8x20m. accels
Fast but concentrating on accelerating with good form, in particular arm swing.
Weights :
Hang snatch 8x3 40kg
Push press 8x3 45kg
Deep squat 8x3 90kg
All with 45 secs rest.
Felt pretty good today, the strain didn’t bother me during the workout but it was there. My physio is great, I’m really beginning to trust this guy.
For the first time I’m now advanced enough to work on my arm action after the first step. Before I had never been able to work because time seemed to go by too fast for me to change anything. In fact I wouldn’t even notice or have the least idea of what my arms where doing when I worked accels 5 months ago. Now I can feel and know what my arms are doing for the first time. I guess it’s the normal advancement of an athlete as you become more and more aware of the signals your body gives you. So that’s what I did todya, I focused on the arm action from 5-20m., on swinging vigorously and helping me move forward. I suppose I’m going to be in for another big improvement in the accel phase of my race this period with the new modifications I’m being able to introduce. What particularly called my attention was how fast I was feeling. I was wondering how fast I’d go when I extend accels to 30m., if by 20m. … can’t wait to see that.
In the weights I felt great too, snatch at 40kg was good, I’ll leave it at that wait for another session and then see if I raise it to 42.5kg. I felt like I was reaching the limit where I can hold good form for 8x3, more weight I would be able to do but with poor form. Push press I can probably keep on moving the weight up, but I’ll be conservative and do another session at 45kg then move to 47.5 next week. Deep squat at 90 felt unusually easy and smooth. Felt like I could have sat down at the bottom a minute and still easily have gone up. I’ll raise this to 92.5kg the next workout. I’m probably able to do 8x3 at 100kg without problems but I don’t want to risk the strain on my core and risking my psoas getting inflamed again now that I’m FINALLY pain-free and feeling great.
Some notes:
Next session I’ll probably take my digital camera and film myself for the first time. Problem is that I’ll have to shoot myself from the front or back with the camera on the floor (since I’ll have no one to shoot me), a side shot is not possible since the indoor track is on a gallery and the middle is a hole with a basketball and volleyball court underneath, not sure how useful that angle will be for technical analysis, but I can’t wait to see myself run.
I’ve become some sort of freak with temperatures. It’s 15ºC outside and everyone on the street has a sweater or more on. But I feel the temperature as perfect, I love it. I’m the only person on the street in a t-shirt. I assume this is due to the tempo and contrast showers getting my body used to temperature extremes and keeping a warmup.
There is talk that the track here in Buenos Aires will finally be replaced this August. Of course I’m very skeptical, as this has been said every couple of months for the past few years. But … just maybe, I wish, everyone here wishes it will happen and get this story over with. It’s shameful that a city of 20 million doesn’t have ONE ----ing synthetic track, when in Europe or America there seems to be one in every town and a ton in a city this size. I’ve been having a kick reading Charlie’s stories in Speed Trap about the underdevelopment in Canada in the 70’s, about Gerard going to the “best” track to get the team together and finding puddles of tar … and other hilarious anecdotes about these third world countries.
Weight 68.8 kilos before workout 68.2 after, I’m beginning to put on some mass. up 1 kilo since last Wednesday’s yearly low 67.2
My trial with BCAA’s appears to have been an immediate success. I’m really seeing a difference in recovery from weights sessions.
I’m rereading the EMS part of CFTS and will be posting my EMS routine here in the next day or two. Tomorrow I’ll talk with my physio again to make sure this work is possible in the facilities we have and the EMS we have (I assume there is no big difference between different EMS brands?).
I also had a very good idea with EMS. I’m going to use it for my lower abs. In the past few months my upper abs (at least visually the upper 4 of the 6 pack) have become big and solid, but since I’m unable to do leg raises and obliques because it flares my psoas the bottom 2 are inexistent and this needs to be fixed one way or another : EMS seems like the answer.
