-my coach thinks that by not doing his program iām preventing myself from shining. any advice how to confront this?
What happens to his athletes times as the season progresses? Does a guy in the 100m open with say 11.2 then run 11.5 the next week, 11.5, 11.4 etc and spend most of the season working back to the opening time? Or do the times open with 11.2 then get stale and stuck on the same time the rest of the year? Look at big picture, male/female across multiple events to look for trends. The goal would be a progression with times peaking when it matters most, hopefully the last few weeks of the season.
-is SE worth really concentrating on before pure speed devel. for hs athletes
For high school in season, yes. Out of season though itās all about acceleration, speed, and power development.
In season we still work on acceleration and speed but we also work on speed endurance (and races take care of specific endurance) because when you boil the high school season down its 12-13 weeks but thereās a week of spring break in there and you need to have qualifying times usually before week 9. Really itās more like an 8 week season and waiting to work on speed endurance (60-150m) leaves no time.
Again, in the off season weāll work on acceleration, our kids do split runs e.g. 3x(3x30m) [walk back rest reps/ 5 min. rest sets] instead of straight speed endurance to shift the focus closer to acceleration.
-my coach belives that it IS always true in reverse, and not necesarrily in the other way (ie. the idea that its the effort which improves the sprinting speed, not actually high intensity) any advice on how to convince him of the contrary?
If your maximum bench press was 200 pounds and you wanted to increase it to 300 pounds would doing reps with just the bar or even 100 pounds until your arms gave out (full effort mind you) help you reach your goal?
-what are some tell-tale signs of overload i could point out to my coach when he doesnt believe me that ive probably worked too much? iāve had past injuries resurface and feel fatigued sometimes, but he just thinks iām whining. is there any more obvious ways to prove to him?
How heavy are your or your teammates foot strikes? Is anyone able to be light on their feet or is everyone plodding? Does this deteriorate over time?
Another way is to measure power by tracking your vertical or standing broad jump every day. Youāll see normal fluctuations day to day but if you see a constant downward trend youāll know your power is decreasing.
-about how long do you think athletes need to recover from other seasons?
Just one school week is good.
Keeping our program towards the lower volume end lets kids ārecoverā from the fall and winter sports. Itās the end of the year and they can be feeling the effects of 7 months of training and competing in other sports so my goal during track is to stimulate and not annihilate.
-both my head coach and sprint coach (who was a state champ 300m runner, so its not fun having to disagree with him when he has that behind him) were football players/coaches, and football does involve non āmediumā speed running, so they see no reason to train track runners from football players (though iām not a fan of my schoolās football program either). does ur statement apply for football too?
Not as much as soccer and basketball. The football guys tend understand full effort/rest better than those other sports but they are also dealing with a 48+ minute game so they have conditioning considerations. Whereas high school track competition is 11-65 seconds of all out effort then 20 or more minutes of recovery.
The big thing I find though is lots of football coaches still run gassers for conditioning so the athletes run those only fast enough to not get yelled at. When they get to track they revert back to the mentality of running gassers, I have to teach them that they can can give it full effort because Iām giving them plenty of rest to recover.