In my opinion you should do what’s important for you in the given moment, the number of reps is for you to see if you are getting better if that’s important to you of course.
I think that maybe one of my athlete would do what you can do in two minutes.
I have tested once my guys how many push ups and how many sit ups they can do, just for fun or Russian twists with med ball, lol, disaster. That was fun, some of them can bench 100 but struggling with greater number of reps. After those challenges the outcome was simple, it is not as important as I was thinking cause my high jumper won all those group tests with body weight 52 he cannot bench 50kg he smashed all the guys even those who could bench 175kg.
I think I have a bit different approach on recovery days when we are doing all the volume work like sit ups, circuits, tempo etc… I like my guys to have a bit of laugh, bit of banter not so serious about that stuff. Of course certain level of fitness must be in place, don’t get me wrong we are not lying around and doing nothing, job is done, having said that I prefer to judge them by the way they look rather by the number.
Interesting that others here find that the players were particularly fit as, in my experience with a vast amount of athletes in different sports, managing 15-17sec (again hand timed) for 100m tempo has proven relatively routine for athletes 100kg and less.
That said, rugby men must possess a high level of aerobic fitness due to the amount of running per match at sub-max speeds.
The degree to which tempo facilitates speed is relatively proportional to the athletes level of general fitness. As a result, the more “generally” fit a power speed athlete is the less the direct impact tempo will have on bolstering speed. Indirectly, however, tempo has loads of benefits for athletes who require running based aerobic fitness and they have been explained ad nauseam here and elsewhere.
It’s all a matter of differentials. The faster an athlete is the greater the stimulus they require from sprint training (aka max Velocity) to further stimulate the adaptive process. Alternatively, the slower an athlete is, the wider variety of stimuli will yield positive adaptive gains in speed. This is why special endurance is significant enough to stimulate speed in slower athletes yet insufficient enough to stimulate speed in faster athletes. As to the line in the sand, it depends on the speed of the athlete- what their max V is and what times they can run, for example, in a 300m sprint. If their average velocity in the 300m, for example, is much less than 90% of their max V then the 300m work will not have positive impact on their 100m performance.
Similarly, because team sports rely much more upon acceleration than max V we see a variety of snake oil being sold by “speed experts” and the reason for this is because there is a wider spectrum of stimuli that impact acceleration, in comparison to max V and speed endurance, AND because most team sport athletes are so poorly prepared; particularly in the realm of sprint preparation/running mechanics. The result of which yields a situation in which almost anything works.
And Asafa DOES it, and Shelly-Ann does it, and Usain does it, and Doc Patton did it with Monte Stratton…and I think Gatlin’s 200 this year came with a “little” bit of conditioning. I would not want to make it look like tempo is some kind of old school thing that they don’t do any more. It’s what you do.
I do see that sprinters don’t want to do tempo. But I think if people see that being in greater condition early allows longer rest in workouts, which allows faster speed in workouts, which allows faster speed overall when you get SE at the end of s-l, people will see it as important.
The corollary being that as an athlete progresses from just coming back from winter break through tempo, power and speed, then SE/SE1, the positive effect of tempo gets less and less, and ultimately you just replace it with more effective stimulus?
my jumpers run the tempo stuff, usually 8x100 with exercises
I did the following as a tempo session last night
2 x 4 x 50m, walk back recovery. Including either hurdle step overs or a kettlebell exercise (about 200 reps in total). Good total body general fitness, better then a 15 minute run IMO.
In 5 degrees, I was walking around in shorts and t-shirt for 20 minutes afterwards.
I’d say that is open for debate as the on-going presence of tempo clearly has its many benefits; however, it must also be stated that a 100m specialist, for example, does not, by definition, require much in the form of aerobic running fitness in comparison to the 200m and beyond.
Charlie gave up on convincing people of the value of tempo work long before he passed away. I’ve been trying to find the thread in the archives. Paraphrasing, he said if he hadn’t convinced anybody by that point he never would because he really didn’t have anything more to say without repeating himself.
Chicken Soup theory
You’re athletes are fortunate to have a great coach like you to watch them and guide them during their training by making appropriate judgement. With the high jumper being good at bodyweight exercises, he is at a advantage at it due to lighter body weight; however, it’s very likely that other athlete who bench 175 is probably a lot heavier.
How fast do they run it and do they do anything else for their aerobic fitness? Do you find it enough to get them fit? I certainly found 4x4x100 done 3x/wk at high 15-low 17 pace to not be enough to get me fit. I would think if you’re talking long jumpers, they would likely need more fitness than high jumpers because of more need for linear speed and runway buildup speed (where there would be some overlap with sprint training).
May I ask how long of warmup you had, how fast were your runs, and how heavy was the kettlebell? I haven’t done the exact same training you’ve done, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be warm enough able to walk around in shorts even for 5 minutes afterwards. Maybe this is an example of your great fitness, which allows you to maintain circulation and warm up for so long under bad conditions.
If he says it’s good I believe it. I’m a bit curious about how good one’s fitness have to be.
tempo is tough but as with anything new introduced into training you must take it step by step until you adapt to the workload. tempo is great and yes CF was blue in the face trying to convince people but results speak for themselves.
Warm Up wasn’t much, kettlebell was 12kg and 20kg, and the running pace was slow (12 sec as a guess).
I think I did some walking, and hurdle drills for warm up. I am not really training, and have only done 4 running sessions in 2 months.
[QUOTE=X-Man;251977]tempo is tough but as with anything new introduced into training you must take it step by step until you adapt to the workload. tempo is great and yes CF was blue in the face trying to convince people but results speak for themselves.[/QUOTE
The results speak for themselves. And the results are repeatable which is why this information is valuable.
[QUOTE=James Smith;251963]Interesting that others here find that the players were particularly fit as, in my experience with a vast amount of athletes in different sports, managing 15-17sec (again hand timed) for 100m tempo has proven relatively routine for athletes 100kg and less.
[b]Tempo is still tempo and it doesn’t determine a persons speed. It potentially facilitates it.
If you are truly separating hi intensity days with low intensity days, tempo during off season with any such speed can be tough. Interestingly , for the short time I was around pre 1988 September, I remember getting super excited I could do tempo with Ben and Angella . I remember thinking this was amazing for me to run with them. I learned pretty quickly that the tempo was the main event for me at that time and the only reason I could run with them even remotely is they were doing tempo at pedestrian speeds. All their energy and work had been consumed with the speed and sometimes it took all they had to squeeze out some tempo runs.[/b]
[quote="“Angela_Coon,post:37,topic:45547”]
Love this, thanks for sharing Angela.
Thank you for sharing, I’m impressed with your circulatory system. I would’ve frozen…
[b]What is your approach to testing and monitoring?
The approach is quite fundamental. Most testing and monitoring is done with the eyes - meticulous observation. ( This is how I learned and this is what I was taught)
Generally the cues or symptoms one whole monitor include degradations in flexibility or in range of motion, degraded posture, fatigue, changes in energy status both during training and outside training and changes in personality or mood relative to the individual athlete’s frame of reference.
Testing is not something which is done only periodically according to a planned schedule - it’s constant. and ongoing process that is done with every waking hour. It is done as you observe the athletes training, competition , travel and during social interaction.
Traditional testing or monitoring include the use of the stop watch, actual weights lifted and reps. However , there is not much point in recording this data, or in using this data by itself, because you have to know the athlete looked while generating it.[/b]
Q + A Page 113 Testing and Monitoring “The Charlie Francis Training System”.
I got very angry watching a practice recently because there was not one eye on the group of athletes during the warmup. I was taught to not take my eyes off the athlete and use all the information I had to decide on what work will be done.