Charlie and others, I am curious to hear your thoughts on setting up a training plan for a heptathlete. planning and periodization. track work/event work/weight room work. I’m always open to new ideas, and of course am curious to see if my ideas are in line with what others are doing or have done. thanks
Of the 7 events all have a speed component, 6 of them arre speed/power events. Most of the events also have a high techincal efficency.
So speed is important as are hurdles and high jump.
A lot of coaches will say you need to put in a lot of hours, but if you are efficient in your time use and stick to those things absolutely necessary I think I can reach a pretty high level with only 2-3 hours a day of training. This is the routine I used for a young lady who went from just under 4000 to 5241 in 1.5 years of training with me. I would tweak it a little now, but it worked for here for the time.
Monday
Jumps work - mostly approaches, maybe a few jumps
Speed work - I trained here like a 400 runner lots of runs between 100-300 (fast and low volume). LJ approaches took care of accel runs
Tuesday
Throws - full throws of one and drills of the other and vice versa on FRI
Med Balls/Plyos
Lifting
Wednesday
Hurdles - drills and if they were up for it we did block work and some 5 hurdle runs
Thursday
Jumps - decathletes vaulted
Speed Work - longer runs or 200s with short recovery. Basically a fast short way of training the 800. 200s (4-6) at 800 race pace with descending rest intervals
Short lift - if meet on Sat
Friday
Throws/Lift - in off-season
Throws drills and easy day if meet on Sat
Sat
meet or 2-3 mile run or 20-30 min continuous swim (not much of a distance running advocate for multis)
Like I said I would tweak it now but I no longer coach multis. My intention at the time was to get them off running every day and focus on the throws which was killing them. Most multis are natural hurdlers or jumpers so that is the last place to spend a lot of time. Lift em and teach em how to throw first. Once they are strong they will be ready for more intense sprint/hurdle work.
Scott Weiser
It makes sense to me to have the athlete put speed events together, let the jump approaches be calculated into the sprint work. The speed based throws could be worked into this day as well, Javelin and Discus.
On tempo days, you could do shot and partial drills.