Yesterday couldn’t do my tempo session because of work. Only had massage. Finally got my right hamstring unknotted. These accels sessions are kicking my ass. I don’t know why they’re hitting my legs so hard, maybe the intensity has increased compared to last season? Today I slept for 13 hours after a hectic week. Decided not to leave my house at all, and put a day of rest in. Anyway, my plan is a mess, I’m trying to sort out what I’m going to do. I have to plan in EMS into my plan and see what I’m going to do with my GPP. I’m leaning towards 4 weeks “base”. I won’t do any hills, it’s too late to start them now. After that I’ll start split runs and go on a strictly short to long plan. Reading speed trap is really making me understand the concepts behind short to long and now I totally agree. The thing I am confused about is how to create a base without going into the dreaded 75-95% bracket on any day. I’ll have to ask around.
Upper body circuit
2x3(8 pullups, 12 pushups, 40 abs)
Another 12 pushups set at the end.
Still sorting my training schedule out and the rest isn’t doing me any bad. Barely did 5 training days this week, and 3 track workouts, but didn’t miss any upper body weights days, I see that as a key to my improvement this period. I know how hard it is for me to gain and maintain upper body mass, I won’t be missing a single session of upper body work.
I’m leaning towards starting split runs tomorrow to replace the submax 300’s. 4x(200-100) with 1 min rest and 8 mins between sets. Goal is 200’s in 24-25 and 100’s in 12-13 which would give me 36-38 in the 300’s, which is what I’ll be aiming to do for my first SE2 session when I jump into the full 300’s.
I’ve come down with the flu/cold. I could feel it about to strike the entire weekend. Slept in till noon today. Then was wrecked the whole day as I struggled to do some work. What I’m calm about is that I don’t think it’s due to overtraining, just bad luck. Anyway, I ended up dragging myself to the track to try to do the days’ work.
I ended up doing
200 24.4
1min 15 secs
100 13.3
Rep 1 = 37.7.
I cut the workout there. Something weird happened, my heartbeat wouldn’t go down. Normally after a minute or two my heartbeat has gone down drastically but after that one rep it was already 8 minutes into the rest and I was supposed to go and my heartbeat hadn’t slowed down, so I called it a day. I also pulled the bottom of my foot (never had this happen before!) in the straight of the 200, so it was probably better to not aggravate that. The work wasn’t all negative. I felt VERY strange. I felt like shit during the warmup and although I had zero energy during the drills and warmup I was floating above the ground. Then once I put the spikes on I was flying. I was feeling so powerful and ready to run full out. All the practice accels were incredible. Then the 200 was a jog, I’ve definitely improved my resistance in the past few weeks, because I could have run at 23 flat today. What probably happened is that since it’s my first or second day of flu/cold my core temperature was probably high and that’s why I felt so exceptionally ready to run fast from that first rep. After that 200 the problems started, I recovered nothing during the walk to the 100, I actually felt like I was getting worse every step of the way. Then I just jogged down the straight in 13.3. This bodes well for the next weeks, I am ready to post some quality split runs (maybe even below 36 total for 300 rep). Another very strange thing was that form just came together, I had never felt my arm swing like that, it felt like textbook. I think what happened in this aspect is that since I wasn’t thinking about my running but about the cold all the technique and arm swing work I’ve done the past few months just kicked in and took over. I really hope I can replicate this in my next few sessions. Overall this was quite an eventful and interesting session.
Gym :
8x3 Hang snatch 40kg
8x3 Front squat 75kg
3x10 back extension
Cut off push press off the routine. Felt energyless during the snatch, and I knew snatch and front squat alone would be a good workout on this day.
Felt much better at the end of the day though, after taking some fresh air. I’m sure the tempo session tomorrow will do wonders.
Hang snatch 8x3 40kg
Deep squat 8x3 95kg
(3 jumps onto bench after each deep squat set)
Massage and stretching
Bench press 8x3 65kg
Lat pulldowns 6x5 55kg
Standing arm curls with barbell 6x5 27.5kg
Dips 3x8
Shoulder press 4x5 30kg
Body weight at beginning of session 69.9kg
Body weight at end of session 68.6kg
I had to bundle in upper body weights at the end of the day because I didn’t do anything upper body yesterday. I’m never doing that again, spent 5 hours training in total.
