Experiment in progress.

Members Area My Training Journal
221

Yes I have seen it (CF taper)
Re: video, Sure, maybe with runs there is not close to 400m+, however I have got Tyson warm up from diamond league 2010 in London, and he did quite few 50m runs and quite few blocks starts and falling starts, around 300m of high intensity done before first round, couple more starts before second round and blasted 9.78 in the final.
Everything depends from individual.
There is NO rule.

And the same directives apply to athletes that I coach, if they feel that they need to have a 5 blocks starts to be ready, so be it, I am not in their head or body to say convincingly that they don’t know what they need, they have been running long enough to know whether they need extra start to feel ready. Last season I had a comp where one of youngsters that I coach did two starts in trainers and said, well that’s it! he’s ready, WTF?!
Later run PR.

About dropping volume.
Right from the beginning of your programme you have one big taper. The volume will be gradually going down. Nobody said that it has go down by 70% from one week to another.

Re: Dan Pfaff where he talked about concepts like “stabilize” and “actualize” I thought that he was talking about changes of stimulation, nevermind.

Re: what Seagrave had recommended, Who’s this programme for?
Is it for for athletes I am working with 10.4-10.9 or 10.0-10.2?

Yeah I understand where you are coming from reading slightly bigger volume of (3X30+3X150)

I think that I might have asked this question before, maybe not. Has anyone asked CF about his early stages of developing athletes, hey Sir. WTF?!
How come you have been running enormous volumes for years?
1985 6x4x60m
Now the point is, that he had to take time to get to that volume somehow slowly while developing work capacity.
Let say:
85/83 volume stable @6x4x60m,
82 5x4x60m,
81 4x4x60m, so in 1981 Ben was 19years old running 960m 2x/ week and that’s without support speed.
My guess re answer would be that CF thought that this kind of volume was APPROPRIATE for athletes he coached.

And I do include Sprints in trainers to total volume when they are fast enough.

222

Isn’t intensity relative to each individual’s potential rather than relative to the potential of the best person who has ever contested a given event?

Btw: Wermouth’s hurdler was born in early 1998.

223

Intensity is indeed relative to each individual, most specifically, their current output ability. Context, on the other hand, is made in reference to the best in the world of comparable age.

If Wermouth’s hurdler was born in 1998 then we must rest assured that, at 18 years of age, he has a potentially tremendous room for improved speed which is why I listed the data of world leaders so as to provide the context.

So again, Wermouth’s hurdler, for these reasons and by all accounts, is well positioned for the volumes Wermouth has programmed for him and as his outputs increase the volumes will decrease each season.

224

I find the details are distorted in slow mo. What is the drill? What is the drill used for? Curious?

225

Volume means zero if the quality is not present. End of story. I can’t judge for sure unless I am there and see it for myself.

Some theoretical model means nothing because it will vary from day to day and week to week as work accumulates.

Am I right? I don’t give two shits if I am right. What I know for sure is volume is so very often miss understood and so often training favors more is better. It’s good that this discussion is going on. Weymouth is really the only person who knows for sure as he is the only one observing. Weymouth never be afraid to throw the theoretic model out the window if it’s not working for one of your people.

I understood the volumes performed by said hurdler were flat speed not done over hurdles. Speed will be less intensive over the hurdles but if the speed is not done over the hurdles you really have no way of controlling the speed so be careful.

Its a good sign you’ve noted in the past their speed is improving but don’t expect speed to improve quickly as other components sometimes do. In fact constant improvement is it’s not always desirable. Make sure you use quality to guide what ever you do. The second you see degradation in anything ( facial expression is a very strong indicator of first line stress) STOP.

Speed of lift?
Our lifting consisted of
squats
Bench
Incline bench
Pull downs
Vertical row
Are pulls
Reverse leg press
hamstring curls
RDL
As I matured as an athlete we learned more about cleans

Remember this is information. Chew it, experiment with it, watch for what I am talking about. Mix art and science and things you have learned for sure. Learn from those with the greatest results not one off results and learn from those who results have stood over time.

I had an extensive conversation with a coach this time last year who was asking about jumping volumes. You will get your own jumping volume quota by watching and listening when the athletes are doing the jumps. Guidelines for volumes are starting points but range of who can do what needs to be respected.

