So when you said ‘smoothing the edges’, it sort of reduces the contrast between high intensity and low intensity days (CNS wise), right? If there’s no such contrast, will CNS recovery still occur sufficiently? with med ball sessions increasing CNS demand on tempo days…
Correct. As for the med ball work being potentially detrimental to recovery, with all things it is a matter of dose and the athletes’ existing work capacity. In my experience, the med ball work on a tempo day has worked flawlessly.
Thank you for sharing your experience. It was mind opening.
If I dont do a tempo or med ball the day before a speed day i will be flat as a pancake.
Thanks for the analysis, James. That’s definitely helpful. The smoothing of the edges of CNS intensity is a new concept to me–I’ve always followed a pretty binary approach to high intensity days. I’ll use this offseason to play around with that approach (i.e., perhaps just do 10 total throws before tempo work).
720 followed by 300 still seems like a lot to me, but perhaps this was well within the capacity of the athletes Charlie was working with at the time. I’ve always had to apply a factor of about .75 to the daily volumes in the CF templates as it is. Do you think they jumped right into the split rep work after a warm-up, or would there have been some acceleration reps working up to the desired intensity first? I ask because those accels would further increase the Wednesday volume.
James, through the USTFCCCA gents (Kebba Tolbert, Vince Anderson, Boo, etc), I’ve been taught to finish CNS days (especially ones that hit the weight room) with med ball throws for the same idea you’re putting forward. My only question towards your practice (with the concession that you know more about this than I ever will) is that wouldn’t this have a negative impact on CNS recovery?
British Group Outdoor Season 200 meter 2004
This graph was for a very high level group of athletes.
Again, this is a recipe for a guideline only.
The volumes on this graph are in theory and meant to be adjusted usually down in volume however needed.
Note you have no medicine ball throws as the season moves towards the end where the more important competitions will be taking place ( you hope)
To say this is a recipe for the 200 meters for anyone and all people is to miss interpret the idea behind the graph.
This is the issue and problem with posting graphs.
Also note that the medicine ball is first and then you are performing tempo.
I doubt very much that many people will be able to handle the volumes of this graphs.
Will you release the 100 & 400m graphs as mentioned earlier in this forum? It would be interesting to compare the different training volumes, etc
My pleasure, anyone on here who is interested in my direct consultation is free to email me for information.
Sure thing, as for volumes, without question these must be a product of what came before. Thus, we can all be assured that Charlie looked at what the group was doing previously and sought to smooth the transition between what ‘was’ and what ‘would to be’ under his guidance. For this reason, same as you’ve already done with respect to the .75 adjustment, is take the principles that Charlie shared and apply them to your own situation in terms of filling in the blanks.
As for the the lead in to the longer sprints, no different than what Charlie spoke of regarding smoothing the transitions between phases of training we must do the same within the training day/training session. So we can be assured that the transition between the end of the warm up and the first work rep was a smooth one.
Pinky, with respect to the fine coaches you referenced, I always put a great deal of cognitive energy into whether or not I’m going to issue a “should” to someone. As this pertains to whether explosive med ball throws are more optimally included on a high or low intensity training day, there is no plausible way anyone can offer the objective truth to you with a ‘should’ without having first outlined a very specific set of conditions. For this reason, nor will I.
What I will tell you is that, as I referenced in the other post, the explosive med ball work beautifully integrates into low intensity training days for the reasons mentioned; however, in no way am I stating that explosive med ball work must be performed on a low intensity day as I’ve consulted for just as many athletes and coaches to place the throws on a high day as well.
It all depends.
The most important thing is to be able to objectively rationalize the global preparation, as it is a tragic error to lose sight of the forest for the trees.
The charts make more sense in conjunction with the lectures, because Charlie explains the rationale. Never get hung up on the specific numbers. The key is to understand the relations between the training components and how they are progressed over time. Try to understand what the numbers represent qualitatively rather than quantitively (which I realize sounds like a contradiction in terms, but I think you get my point).
Charlie always said he worked backwards. He trained by feel and intuition as he went along and what he saw from the athletes at any given moment. Long after the fact he went back and charted out what he had done in order to explain it. But those charts are necessarily much “cleaner” than the actual workouts performed. It’s kind of like stock market charts, day to day it might look somewhat random and chaotic, but as you step back and look at weekly, monthly and yearly charts you see clear trends.
Regarding the med ball throws on tempo days, if I remember correctly they occurred when the CNS demands on the high intensity days were not that great. So, there is not as great a need to sharply contrast the tempo days. As the high intensity days become higher in intensity, the contrast on tempo days becomes greater to facilitate CNS recovery.
James and Flash,
Thanks for the responses - I think I just got the ‘how to fish’ answer and then the fish, and right now both are appreciated.
To change the direction of my question to more of a physiological one as opposed to one of programming - this use of medballs seems to imply that a certain consistent level of explosive CNS usage is needed throughout the building phases of training - which as you both say is to smooth the contrast between high and low days, which makes sense.
What I’m curious is about is wouldn’t this constant activation inhibit CNS recovery? Is it simply an issue of balancing volume/intensity so that the body can recover from both Monday and Tuesday by Wednesday? Or does the medball work not surpass a threshold to create more CNS fatigue? Or is a certain level of CNS fatigue acceptable with a build block? Or?
Like Actuary400m said, I’ve come to approach CNS work from a binary on-off position, with the assumption that the off allows for recovery from the previous ‘on’ session, so this idea is something new and just makes me curious.
Thanks for putting up with me - I hope I’m not pestering.
Is it just a case that med ball work does not tax the CNS to any significant degree and is essentially a lowish intensity exercise.
My preamble on CNS starts below !
There is a lack of measurable scientific evidence for the existence of CNS fatigue, the level of effort necessary to fatigue it, the period of time necessary for CNS recovery. Is it actually the same/linked to/analogous to Noake`s central governor theory for example.