The accels session wasn’t stellar. I had two beastly accelerations in the first two 20’s and by the third 20 I was fried. My CNS was cooked. I had a really small energy envelope today and burned it even quicker because the first reps were of such good quality. After that I had to go progressively lowering the pace each rep and by the 9th one decided it wasn’t worth continuing (I had planned to do 10). The positive is that I keep feeling an improved involvement of my arms during the accelerations. In hindsight I should have gone submaximal (95%) and concentrated on technique from the 4th rep onwards when I saw I was fried on that 3rd rep, instead of letting intensity drop because of exhaustion through each rep.
In weights I dropped push press again, and concentrated on getting some good hang snatch and deep squat in. Increased deep squat weight to 95kg. Will do 100kg on my last 8x3 session on Saturday, that should top off the thick of my hypertrophy period nicely. Where I’m noticing excellent gains though is in the bench press. I’m FINALLY breaking through. Today I increased to 65kg and could have done 8x3 with 70kg with no problems I think. Hell, just 3 months ago I was doing my max strength 3x3 sets with 70kg! Today the weight was flying up from first set to last set. I think my goal of reaching 100kg this cycle is possible seeing these gains. That would be an EXCELLENT 25% increase in my bench press in this macrocycle (from 80kg). In squat it’s still too early to speculate much, but 5 months ago I was starting my max strength phase with 3x3 95kg (@80% buffer). This time I’ll start at 100 or 105, aiming to reach 3x3 130kg on the last week … but things might change in the next few weeks, and also, I have no idea how I’ll begin to feel when I do EMS strength sessions. Body weight clocked in at 69.9kg at the beginning of the session, my best weight this year. I am aiming for 71-72 at the end of this hypertrophy period, in particular to finally put on some kilos of muscle in my upper body. I can notice my arms are bigger, but most of the new weight is from my legs. Creatine must be kicking in. Now my legs are suddenly huge. A clear change from 2 weeks ago. My quads are bulging again and my upper thighs are again looking like 2 times wider then my lower thigh.
On a final note, I’m buying Mizuno Tokyo’s. Found some for $50 and certainly am not passing that over. I think I also need new spikes psychologically, I’ve had the same orange fluo and yellow fluo Nike Zoom Rival since November 2002 when I was a beginner, I now need better spikes for the type of performance I want to achieve and to accompany me into a new phase. After all, a car can’t roll optimally without good tires.
Hey Aln, just a question which has nothing to do with your training, but what do you do other than train, cos it seems you have stacks of free time to train for 5 hours!!!
I can barely get in 1 1/2 hours a few times a week!!!
Just making some notes to myself here, after much reading and rereading posts and parts of Charlie’s books. I want to make sure I completely clear my thoughts about some aspects of training.
The major error or difficulty I’ve had with going short to long is that I never fully grasped till now that as much as possible is done at 100% intensity. Why is it done at 100% intensity? Because that’s how the greatest gains will be achieved. In speed work we’ll be working on improving top speed, in speed endurance we’ll be working on maintaining THAT top speed for as long as possible. Working at less then full intensity is suboptimal.
The reason why I’ve had so much of a problem getting this into my head and not being scared of the bulk of my program containing or more precisely being BASED on full intensity work, is because of the training approach I trained with before and the influence of that coach. This coach made (makes) his athletes almost thing that full intensity is bad. Full intensity was like prohibited terrain. If one would go too hard on a given practice, even on a workout that is already submax going a bit harder but still submax, one would die and not be able to complete the workout because of the amount of volume and short rests. Full intensity became this weird thing one does a few weeks or couple of months at most during each macrocycle and the only right way to build up to that intensification is through a long to short progression of increasing intensity vs. decreasing volume as the macrocycle progresses. Furthermore, since most athletes and the system in this country is of the stone age, all coaches believe in long to short and I meet resistance to what I’m doing and try to convince others of constantly, even from within my own club.
Conclusion : I’ll have no problems from now on going with short to long. I agree with all of Charlie’s principles, so there is no reason why I should be hesitating to apply them. I’m going to finally plunge completely into short to long and modify my plan accordingly.
The more I read this phrase by Charlie, the more I see it’s brilliant, it sums up the whole way of training and setting right priorities for your level and the progression of training in an athletes athletic lifespan.
