See Jet doing nothing but a bunch of general strengthening exercises with John Smith standing right there. The first time I saw this, with a whopping 2 plates on each side of the 45 degree, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But the real point is it doesn’t matter. She is still the fastest woman alive, and I think its fair to say that she didn’t get there due to the specificity of her weight program.
Now repeat after me Charlie’s mantra:
Weights are General
Weights are Secondary
Weights follow track
As Charlie pointed out on this forum multiple times, all you really need is a push, a pull, and a squat.
I think their gym work is before their track work in most cases.
I don’t think gym work will directly make you faster anyway. I would keep it general at the moment with circuits etc and when the season ends, you may assess things again.
Having done very little in the way of weights during pretty much my entire athletic career I’m not going to rush to add them in now, I just want to make sure that on the occasions I do find myself in a gym I’m doing the right stuff. Especially with my warm weather training trip coming up soon I’ll have access to proper Olympic weights so I also wanted to know what exercises and what weight I should be doing for those sessions.
But I won’t be losing any sleep if I can’t get in the gym on a regular basis this season
I assume he does yes, works well on creating a good powerful extension and activating the posterior.
At this stage, I would just add a fairly light ATG squat, light to mid deadlifts (not heavy as this may strain your hamstrings if not strong enough) and a nice easy bench press / incline bench
In addition would look at “core” elements, that will keep your legs swinging. (Kinda prehab) weighted drinking birds, hip thrusts, reverse step lunges.
That overhead med ball throw is quite often incorporated into the medball sessions we do at training, and I can say right now there is no way I have space for that in the gym. lol
But really if I’m doing it at training anyway I don’t need to go out of my way to do it at the gym too.
What are drinking birds by the way? Google couldn’t help me on that one.
If you have any kind of weakness you will find it with that, I get my guys to hold a 20kg plate out in front, this works core, flexibility and will strengthen the hammy eccentrically real nice
Im thinking, you’re only a month from outdoors, forget weights.
Do instead explosive mediball instead of weights.
Squat - throw
Jump - squat - throw
Behind head throw
Roll back - throw
Add in slow push ups (different angles)
Chin ups And bodyweight rows.
Maybe some lunges etc.
Do all this outdoors.
It’ll not make you overlly tight.
Yet will give you a solid start before starting weights next season or once this season ends.
I totally agree.
Secondly I noticed in the other thread that you did a gym session last saturday instead of your usual sprint session. Hopefully that was a one time deal. Sacrificing sprint workouts in order to fit in your gym work would be a serious mistake.
I’m not in any mad panic to start doing weight right now, as you guys have said it’s close to outdoor season and whatever I’m doing seems to be working in one way or another.
I’ll make sure I do extra med ball and pylometrics to try to boost my explosive power a bit. I can always go down the track and do bounds over hurdles between sessions.
And that was a one off martijn, I only went to the gym because I missed the track session. And I would always preference the Saturday sessions over the gym as they are normally more speed orientated so I need to make sure I’m doing those ones!
I would argue that you wont improve your explosive power if you are not improving your ability to produce force eg max strength. For me squats followed by a posterior chain exercise twice a week after your speed work will provide a different stimulus and benefit your power. i would go 2-3 x 5-6 squats followed by RDL 2-3 6-8 this wouldnt take too long and best bang for buxh imo
Do you think it’s necessary to do the RDL on both sessions? What about doing it once a week esp. when you don’t do regular sprints and do hill sprints in your speed session. And also if you are squatting deep it will recruit the posterior chain to a good effect as well I think. Also, how heavy do you go on the RDLs after already going heavy on the squats. I go to 5-6 reps with moderate to heavy weight but I keep a strict form and explode on my reps. I was wondering how you or anyone else do it?
Bit of a thread resurrection, but it made sense to keep all this together. I now have access to a new strength and conditioning facility at a local university, including Olympic bumper weights, squat racks and weight platforms etc. at my disposal.
I want to get myself a ‘proper’ gym plan sorted so I can make use of this new facility, I have almost 16 weeks until my first outdoor competition, and I plan on doing 2 gym sessions a week during this period. I just spent the last 3 hours watching the CF Weights for Speed series, although the bit I needed most i.e. sets, reps and percentages or any sort of guide on an overall weight plan was left out at the end which was slightly disappointing.
So I still need advice on where to start with that. Do I just go for a basic 5x5 program, or try to be a bit more clever and go for higher reps with low percentages in the earlier weeks and build up to lower reps and set with higher percentages and try to give it a proper structure?