There are postulations that changes to neurotransmitters are the cause of CNS fatigue. However serious athletes will always be exposed to the affects of hydration, nutrition, muscular fatigue, levels of sleep and other affects of heavy training. These may induce feelings of fatigue and make it difficult to filter out the specifics of CNS health (this is my opinion by the way).
So would it be true to say that CNS fatigue existence and behaviour is mainly empirical.
Nevertheless there appears to be something going on related to some or all of the above. It is sparked by hard sprinting and lifting of heavy weights, and seems to occur in most individuals if they exceed 2 or 3 of these types of hard sessions per week.
Does anyone know of research showing that easier efforts such as med ball work actually create similar physical affects of perceived CNS fatigue ?
Thinking about relative levels of intensity.
Doing say 200m of hi intensity sprinting represents say 150 hi force ground impacts propelling body weight.
Doing a heavy weight session of say deadlift, squat, press, pull down - with a protocol of 4x5 for each - represents 80 big efforts.
Med ball protocols do not approach these volumes of intensity. .
The concepts of hi and low training efforts are not binary but a continuum of effort and resulting impact on the body. Whether considering impacts on CNS, a central governor or other fatigue factors med ball work is probably somewhere in the low/middle range and therefore fits in nicely between hard sessions.
As per usual, this analysis is awesome and dead accurate.
What Flash is articulating is in essence of who Charlie was as a coach and not so easy to teach without larger cross sections of information and maybe some experience.
He really hated writing down his work for the very reason that we are debating or discussing right now.
Having said that, to demonstrate to the world and the nay sayers who he felt took something away from him, he was driven to illustrate his thinking via graphs and illustrations. He had someone do the drawings and illustrations from his ideas and his experience and his work but they do not fully capture the information as is.
For this reason I strongly recommend people to read Charlie’s book Speed Trap and the Training Manual because they both give context in my opinion.
The lectures are also amazing but intense, in-depth and require knowledge going in so it’s not overwhelming.
Flash, you came here as a very keen and very passionate person and took it all in and made the most of the information. Not everyone is able to do this.
Many people are looking for what I call the magic pill. And while we all know Charlie has been known in some circles of taking advantage of a certain “magic pill” so to speak, volumes of people understand the rational and methodology behind his brilliance.
Sure I have a vested interest in saying so but not as much now as when he was around.
I am not sure when I release and or post those graphs.
Thanks for posting the chart! Always nice to see a bit bigger picture. As with most of Charlie’s charts, they are a 12 week snapshot. My question is usually where do these 12 weeks fall?
Regarding med ball training at the end of a workout, with all the different training units done on high intensity days, most likely in order of importance with regard to available CNS energy, are we really going to move mountains by putting a few throws at the end of a workout? Not sure how it’s icing on the cake for someone who just sprinted, did Olympic variations and squats?
I just want to reiterate what I said in my initial post that restarted this thread: I am only looking for the “what” in this chart because I want to better understand the “why.” I am not looking for a magic pill nor am I the kind of guy who will copy a workout verbatim. I’ve dissected as much of CF’s material as possible over the last 8 years (purchase speed trap, CFTS, Elite Concepts, many of the lectures, training videos, etc.). The main reason I raised the questions on this graph is because the things I saw on it seemed to go against a lot of what I’ve heard Charlie say or what I’ve read from his material (Wednesday volumes appeared high, CNS stimulus on 6 days, etc.). James really helped put some solid “possible” reasoning behind the layout, and that is exactly what I was hoping to get. Don’t worry: I’m not going to blindly perform these workouts now. Rather, more questions will probably arise (e.g., why are increasing distances used in the split-rep SE on Wednesday?). It’s all a part of my attempt to better understand the thinking of a master.
Pinky, what’s important to recognize is that besides the fact that the totality of of CNS fatigue is not fully understood, that it is not of practical value to think in such isolated terms. Hence the narrow minded thinking of monitoring only HRV to the exclusion of other biological systems or to narrowly look at only one aspect of sport preparation when a problem arises as opposed to accounting for everything.
Understand that from an injury standpoint, the primary contributing factors have less to due with CNS fatigue and more to do with what caused it. In this way, it becomes a question of muscle/tendon/fascial involvement.
For example, say a sprinter performances an obscene volume of maximal intensity bench pressing, shoulder pressing, and rows on Monday after some tempo. Let’s say that the toll all the maximal intensity upper body training takes is substantial in terms of CNS stress. Now let’s say Tuesday is a speed day. Regardless of the CNS stress from the upper body work and how the central nature of the fatigue (possible alterations to entities in motor cortex) must be acknowledged, the fact that the muscles of the legs were unaffected poses little risk to a training set back resultant of a pulled muscle in the legs.
Alternatively, let’s say Monday included, for sake of example, the exact same magnitude of CNS stress, yet by way of squats, deadlifts, and leg presses. Now, regardless of the central fatigue, the primary area of concern is the peripheral state of the muscles/tendons/fascia in the legs and those implications on the Tuesday speed work. Need I say more…
Thus, while the high/low system is predicated upon the intelligent training organization of CNS intensive variables, let us not lose sight of the forest for the trees and forget that the primary question for the sprinter is what is going on with the legs day to day.
As it stands, single response explosive med ball throws present such a brief effort against small external resistance that, despite the motor unit involvement, the soft tissue toll is negligible for a prepared athlete.
James (and oldbloke), thanks for taking the time for those reponses.
James, you’re definitely identifying a weakness in my current training view, one that I’ve been coming to recognize this season on my own, but I think I am guilty of just trying to look at CNS at the expense of all the other systems at play - fixating on what I don’t understand as what must be the solution to all that ails me…