“Think of it this way. When you begin to train, the biggest differential in times between your performance and world record performances lies to the “right” of the time curve. Why spend your time fighting for hundredths of a second over the first 30m when you can gain whole seconds over the 200m section. But, as you advance, your requirements move steadily to the “left” of the training continuum. You must also consider your strengths when deciding on what speed or special endurance to do. Eventually, once total fitness is in place, the only real way to continue to improve is by improving max speed- which must be done in alactic conditions- methods such as speed work, plyos or max strength weights.”
3x(200-100) 1 min between 200-100, 8 mins between sets.
Untimed 200-13.9.
28.2-13.3 2nd
29.2-13.5 3rd
Couldn’t do weights because I trained somewhere where I didn’t have access to them.
Trained on a cinder track, which had grass grown over the outter half of the track, so the two lanes to that side were AWESOME. So soft and bouncy, it was a pleasure to run on that stuff. I had never run on such even grass, the thing is that this grass is thin bladed and grows like a pancake, hard to explain, but it creates a perfect covering for the cinder track, because the roots and a lot of dry grass are above the cinder. Anyway, I ended up running 28 extra meters in the 200 because of a measuring error. The good news is that the extra 30 meters didn’t feel as long as they would have felt in the past. I felt stable and able to keep advancing with no problems the whole distance. The intensity probably wasn’t high enough though, I wasn’t accelerating as much as I should have. Or rather I was accelerating well but the terrain was very uneconomical and bouncy, so I was probably losing speed and a ton of energy every meter of the way.
Hectic day. Little sleep, tried to do too much, quality suffered.
In the AM I found an hour break midday and did an upper body weight circuit. Since I slacked off the last half of last week and didn’t do upper body work, I didn’t want to let another day go by and lose the gains I’ve accomplished so far. I did :
2x2(8 pullups, 12 pushups, 6 dips, 40 abs) and then one more rep because I wasn’t going to be able to complete another set. 3 mins between sets.
This workout kicked my ass. Adding dips wrecked me. I thought I would be able to add 8 dips without a problem, since I do them like a breeze when they’re alone, but from the first rep I knew I’d have to cut down a bit. I also had to cut down number of reps in sets to 2 instead of 3. My arms were about to explode through most of the workout, hell of a workout!!! Never underestimate body weight exercises!
In the night I did :
200 24.0
1 min 30
100 12.5
20 mins
200 24.9
1 min 30
100 12.8
Rep 1 : 36.5
Rep 2 : 37.7
Sleeping too little yesterday, a hectic day at work and the upper body weight circuit in the morning drained me. I had nothing on the track. I felt slow, tired and heavy. Not smooth and quick as the past few sessions. From the first accels I knew I was fried, they were sloppy and slow. And I couldn’t accelerate in the reps themselves. I was hoping to do 3 reps, but cut it at two.
Weights : (unloading, decrease from 8x3 to 6x3)
6x3 hang snatch 40kg
6x3 push press 45kg
6x3 front squat 80kg
3 down-up jumps from 50cm. stool after each front squat set.
3x8 back extension
Could barely do hang snatch today, I had to pause between each rep. I was totally energy drained. I was glad this day was over at the end. At least now I feel like I’ve caught up with my training. I’m also seeing about changing my work shift and training earlier. It’s getting too cold to train at night. I rather train in the early afternoon and then be dead all afternoon at work, then struggle through training at 35-45ºF at night.
Despite all that, that 36.5 is a new split run PB! I can’t wait to see what I can do next week properly rested. Aiming for sub 36 next session and am hoping I can get below 35 on the last week of split runs.
Today I had the best session in recent memory. Felt so incredibly fresh from start to end of the workout, I couldn’t believe it. A complete contrast to last Wednesday when I was fried after barely two accels. I think the BCAA’s are really having a major impact on recovery. I had been noticing much better recovery after weights workouts, I think there is little doubt now that they’re helping me.
Accels
8x20m. 2x30m.
Every single accel was of excellent quality. I also worked a lot on using my arms much more, and perfecting the left arm action/explosion on the start. It’s going to take some work but I’ll get these things down, I practiced standing too, I don’t know why I hadn’t before, this let me calmly see what exactly I’m looking for the left hand to do and then I tried to apply it during the actual accels. I’m confident that by the next competitive period these aspects will be solved … I’m slowly getting very excited and curious about what will happen this second half of the year. I feel like I’m finally understanding how to train myself and am vastly improving many aspects of my running. If the results reflect how well I’m training I’ll surprise a lot of people here in Argentina.
