Have any of the UK guys seen the coaching articles in Athletics Weekly?, this week sees Malcolm Arnold coaching sprint starts with pics of his athlete Jason Gardener. There is also a posting of examples from Jasons training sesions.
I have found the articles very useful, I like the ones by Max Jones. He seems to have some ideas similar (if not the same) to CF’s eg the core work done with medicine ball by Paula Radcliffe, he stated (i forget in which issue) that whilst weight training the athlete can in no way replecate the speeds achieved on the track, rather than that the athlete should use exercises to develop general strength, eg squat bench, and develop the specific speed whilst running.
He is a big fan of strength training, and also a big (perhaps closet!) fan of CF’s it would seem.
Is that in this weeks AW? Maybe I’ll pick up a copy. What actual information is there in the article? Usually i just find they spend 3/4 of a page explaining about how important it is to do whatever the article is about and then there is no substance to the rest of it.
I have noticed since the Paula article that more people are using med balls! Before then I had people going “why do you use med balls, no one uses them”! I just smile.
Its one of those coaching articles in which they have the analysis of technique with the sequential small photo’s of an international athlete performing their event.
There have been recent ones showing discus and triple jump.
Arnold shows examples of gardners training week, as has been mentioned before on the site by David W, Arnolds athletes do long to short, and alternate track with weights. eg
Sun: Track
Mon: Weights and circuits.
Tues: Track
etc
etc
This is standard practice in the UK. Most of the major people I know do this progression. I had major improvements by dropping weights work completely from programmes like this about a months from competitions because of the competing stresses. I did this because there was no other way around the problem - we couldn’t change the training so we had to change the weights work. This year I will use limited lifts on off days and see if it works as well as dropping them completely.