226

Every sprinter I’ve seen work with us did long runs in GPP as long as possible when we were outside. Fall and spring. 300’s, 500’s, and 600’s depending on the person. It’s hard doing the longer stuff. It’s very different work compared to short fast work and explosive work. The idea of longer work as I noted from a few of my GPP sessions is to facilitate recovery of greater volumes of speed work that comes after GPP. Do I feel longer runs are needed? I have not enough back ground of experience to say so but I was speaking to a coach who we worked with as an athlete and was heading coaching Education in UK as per a recommendation from CF and we were comparing notes as I have been coaching a 400 m runner this summer. He was saying a lot of programs are not getting this kind of work done in the fall or spring. Not doing the longer runs to build exceptional cardio vascular fitness as a base of acquiring all other elements short circuits the final envelope of speed opportunity. Cf’s words not mine.
He always told me he could easily “make” me faster sooner but it would compromise the longevity and total capacity to speed development.
I was also speaking to Tudor the other day. First thing he said was DeGrass needs to be stronger and until he gets stronger he will be missing out at the start. He would not yet have enough background in foundational strength based on what we currently know about his development and age.

227

Well, thinking about the future
I was planning to increase the overall volume of running next year for very simple and practical reason. Hight of the hurdles is going to change, therefore speaking as I see it that’s create a new problem but at the same time opportunity. Efficiency of hurdle clearance must be in place to allow youngster to be fluent over the ten bariers. Therefore more reps must be done, I don’t think that increment will be big nevertheless sufficient number of high hurdles have to be covered to allow improvements in technical efficiency, that particular part will remain to be seen.

Speaking about big CF volume just had a thought that maybe guy has covered all areas of development.
Starting with 6x4x60m as an extensive tempo, move to intensive tempo eventually special endurance and speed. Just a thought.

Anyway,
Wednesday did some dribble bleeds x 6 over 30m. Gym clean progression and started to include squats 3x8/10. Circuit 450 throws different positions, 200 sit ups, gluteus activation, stretching.

Today
All drills on the hill 10m
10x10, 10x20 really nice runs,
I decided to break the final set into 2x4x30 they looked really good.
Easy gym, just with the bar playing around.
200 abs.
Done.

Guys, thanks a lot for contribution.

Personally I think the one of most valuable principals, part of your coaching code, philosophy or whatever you want to call it that I am trying to stick to, it is what number two wrote in lessons from Charlie:

Don’t afraid to walk away.

(i don’t even know whether I am making any sense, lol,)

228

That’s weird that he bounds into acceleration…Pushing action makes sense, wonder why though he is more upright, causing more of upward movement, which is a good thing for top speed, but not for acceleration.

Thank you for the response.

229

I do not remember seeing anything about longer runs over 300s in GPP videos. Would you please elaborate on this? I remember mostly 100s, 200s for tempos and mostly hills that are 10, 20, 30, 40, 60 lengths for GPP. Would this differ for person to person? Would you please elaborate on when one should do more of GPP as shown in GPP video vs. longer run GPPs and how the outcomes differ? Maybe lankier people will do more longer runs, while explosive people do more GPP video style, or maybe it has to do with training background or training age?

I also find it interesting that you said “Not doing the longer runs to build exceptional cardio vascular fitness as a base of acquiring all other elements short circuits the final envelope of speed opportunity”. Does it mean fitness is a pre-requisite in building greater maximum velocity?

230

I, too, would like to hear more about this as I can’t recall coming across longer runs in any of the CF material I’ve purchased over the years. I’ve always approached extensive tempo with the general rules: 65-75% intensity; be able to run last rep at same pace as first rep; finishing last rep at same pace shouldn’t be too easy; 1000m-2000m for shorter sprinters; 2000m-3000m for longer sprinters. Typical workouts for me have been 3x6x100m; 2x4x200m; 6x300m–usually with a 1:2 work to rest ratio for reps and then a longer rest between sets.

What kind of intensity for the longer runs? How many total? What kind of work:rest ratio?

231

CF materials do seem to focus on 100-200 duration tempo. With some 300s in a 400m pgm. But i also cannot find anythng longer.
Maybe due to his focus on 100 and 200 runners rather than 400 athletes. For 400 runners kitkat talks about ‘over time’ rather than over distance and sems to prefer only a small amount over time, something like 350 up slight hill.
Many 400 pgms show 500-600 reps so it may not be a critical point. Maybe 8x300 compared to say 4x600 us not a big deal.

Kwaves point about benefits of tempo to develop speed - a factor often quoted is that improved cardio fitness helps recovery from speed work.

