notes:
-barton hall is not know to be a fast track, but it is nonetheless, actual track material and 200m (no banks though)
-positives: felt relaxed in both races, technique was good in the 300m, good start in the 60m
-negatives: had an english final between the 60m and 300m (probably added a distraction to me running fast), times in either race were not good even for what i did in hs, hip height could’ve been better in the 60 and my upperbody had a lot of twisting movement, need to go out faster in the 300m
notes:
-back home, using hs indoor track to do winter workouts. stuff seems more general again, and if facilities can’t be reached i am suppose to try my best to improvise something similar. no shorter sprints are involved, or full speed stuff in general, i may try to replace volume that i lose because i don’t know the exercise or because i didn’t have a facility available with some full speed running and/or contrast work
-back to self-massage, but will continue to use contrast baths for recovery and spot icing for injuries
-wrist is hurt, can’t clean anymore. just doing the parts of that exercise separately now (pull, front squat, arm motion with db’s)
-mechanics are beginning to fall into place and be more natural
-barely ate the day before my weigh in, i think i’ve put on some weight again, but it appears to be good weight as i still am seeing more ribs and muscle definition than ever
notes:
-got a new scale so i did another weigh-in, seems to read a bit heavier than my old one did so i don’t think it’s so much that i gained weight. regardless, i do the weigh-in’s mostly for comparison
-still working on the winter workouts, some much more general stuff than we’ve been doing, very little full speed work, but lots to work on my relaxation and upright mechanics
-mechanics feel like they are starting to come together, arm swing beginning to feel natural again and looks much tighter and relaxed, working on dorsi-flexion and knees are hitting the top with really just a step-down cue. excessive backside mechanics are gone! will be excited to get back to more specific training when break is over and watching my times drop as i’m certain they will
-noticed that i am looking significantly more muscular than i have in a while, maybe ever, because i am weighing just about my heaviest ever, but am not takning creatine now and seem to have lower bf than ever. plus my fitness and overall strength are definitely the best they’ve ever been, in the least my body is definitely ready to get fast, now just to train the actual speed
continuing with winter training, not much new to update. getting better at dorsi flexing striking. felt pretty exhausted in the weightroom this week so hopefully that means my other training is taking more effect!
-all lifting has been at 80% of our max during winter break and i can tell i’m having some major strength increases because the lifting sessions are beginning to seem very easy to me whereas at the beginning of the break they seemed quite difficult
-wrist is finally feeling good enough to start cleaning again. i dont think that my weight will have taken too much of a hit because i just parametrized the exercise so i still did all the motions and hit all the worked muscles. 185 still felt like an absolute piece of cake and thats nearly 75% of my tested max
-hip mobility and strength feeling better and better, had first full speed runs in a while on monday and without trying my stride was really able to open up and it felt much faster. my elasticity sems to be improving too as there is a noticible bounce in my stride that used to be flat
I see you are up at Cornell. I know Coach Howley works with all Olympic and non-Olympic sports up there. How do you like him and the program? Any general comments?
i actually don’t see too much of coach howley because he is more of an athletic administrator than a coach. any training i’ve had has been with coach taylor, thompson and sometime beech. i do believe that he is probably involved in the writing of our weight room programs as they don’t seem to line up exactly with the running workouts which i know coach taylor prepares. about the weight program, very little higher rep work and A LOT of squatting. sometimes we can end up squatting 4-5 times in a week, though only a couple of those days would be heavier back squats and even those weeks are probably submax lifting weeks
me running 30m 3 pt with a few mechanical changes. was post-plyo workout and it was dipping into probably the low 50s at that point of the day. i think i should actually lean a bit more forward as i am nearly leaning backwards at certain points of a couple strides
i’ve been training with a friend this winter. he will be jumping for keene st this coming spring. he’s about a 20 ft long jumper and this jump was 18.5 ft. the sand was quite ard as its out of season and this was also post-plyo workout
Can you post a slow mo video? It looks as though you are being to pity patty with your strides/You are not covering very much ground like you’re running in place. Are you fighting for frequency?