Weights :
6x3 hang snatch 40kg
6x3 push press 50kg
6x3 deep squat 100kg
Despite the excellent accels session I still felt EXTREMELY strong in the gym. Who knows, maybe this was just one of those days. Increased push press to 50kg and deep squat to 100kg. Weight was flying up on both. The squats were like playing piano. Let’s see how I feel during the next sessions, maybe this was just an unusual day. If I’m actually this strong now I’ll be putting up some mean numbers, definitely 3x3 140kg at the end of max strength … and I’m not factoring in EMS because I don’t know what type of additional gains I’ll get … geez, I would feel ridiculous if I end up doing 3x3 150/160kg.
Body weight at start of session : 69.6kg
Body weight at end of session : 68.9kg
I wasn’t able to find that rhythm or feeling of 2 weeks ago, but I felt smooth and even through all the runs. I see how acceleration is developing, I was able to get to running speed smoothly and in a snap, a contrast to two weeks ago. It really makes me happy to finally be able to understand and see how elements of my training affect my progress. I feel like I’m beginning to understand and get a feel for training myself.
Massage
Weights :
Lat pulldowns 5x5 55kg
Bench press 6x3 65kg
Standing arm curl with barbell 5x5 30kg
Dips 3x8 (15 secs rest)
Back extensions 2x6
45 secs rest between everything.
Benches were occupied so I had to start with lats. As would be expected I felt tremendously strong in them, but I refrained from lifting the weight, I’ll increase next week and see if I feel the same when lat pulldowns go after bench press. Everything appears to be progressing according to plan.
I have to decide what to do tomorrow, I would have really liked to do some hills but it’s too complicated to go to the place where the hills are and train alone.
It rained all weekend long and virtually all day long today. Then at around 7PM it finally stopped, so I went to the club. The sight was incredible, virtually the whole track was under water. The field was flooded all over the place, except luckily for one end which is a little bit raised and thus the water had quickly run off, so I did 100’s tempo on that curve.
4x5x100 with 30 secs and 2 mins 30 rest.
Average time 16.
Weights :
Bench press 6x3 65kg
Arm curls 5x5 30kg
Lat pulldowns 5x5 55kg
Dips 3x8 with 2.5kg (15 secs rest)
Back extensions 3x8 (15 secs rest)
45 secs rest on everything else
Feels like I’m hitting a wall again in bench press … I want to see how I feel when I go into max strength. All the other lifts were a piece of cake.
I’ll do the same workouts I’ve been doing the last few weeks for this week and the next. Next week our company will be presenting it’s new product line in the largest construction fair here, it will be HECTIC. I have no idea if I’ll even be able to train the whole week. I’ll see how things work out. Then the week after, when the chaos and stress has passed I’ll finally start my SPP and max strength phase. I’ll go in having done 3 weeks of 8x3 and 3 weeks of 6x3 for the major lifts, as my hypertrophy phase. 6 weeks of acc dev and 3 weeks 300’s lactic work and 3 weeks split runs. These next two acc dev sessions will be submax though.
Not a great day. I barely did :
200 24.2
1
100 13.1
I was so disappointed by these times, in particular since today was a holiday and I had time to workout midday under the sun in decent weather for the first time in over a month, that by the time I stopped thinking and reviewing what I was doing right or wrong in my program 35 minutes had passed, I did some strides but my warm up was gone, so I called it a day.
Weights :
Hang snatch 6x3 45kg
Push press 6x3 55kg
Front squat 6x3 90kg
Increased rest periods to 75 seconds (from 45).
Logically, felt strong in the gym with all the spare CNS energy from not completing the track workout.
But overall the day wasn’t a disaster as I think I came to a series of conclusions and noticed some things.
Hang snatch technique, after viewing some videos I now realize I don’t get under the bar, that’s why I was having trouble improving above 40kg which is a ridiculous weight considering my strength level in other lifts. 40kg is the max I can snatch up to full height (the bar going far up enough for me to “catch” it standing straight with my arms up). I see I can certainly snatch 50-60kg now, but getting under the bar quicker and lowering the position I catch it at. Had no problems at 45kg after that modification. Might try with 50kg next session if I feel good with 45 in my first set.
