High School Coach

I am a girl’s high school track coach. This is my second year and after looking at last years program and doing A LOT of reading, I found that my program last year was well… not very good. I wasn’t completely disappointed though because everyone on my team had PR’s at the district meet. Anyway, to my questions… I have a 13-week season from the time practice starts until the District me, 14 including the regional meet, and 15 including the state meet. Most of my kids will be coming out from other sports, I’ll have a few doing soccer and track simultaneously, and the basketball girls will not come out until the week of the first meet (which is 5 weeks after practices begin). For the girls that will start with me from day 1, I was planning on a 5 week GPP phase, 4 weeks SPP, and 4-week comp phase. I will have 5 days a week to work with them during GPP, and 4 after that because we will have one Fri-Sat meet a week.

GPP:
Monday- Intensive Tempo
Tuesday-Extensive Tempo/ body circuit
Wednesday-Hills
Thursday-Extensive Tempo/body circuit
Friday- warm up, drills, strides

I know in SPP I need to throw in more acc. dev., max velo, speed endurance, and special endurance but I am unsure how to structure the week?

I will just say this: if everyone PR’d at districts last year I would not be looking to completely overhaul your program.

What events do you coach? 100m-400m?

Well I’m working on my sprint program only right now. I am the head coach so I write all the workouts for all events but I’m specifically writting for 100m-400m at the time.

So you think I need to completly overhaul my program? If you don’t mind me asking why? We have a goal to PR at the district meet for those individuals who will not make regionals or state. Especially for my Junior Varsity and Freshmen Division kids.

Are you going short to long or long to short? This determines the ordering of those elements.

I am not sure about the use of intensive tempo on monday. Maybe swap the hills and the intensive tempo day? (So the hills have more quality). This is only based on observations regarding my own training, so your mileage my vary.

I meant I would NOT be looking to completely overhaul your program since everyone PR’d at districts. Sorry about that.

I’ve read a lot on not using Intensive tempo at all, any comments on that? If I don’t do intensive tempo work, I am going Long to short.

What kind of facilities do you have and are you doing anything in the weightroom?

I’m looking to completely overhaul because I did get desent results last year! However, I was doing things like giving way to much rest where I wasn’t supposed to or to little rest and not enough distance on some workouts.

Yes but it is a very small wieght room and as horrible as this is, Football has priority, then baseball… So the wieght room really isn’t an option.

i ment I’m NOT looking to completely overhaul, made the same typo as above!

Is there a meet on Saturday during your GPP phase?

If not, I’m wondering about the distribution during the week. Right now, you have four relatively difficult days followed by one lighter day followed by two rest days. If you want to stick with the mix you initially posted, this seems to make more sense:

Mon: Hills
Tues: Ext. Tempo/body circuit
Weds: Warm up, drills, strides
Thur: Intensive Tempo
Fri: Ext. Tempo/body circuit

No meets during GPP, but I will only be working with them monday-friday so thank you for the suggestion…

Can you give us some sample sessions of each workout?

Well if I follow the suggestion for the week mentioned above:

Monday- Hill day:

2 x 40 up, 2 x 40 down, and 2 x 30, 40 flat.

Tuesday Extensive Tempo:

12 x 100m @ 65% w/ 50m rest on the football field

Wednesday- Warm up, drills, etc…

Thursday- Intensive Tempo:

4 X 200 @ 80% w/ 3min rest

Friday Extensive Tempo:

6 X 200 @ 65% w/ 1 min rest

Couple of thoughts.

  • don’t do runs down the hill…bad…bad
  • I’d bump up the volume each day (maybe +20%) especially since you’re probably not going to do weights.

Could you please explain why running down hill is bad?

I’ll bite.

Some people advocate running down gentle 1-3% slopes as a form of over speed training - and that’s setting aside the question of the value of that kind of training.

It looks like from the length of the reps you’re doing that your hill work is (or should be) on a fairly steep (<15%) hill. Running down hills like that will damage rather then strengthen the quads and the supportive structure of the knees and hips. Plus, there’s a good chance someone will fall.

I’d also suggest that you make you’re hill day 2x4x40m or 3x3x40m and take out the flat sprints for the first three weeks of the GPP.

Thank you! And I’ll follow your suggestion…

Any ideas, recommendations, or suggestions on how this should change in SPP. I’m assuming no more hills and no more intensive tempo stuff.

You are probably right about hills, but both will depend on your approach to training (S-to-L or L-to-S).