Does anybody see any negatives of generating moderate or high levels of lactate during the off season for A)100/200m sprinter (B)200/400m sprinter?
What are the positives of lactic training for both athlete types (A&B)?
Put your thoughts out there.
For both the 200 and 400 athlete I feel high levels of lactic ie. from short rest intervals, can be useful before special endurance starts (where full rest is given between reps). The benefit would be improved lactic tolerance ready for the start of special endurance, so the runs maybe of higher quality.
Our training group has relied on alot of intermediate training with high levels of lactic (much of our special endurance really) and have never done tempo work. After only a short cycle of speed work and speed endurance after such training one of my training partners (100/200 runner) has become indoor champion at 200m twice and 400m once here in GB (AAAs championships). This is the only method we have used so I cannot say it is better or worse than just using tempo and special endurance with Charlies guidlelines. I am however, seeing alot of sense in using tempo and special endurance as described in these forums and CFTS but could never get my group to change their minds.
No one here would argue with success. I think the idea here is to try to understand the structure of various successful programs to try to understand how they work and how far they can carry the athlete. I think we can agree that tempo as I describe it would serve as a supporting means for the more demanding work, such as speed, speed endurance, special endurance, hills, strength endurance, etc.
Richard; Can you give us more details on the type of work (times etc. frequency per week, rest intervals, etc) and the duration of this type of work. you say up to eight weeks but at some point I’m assuming that intensive tempo switches to special endurance within that period.
That is funny because that is exactly how we used to train in the offseason. (and sometimes throughout the early part of the on-season)
day 1 speed and plyos would be grouped together (sometimes with weights)
day 2 Weights (upper body only)
day 3 tempo/core the day after weights pretty light for recovery purposes only (just for recovery, little CV impact)
day 4 Short rest interval long speed/hill lactic work either hill based or on the track. 90% effort with min rests. (normally with a tendancy to barf at the end haha) followed by lower body weights.
day 5 light tempo
day 6 Circuits or technique work or Rest
day 7 Rest
Into the competitive part of the season we would sub in more special endurance runs instead of the lactic runs, add another speed session on Day 6 and drop circuits entirely. But we wouldnt eliminate lactic work entirely.
I must point out though that we were not world class runners at the time. (high 10’s FAT, high 21’s Low 22’s FAT, 47-48.XX in the 400meter)
We didnt have easy or consistent access to massage, EMT etc either.
cheers,
Chris
Here are the details of our winter training. We are 100/200 and 400 runners.
GPP lasts about 4 weeks and consists of 3x2 minute grass runs twice/wk and hills once/week both sessions performed near maximal effort per run, plus drills and circuits mixed in and done seperate.
Then we begin track intervals which last about 5-6 weeks and are done as follows:
Monday: 6x300 with 3 minutes rest between runs. Each run performed in no faster than 40-42 seconds for the first session with improvements made each week thereafter. Speed depends on the individual…we have 33-35 second pbs.
Tuesday: weights
Wednesday: 500, 200, 400, 300 with around 10 minutes between runs. The runs are done in best times possible apart from 90-95% 200.
Thursday: weights
Friday: rest
Saturday: Speed work, or 10x90 at 90% with 15 seconds rest between runs, or hills depending on the athlete. (I like to do speed work and then sundays weights here instead, and am thinking of putting a tempo session on friday.)
Sunday: weights
In the next phase we concentrate on speed and speed endurance with the odd special endurance session. Speed and speed endurance run at atleast 95% with full rest. Special endurance run in atleast 95% with 20-30 minutes rest.eg. 3x300 or 250, 200, 150.
With all the talk of medium speed work eg 2x3x300 I would like to ask the following question…
Is there really a difference between the above session and something like 3 x 600m full recovery…
The speeds are probably not much different ?
Would the lactic levels differ much ?
I tend to think of all the intensive interval stuff as a form of
split rep special endurance work…
Originally posted by Richard Hand
Here are the details of our winter training. We are 100/200 and 400 runners…
Richard, what are you targetting with your strength training at this time?
Terming…
Weeks 1-4 as phase 1
and
Weeks 5-10 as phase 2
Are you doing something like an AA phase in Phase 1 and then leading into a max strength phase in Phase 2? The benefit I see here is that your track work is pretty light on CNS demands, so your weight work could be pretty intense.
aj, the 300 session run as we do it seems to develop more lactate accumulation since the 500/600 sessions needs more rest. But I suppose they are quite similar regarding the stress on the energy systems.
dcw23, for resistance training we use circuits using either body weight or high rep weights for phase 1 (GPP) and then drop the weights down to reps of 10 or 8 for phase 2 and then down to 5 after that for max strength. However, I take your point that it would be useful to use max strength in phase 2 before CNS demanding track work begins. I am wondering whether I should start an AA phase half way through GPP and then split phase 2 between AA and max strength carrying max strength part way into phase 3 where track becomes more CNS demanding.
Richard can you show a typical timeline of your difference phases in weeks and what month/date you typically start each phase?
ie:
Phase 1 GPP 8 weeks, Phase 2: 6 weeks etc etc
thanks!
Chris
Chris, I have stated the 1st phase of 4 weeks as GPP and then the second phase of intensive intervals for 5-6 weeks. However, I am wondering if this is really all GPP. The 3rd phase which lasts until the indoors involves speed, speed endurance and special endurance. After the indoors a shortened phase 2 is repeated and then we concentrate mainly on speed and speed endurance with just special endurance once a fortnight.
Cool thanks for the information. It seems to be a general GPP at the beginning with a bit of specificity at the end towards lactic work.
Cheers,
Chris
Would anyone like to comment on or critisise the programme I posted?
Are there any 400 sprinters that would like to compare their programme (or Charlies) to the one I posted?
Which program did you post?
I am always up for a good discussion 
Ummm this may be a dumb question, but What does HSI stand for?? I know they are a track club and Mo G belongs to them, but what is the name?
thanks
“Handling Speed Intelligently”
Are you serious?? What kind of crappy track club name is that?? Who thinks that S#$% up?? I mean come on, sounds like something a 6yr old comes up with.
You can always start you own club. Think of the advantage you’ll have over them if you have a really cool name!
Originally posted by Charlie Francis
You can always start you own club. Think of the advantage you’ll have over them if you have a really cool name!
hahaha!!!
Well I am not planning on starting my own club, but if I did I wouldnt make a name thats sounds boastful like HSI. Just saying the name out loud you know Americans like John Drummond came up with that.
However, I can see the that most ppl want the cooler name, I guess thats b/c they target the adolescent audience.
HSI also mean Hudson Smith International -named after the founders. I think the dual meaning of HSI is clever and appropriate.