I see I was making a mistake with my weights, what I was doing was kind of dumb, leaving rest at 45 seconds. Either I should have continued doing hypertrophy 8x3 with 45 seconds or gone to 6x3 with more rest and raising the intensity. A mix of the two accomplishes nothing. So since I completed 3 weeks of hypertrophy, the logical thing now is to do 6x3 at a higher intenisty to get ready for max strength. Increased front squat to 90kg with no problems with the extra rest, will increase deep squat to 105 or 110 kg Thursday. Both of those numbers indicate my strength has increased in relation to the previous period. I don’t know what I’d do without the weights work, it’s what keeps me going when things don’t go so well in the track, because one sees the improvements clearly and linearly.
I answered my own question that I posed two weeks ago today, after much brainstorming in that half an hour of rest and meditation. The reason why one doesn’t do split runs at full intensity, is because one isn’t ready for that. And believe me your body will tell you that if you try. That’s why one does the 200 submax, because one uses the acceleration one would use for a 300. Since you acceleration is only developed to the point where it’s useful for a 300 at this point in the program, it’s NOT enough for a max 200. So it’s impossible to do split runs at full intensity at this moment in the program. So if split runs are done sub-max I just see NO point in doing them. Just go straight into the 300’s SE’s, or if doing submax at least personally I’ll go with 300’s in the intensive tempo range. Split runs clearly don’t work for me, I was making the same mistake I made last year where I couldn’t transition from split runs to 300’s and ended up abandoning them altogether. I was on the same path. I’ll begin doing 300’s straight off and improve from there.
AM
Tempo
15xno idea, probably around 100 or 110 meters.
Untimed. 30 secs rest between each.
Today I went to explore a big park in an upscale neighborhood 5 blocks away from my university, the park is outright beautiful and the grass is perfectly cut and even. There are also some 20m. or so grass hill with a 40º gradient I’d estimate, and a concrete “hill” (walkway) that’s about 60 or 70m. long and has a 20 degree I’d estimate. The only minor problem is that there aren’t any long patches of grass, the one I trained in is around 130 or 140m. long, and I couldn’t use 20 at one end because it was muddy. Regardless I made a great discovery. I’ll be doing a tempo session a week at least there, during my 45 minute mid-morning break.
PM
Massage
Weights :
Bench press 6x3 70kg
Standing arm curls with barbell 5x5 30kg
Lat pulldowns 5x5 60kg
Dips 3x8 6kg (30 secs rest)
75 secs rest everything else.
Felt strong in everything, bench press I was moving the weight up fast with no problems, not effortless flying up, but moving it up fast enough to think that I can probably do 85 or 90 right now, which means that by the end of the max strength phase I have a realistic shot of hitting my 100kg goal. Pulldowns are also easy, I’ll probably be able to reach 75 or 80kg.
Weights
Hang snatch 6x3 50kg
Push press 6x3 55kg
Deep squat 6x3 110kg
Back extensions 3x8
75secs between lifts.
A positive day overall. Felt great in the accels and also filmed a couple. Felt extremely strong in the gym as well, massage Wednesday and taking my rest day yesterday probably did wonders for my session. Acceleration also felt lengthened, I was accelerating well up to 25-30m. compared to last week where I was struggling from 20 onwards. Next two sessions will be submax to be fresh for the introduction of max v work and to not burn out the stimulus.
After a full week of rest. Things went VERY well for our company in the fair, we couldn’t be happier with the way things went. Now I’m ready and hopefully very fresh for my max strength phase. Tomorrow I’ll do my first max v session of this prep period. I need to determine tonight exactly all I’ll do. I’m thinking of 4 o 5 flying 10’s with 40m. run up. Weight will be 3x3 @ 80%, which I’ll put down at 102.5kg for squat in week one then move up 110, 117.5, 117.5 (two sets), 125, 132.5, 140 (goal) each week. I can tell I’ve lost some mass in this week in which I didn’t touch a barbell or think about running. I hope things go very well, though.
