I need help with planning

Expert Discussion Planning and Periodization
1

I am 16, HS freshman, just finished first track season, but only practiced for about a month and a half due to an injury, so training experience is very low. I run the 100, maybe 200 also next season. I’m starting to set up my plan for next season. Since I’m a beginner, I know I should just work on general conditioning, but I have no idea how specific I should get. I read Training for Speed, the 2002 Forum Review, and Speed Trap, and honestly, while it cleared some things up, I am still very confused. I’ve searched the forums a lot, also, and it has helped some.

I’m thinking about focusing mainly on strength over the summer, with conditioning and a little speed work. Then in the fall start a long GPP phase, then a pretty long SPP phase, and then a little bit shorter pre-comp phase that ends right before the season starts. Should I get that specific, though? If so, is that an ok plan? Should I just work on general conditioning the whole time?

A couple other questions:
How often should things be changed (could I do the same thing every week for each phase)? I know in strength training it is very important to switch things up in order to avoid adaptation and stalled gains, is it the same with sprint training?

How should I set up a weekly training plan? Is the sample weekly plan from the 2002 Forum Review a good start? How should I change it to suit different goals?

Thank you.

2

Hey sprint - nice to see you’ve done some reading, and I hope you are feeling better from your injury… although I (or anyone) can not prescirbe specifics for you, may I offer a detailed suggestion?
Summer -
Mondays- Acceleration Work
Tuesdays- Tempo
Wednesdays - Hills and ME Upper Body (go for a new 5 rep max in BP)
Thursday - Tempo
Friday - ME Lower Body (Go for a new 5rm on SQ, follow with P-chain exercises)
Saturday - Tempo

Good Baselines to start with —

  1. Use sets of 4 — this makes volume management easy.
    I’d say start with 1 set of 4 30m fall forward accelerations at 95% for Acceleration work
    2 sets of four short hills for hill work
    2 sets of four 100s at 70% for tempo

  2. add something every week — like calisthenics on a daily basis, med ball work (and progress from strength and conditioning exercises to power), and more exercises/ volume in the weight room. This has a snow ball effect on your general conditioning.

  3. once every three weeks or so, (or really, whenever you feel very fresh at the end of your acceleration work) try a 60 or a 100 — if you’re matching or beating PB’s after a CNS workout, things are working. If you feel the up/down and flying sensation, things are working.

In the fall, I’d do something similar until about November, when I’d start a Max Strength Phase.
CFTS has a detailed description of what this should look like…
here’s what I suggest (and will do myself this indoor season, adjusting of course for competitions)
Monday - Tempo (below 65%)
Tuesday- Accel + Weights
Wednesday - tempo
Thursday - SE (2x60) + Weights
Friday - tempo
Saturday and Sunday — recovery stuff
after a maintenence phase (2 weeks), I’d do a short (2 - 10 day microcycle) GPP phase, then repeat the Max Strength cycle, with the following changes -
Saturday becomes Max V day (flying runs) and SE goes out to 2x80m, and reduce the accel work. —Then, you should be at or in your HS outdoor season
Let us know what you plan on doing and start a training journal… I’m very interested in your development

3

Wow, thank you. This is great. I have a couple questions, though. Also, one note-my strength training experience is a little longer than my sprint training (about 7 months), and I know more about strength training than sprint training.

For the weights in summer, on the two days do you mean a 5-rep max in bench and squat every week, or should I rotate ME exercises like Westside? Also, no DE days, will the speed development come from the track? What about speed for the lifts, or does it not matter?

Do you think I could handle a little bit more with strength training, I was planning to do a CT pendulum cycle or two over the summer. I have one planned out, I can make a couple adjustments and post it if needed. It would be either 3 or 4 days a week depending on the block, total body for 3 days, and upper/lower for 4 days. I would probably have to reduce the volume if I did that if this would work in the first place) and switch the 4 days to 3, right?

Should I keep the template the same over the summer? Wouldn’t adding some speed endurance or special endurance be good for general conditioning and the “why fight for tenths or hundreds at the start when you can gain seconds in the later stages of the race through general conditioning” thing. Or will that come later?

I don’t know of any hills to run on, is there anything else I should do?

Last thing: How often should I switch/rotate exercises for tempo, accel, and SE?

Thank you, I really appreciate this.

