You can then perform any auxiliary training/weights on the days in between along with some form of tempo if you wish. Any explosive throws can be done on any day, however, if you perform explosive jumps I’d advise those to be done after the sprints.
All of those factors you mentioned makes sense and currently, my 2 speed, 1 plyo, 3 tempo, 3 weights (1 of which is light day) format is keeping me healthy and minimally sore with very fast recovery when I get any.
Thank you.