any advice on how to put it in slomo? i don’t know how to do that, all i did was directly post it to youtube, is there someway to alter the playback speed while uploading?
and ironically, i’m not concentrating at all on frequency, just range of motion, solid core, upright posture and relaxation. i think the low video quality increases how “pity patty” it looks (recorded from my cell phone). i will have higher quality video to post this friday, maybe even some tomorrow.
i do think having a slight forward lean like i see most professionals having would be beneficial to my stride length because while backside mechanics would appear to be worse, really just my takeoff point would be further behind my COM meaning more force pushing back and propelling me forward as opposed to down and up. just from measuring in the video frame-by-frame it appears that my strides are at least longer than my height, i think they are right about 2 meters while upright
i do believe my steps at the start are kind of small too, but i know im hitting triple ext and thats my strongest part of the race so im not planning on messing with it (thru ~20m i’m right with 10.5x kids usually)
this site i found says that i should go for approximately a 7.5 foot stride optimally. i will measure next time i run because i am curious where i am compared to this. ive been told it looks like my stride length looks small, though i think this might just be the fact that my backside mechanics are very, very minimal when i get upright if i really cue light, quick, bouncy running as opposed to overstriding and pushing
i agree, i noticed that my front knee comes above parallel with the ground and my plant leg ends up pushing down instead of at a 45* angle. i did some relaxed 150s today and have video that i will post later, but hip height appears to be similar. gct looks to be a bit longer but my stride length looks to be much better. ill take video on friday when ill have a couple full speed runs
Could it be that your hips are rotated too much causing the weight to be transferred behind the cog and the body positioning is not quite right simply because of overcompensation?
i think that in that specific run i simply overdid the hips posterior tilt a bit as my back even appears to be a bit hunched forward instead of a slight arch back. kind of like an “a” run as opposed to a sprint
weight program for the winter ran out today, but on the workout schedule it says i’m suppose to lift, so i did an easy bodybuilding circuit i just made up since we rarely hit that rep range anymore, i want a high quality sprint day tomorrow so i couldnt do any cns taxing stuff and we rarely hit specific muscles, so it would just be a change. here it is:
2x10:
each db biceps curl (alt)@25,35
side shoulder raise@15,20
decline fly@20,30
bentover raise@10,15
lat pull down (wide grip)@45,90
ab rollout@kneeling,standing
stomach vacuum@lying,double leg bridge
each side bend@50,75
each high cable twist@30,40
hack squat machine calf raise@90,180
reverse hyper@25,50
first set actually felt kind of difficult, not used to that rep range anymore. ironically, i think i have more hypertrophy than ever in nearly every muscle group besides my abs and pecs. guess higher sets, lower reps, lower rest works better for me as far as bodybuilding goes
tomorrow i will do a weigh in and a full speed and contrast training workout. i will post video on saturday of the sprints if i can get someone to shoot for me. then the weekends off for me, back to school and back to regular practice!
will post video of me and my friend tomorrow. i think i found a big break through in why my upright speed and stride length is so small. i stop applying force downward and back right before i hit the ground so each step is a brake and all my legs are doing is preventing a collapse. there is like no air time or travel except for that which is required to get my leg from the recovery position to the knee up position. its like im just doing an exaggerated walking motion quickly and the only extra stride length im getting is from a bit of an elastic response, but barely any full muscle contractions seem to occur. i think i need to key on the step down and back cue THROUGH ground contact more instead of just to right before it
weigh in -> 149 lbs/ 67.5 kg
Full warm up
3x blast out, 55m blocks (6.97,6.93)
functional warm up
weights warm up
2x5 bench@135,165, 3 power squat@225,275, depth jump to hurdle hops@no box to green hurdles to low box to low hurdles, power out@2 pt, 3 pt
3x5 becnh@185, 3 power squat@315, depth jump to hurdle hops@high box to high hurdles, power out@ 4 pt
cool down
stretch
contrast bath
contrast shower
notes:
-very sore today in the core
-intense cns workout today, i think i found my major mechanical flaw. the name of the game is all about applying force to the ground and i actually wasnt telling my legs to apply any