4

ok… lets see… I made the template from some stuff I really liked from Joe DeFranco, and he says go ahead and rotate… I’m not right now, b/c full range BP and SQ are still safe and working for me.
Bingo on the speed development
Re: General Conditioning - that’s what tempo/gpp work does for you. speed or special endurance is exactly that - developingthe capacity to run a given sprint in as fast as you can. You do SE runs when you need to ‘fight for tenths’ b/c they are very draining on the CNS.
Tempo you can change every workout - just asa long as it roughly fits the parameters of CFTS and you do it after a good warm up
Accel work I like to have an absolute max meterage goal for a workout (for me right now, I want to be able to do 6x10,5x20,4x30,3x40,2x50,1x60, sometime this summer) and what I’ll do is depending on wheree in the cycle I am I’ll take a component part or two, or three and I’ll do what I can. the next week, I’ll try to make an improvement in work capacity. as long as I’m hitting my times and feeling good, I’ll up the load for the next week. So every week I guess you could say I rotate work.
No Hills? where do you live? I’m in Saint Louis and even my HS area has some grassy knolls I could use.
Remember, what I wrote was just a suggestion — add what you feel neccesary, but remember -

  1. Your focus is sprinting! If it doesn’t answer the question “Will this contribute to my track work” don’t do it
  2. Build a base — recall CFTS - 8 years of dedicated, consistent, good training and coaching is optimal for getting to the point where one could realize their speed potential
5

Ok, so what I have now as a rough outline is this:

Summer: May 24 to August 27 (14 weeks)

Monday- Acceleration work
Tuesday-Tempo
Wednesday-Hills, ME Upper Body
Thursday-Tempo
Friday-ME Lower Body
Saturday-Tempo
Sunday-Active Rest

*Adding volume progressively

Fall: August 29 to November 5 (11 weeks)

What should I put here? I know something similar to the summer work, but I don’t know what I should change, and I want to switch it up some. Maybe add some high-intensity intervals, 30-50 meters as in CFTS?

Max Strength: November 7 to January 1 (8 weeks)

Monday-Tempo
Tuesday-Acceleration and Weights
Wednesday-Tempo
Thursday-SE and Weights
Friday-Tempo
Saturday-Active Rest
Sunday-Active Rest

Maitenence: January 3 to 15 (2 weeks)
Same but lower volume?

GPP: January 17 to 29 (2 weeks) I can change this back to 10 days, but 2 weeks sounded better.

Max Strength 2: January 31 to February 26 (3 weeks) Should this be longer?

Monday-Tempo
Tuesday-Acceleration(reduced) and Weights
Wednesday-Tempo
Thursday-SE and Weights
Friday-Tempo
Saturday-Max Velocity
Sunday-Active Rest

A couple things:

Should the second max strength be longer? If so, should I reduce some of the summer or fall work?

In determining when to add volume, is the thing I’m looking for to determine if I am doing too much times dropping off?

The weights are 2 days a week the whole time, is there any time I could handle more? I was wanting to do something different over the summer as I mentioned in my second post. If it would be too much work, then I definitly won’t.

This helps a lot, thanks.

6

Another idea: How does Joe Defranco’s new thing look as something I could over the summer for lifting? http://www.t-mag.com/nation_articles/311west.jsp

A little down the page it says you can change the order like this:

[QUOTE=]MONDAY (A.M.) – MAX-EFFORT Upper Body lift
MONDAY (P.M.) – Sprint work, conditioning, GPP or skill training
TUESDAY – OFF or Restoration techniques
WEDNESDAY - Sprint work, conditioning, GPP or skill training
THURSDAY – REPETITION Upper Body lift
FRIDAY - Sprint work, conditioning, GPP or skill training
SATURDAY – Lower Body lift
SUNDAY – OFF or Restoration techniques
[/QUOTE]

I could do something like that, but I would change it to look like this:
MONDAY (A.M.) – Acceleration Work
MONDAY (P.M.) – MAX-EFFORT Upper Body lift
TUESDAY – Tempo
WEDNESDAY - Hills and Repetition Upper Body lift
THURSDAY – Tempo
FRIDAY - Lower Body lift
SATURDAY – Tempo
SUNDAY – Off or Tempo

How does that look? Thanks.

7

Just fine :cool: