Are all the elements of acceleration, maxvelocity and speed endurance meant to be in place before the start of the outdoor season, whether l-to-s or s-to-l, and improvement comes through the lighter work load that naturally allows for the intensification of speed OR are some elements developed during the competitive season. For example l-to-s maxvelocity s-to-l speed endurance?
I need peace of mind!
Depending on the type of progression (l-s or s-l) certain aspects of the race will develop at different times. It also depends on how you set up you gpp/spp leading up to a season.
If things go according to plan in my spp, then I would expect acceleration and speed to be in place for competition season indoors. Competitions should be used to tweak technical and psychological aspects of the race while tapering down.
For outdoors, I build upon my speed in the 60m and make sure my 100m endurance is in check for the season.
What I personally do is let the competitive season take care of my 200m times in a short to long. Its not completely necessary, I just prefer things that way.
In a long to short, you might not tap into you’re true speed potential until a few races in, but I would imagine it would be the opposite of what I do with my 200m. That is that your 200m endurance should be in place, and you let the competitions take care of the 100m speed.
I’ve found that competition season isn’t the time to be building, its the time to let what you’ve built come to fruition. If you plan properly, you should have no worries come competition season. What I would never do is go into a competition season with poorly prepared speed, acceleration or endurance and expect the competitions to improve them, because competition only offers limited improvements in itself.
Charlie’s SPP video describes this plannification really well. What you’re competition times tell you is how well you’ve prepared/trained leading up to it.
Great post, Syrus.
Great post and all but I think things boil down to weather and facilities for most people. What if you only have a 30m hallway, then you must work on accel and focus on top speed and SE when you can. What if you only have a two week gap btw indoor and outdoor?
Definitely
I’ve seen so much wasted talent due to poor coaching and facilities its amazing.
Best example I’ve seen to date: One of my competitors had been doing collegiate track for 4 years. His school had a pretty much non existent track program, but he managed to have a coach, but lacked a proper facility to train in during the winter. I believe they resorted to training at a rink. His 60m times hovered around 7.3-7.2s.
In his last year of eligibility, he moved out west for graduate studies. He was able to train at a proper facility with the exact same coach sending him workouts. He hit 6.8s that season. I was amazed when I saw this. At the championships I asked him: “What the hell dude!” haha. He said, “All I did was train on a track consistently”. I’m still shocked to this day by his progress.
I’ve also heard of groups of athletes training in school gyms during the winter.
With that being said, top notch facilities are definitely not prerequisites for progression, but if you only have 30m, its going to seriously limit potential.
The two week gap between indoors and outdoors would be tough, especially from a championship situation, when you need to qualify for regionals,ect… quickly. I think the less ideal the situation the more creative thinking is needed. When switching from indoors to outdoors so quickly, it is probably important to use the competition as training, I think this is the heart of the issue in this thread. My guess would be that volumes during these competition weeks would need to be higher than typical competition weeks. So include the competitions as training days, and build what you need (endurance or possibly even speed), while competing. I would expect competition times to vary way more than usual, tapering for the important meets would be vital to success.
The longer the competition period the better in this situation because it allows you to sustain a higher volume for longer before tapering down for major competitions. Remember you need progressive intensification to improve, and competitions only offer a limited intensification. Thats why we train beyond those volumes and taper down.
But ideally, these things should be in place before competition. Then all you’ve got to worry about is the bang of that gun and that new pb you’re going to set.
Well at the NCAA level 2-3 weeks is the norm between indoor and outdoor and this is the reason why so many coaches prefer to follow a l-s or intensive tempo scheme. I agree with using the gpp for accel development, spp for top speed development but I also think it would be useful to include some longer sprint work in the program. Competing in a couple indoor 200’s would also help the athlete transition to outdoors.
Thanks Syrus2001 for that.
The reason I ask is that some athletes make quite large improvements during the season. Improvements that seem beyond what one would expect if they maintained the elements that were developed in the spp.
I typically attribute a few things to people that make huge gains within a season and that is:
If they’re coming off a long to short, and its at the shortest end of the spectrum, or short to long and its on the long end of the spectrum. I’m never surprised to see my 200m time drop by 0.5s between two races.
If their plan was pretty much a waste of time or poorly planned, then the intensity of competition will provide gains within itself. For example a guy who runs cross country all year and then goes and runs 100m sprints. Well their body will adapt to those 100m pretty quickly but also stall quickly and the chance of injury is quite high.
Someone who trains through competitions and only tapers later in the season will probably have a pretty dramatic time drop during the season. I would never underestimate the power of a good taper.
Proper planning cannot be avoided if you want to maximize your potential. In each of those scenarios I believe that a person will run their fastest times if all things are in check prior to competing.
I’m never going to run my fastest 200m possible if I keep leaving competitions take care of that aspect of my race. The last situation is probably the best option in terms of development when necessary.
Great talent is sometimes lost in poor planning, and you’ll see glimpses of it when their going through competition periods.
I follow a s-l program and my 60m times can drop two-three tenths in one season. It always take me 3-4 meets to get going and I run my best at the end.
Thats a pretty huge drop. Mine typically fall about one tenth from tapers/technical adjustments and adrenaline. Also I guess this could be highly individual. Some people tend to be way more inconsistent technically than others. My teammate ran a pb of 7.19s in the heats and a 7.31s in the final, he is terribly inconsistent from meet to meet. Whereas I tend to be quite consistent from meet to meet and race to race, maybe .02s between heats and finals and between meets if that even. The only significant time drop within season that I’ve ever experienced came from a technical adjustment to my start which made me jump from consistent 10.9s, to 10.7s. Other then that, conditions and competition and slight progressions will advance my times.
Something to remember when the time within the training/competition calendar seems limited for various reasons:
The higher your level of trainedness the less time you need to spend on GPP and the more of that time you may spend on concentrated training.
Thus, in a S-L for example, while the transition from indoor to outdoor may only span a couple weeks, you may very well be in suitable form for the transition if you are in a position to concentrate your training efforts earlier in the year.
When GPP only spans 7-10 days, as an example, the calendar all of sudden seems much more manageable.
Thats a good point James, one that I completely forgot about.
You might also see someone progress quickly when its within the realm of what they’ve done before. So say drop down 2-3 tenths only to approach their pb or equal it. So previous levels of performance are a factor. Its not such a rare occurrence when someone drops 2-3 tenths without a pb over a few meets, but when someone drops 2-3 tenths off of their best over 3-4 meets, that is rare.
And here is the confusion for me. Because if everything is in place before the start of competition then large improvements from one race to another can only be the result of being fresher and having more CNS energy concentrated on the primary focus- the event. Yet the kind of improvements seen in-season hint at something much more developmental in those athletes cases whether this is deliberate or just unintententional (some unforseen by-product of the coach’s maintenance programme).
And here is the confusion for me. Because if everything is in place before the start of competition then large improvements from one race to another can only be the result of being fresher and having more CNS energy concentrated on the primary focus- the event. Yet the kind of improvements seen in-season hint at something much more developmental in those athletes cases whether this is deliberate or just unintententional (some unforeseen by-product of the coach’s maintenance programme).
In the SPP download Charlie speaks of Ben’s development and he was typically where he wanted to be in his season right off the bat from the first couple of competitions.
What you should concern yourself with is your plan and progression forget other people’s progression. Its sporadic because of the way they’ve prepared. If you plan properly the results will come. You want consistency. Not to run 10.2 and then never see that number again because you have no clue what you did to get there. You’ll run a good time and say, of course thats what I was planning for. If the goals were realistic to begin with.