232

CF materials do seem to focus on 100-200 duration tempo. With some 300s in a 400m pgm. But i also cannot find anythng longer.
Maybe due to his focus on 100 and 200 runners rather than 400 athletes. For 400 runners kitkat talks about ‘over time’ rather than over distance. His over time seems relatively short, such as 350 uphill. However many pgms include 500-600 reps so maybe not too critical.

Kwave point about speed development. Improved cardio fitness is considered to help recovery from speed training.

233

So you mentioned that there’s an indirect effect of increase in fitness facilitating recovery, thus ability to have higher quality speed training more often. I wonder if there’s any direct effect…just the same way increase in general strength increasing force velocity curve can have small effect in I believe shifting the curve up as a whole, resulting in greater force output even at the opposite end (speed end) of the force velocity curve.

Maybe increase in general fitness can shift the metabolic capacity (alactic, lactic, aerobic or phosphagen, glycolytic, aerobic) as a whole upwards…?? maybe? not sure.

Thank you.

234

Despite my late age of training with Charlie I had no real back ground in running. My athletic background was gymnastics and track and all other sports at the high school level but I had not ever seriously been trained or coached. Essentially Charlie saw my training age as zero ish.

I just had a conversation with BJ and he said they did longer runs from 1977 to 1983 as part of GPP. Consistent with the distances I was showing in the small slice of GPP I posted a few days ago. After 1984 he said things changed and more emphasis was on shorter tempo as discussed in distances of 100’s and 200’s. I know the foundation of getting those longer runs in a GPP in spring are fall are important for anyone starting out.

First we did 100’s and then 200’s and when both were decent we started to do 300’s and then when I had enough exposure to the 300’s we started doing 500’s. Remember that the more experienced you were as a 100 or 200 meter person or hurdler the less your GPP might be depending on the level you are at and your competitions and the level of your successes that season.

235

Try to appreciate the context of the information that was created here. It’s possible none of this information would be around had 1988 not happened as their would not have been a need or motivator per say. I actually had one of the athletes tell me that Charlie told the entire world how to get fast LOL. Okay, that might be one perspective but gee whiz. I feel it’s been a pretty cool contribution that otherwise may not have existed for coaches and athletes and lots of interested parents to write to me all the time appreciating the resources to guide them.

236

Session went really well.
Hill session.
4x10m, 4x20m, 2x4x30m, 4x40m.
First set was easy and relaxed, I would say that it was too easy,
Stopped the session for a moment, had a talk and explained them the concept of “urgency” Vince Anderson’s approach.
Following runs were really sharp.
Good form.
With Athlete X trying to reduce shoulder rotation and changing foot position right off the ground (toe up)
With Athlete Y trying to change back side mechanics, I think especially in hurdles you just don’t have any time to stay at the back with your leg while in limited spacing running 9m/sec.
I think that this is one of three technical areas where the main gains in regards of time improvements will come from.
Other two are related to hurdle clearance. Lead arm mechanics and take off distance are other elements which must be addressed this season.
Bounding 4x10 LRL…, 2x10 LLL…, 2x10 RRR…
Weights
Cleans progression
Single leg ham curls 2x10,
Hip thrusts 2x10 with elastic band,
Nordic hamstrings 2x10,
Abs 200/250
Stretching, mainly hip flexor.

237

Ange, are the longer runs that you’re referring to (i.e. 300’s, 500’s) being done on tempo days or high intensity days? Or is the distinction between the two not as important in GPP as regards the running components?

238

I remember Charlie talking about longer tempo runs in workouts - esp 600-500-400-300-200. If you remember the old Trevor Graham workouts posted Marion and crew did longer tempo work in gpp.
Tuesday
4 x 200m ( 28sec-3minutes recovery)- 8minutes rest- 4x200m (28 sec - 3minutes recovery)

Thursday
4 x 400meters ( 60 sec- 5 minutes recovery)

Saturday
6x300meters ( 42sec-53sec / 90sec recovery)- push ups 2 x 50, abdominals 2 x 50, calf raises
2 x 50, pull ups 4 x 4

FYI - PJ also had success with the longer tempo runs even up to 800’s i believe.

239

I don’t recall CF talking about longer tempos…Maybe it was from one of his forum posts or forum reviews or maybe I just missed it. I haven’t got the chance to read any of Trevor Graham workouts. Is it posted on this website? Man, that workout looks tough. That 400m…

Thank you.

240

It makes more sense I guess that even Ben Johnson was doing longer runs earlier in his development.

I truly am grateful to you and Mr. Francis for this website and sharing all the information. I really don’t mean to make it seem like I’m not, and if it seemed that way for whatever reason, I apologize.