HRV is really interesting.
Last year, i was purposely attempting a deep heart rate reading to tell me to back off. So i thought, i’ll run a 20km run at 80% of max HR on fri, that’ll stuff me. All week the readings kept saying i was on track and training well. The day after the 20km run, i woke up feeling great. The HRV score showed Complete recovery! (last yr i wasn’t training for sprints, more like a 10km) Your talk on 10 x 100’s not doing anything, yet 10 x 200’s do. There is deff something there.
On a side note based on comments earlier.
36 sec 200m speed - i base this on crappy grass tracks, in joggers, slowest speed
De load week, i find it’s a good speed too. Helps freshen up.
On a crappy grass, and doing them in 36sec, the hardest session i have done is, 36sec 200’s with jog 100m in 36sec for 12 reps. Very hard - but not La+. The next day you feel fantastic. As confirmed via HRV.
I’ve always found, 10 x 200’s with a 200m walk back, you tend to run the reps too fast, much like Angela mentioned above. It’s harder to run too fast if you kill the recovery.
I also do tempo with Jog 400-600m recoverys - so like 2-3min between 200’s, but jogging. Makes it hard to run too fast, and easy to keep a lid on the pace if you’re the type to almost race your tempo too fast. Just make sure you don’t walk the last 30m or so before the next rep… Jogging is slow too
Or even
Push ups - run 100m - split squats - run 100m - abs - run 100m and rest for say 2min then repeat. The exercises make it pretty hard to run too fast, and it’s much more interesting. Change exercises each time.
Tempo is so easy, can be done anywhere. So many variations it’s insane.
FTI - the biggest difference between a sprinters tempo and mid distance tempo is volume. Sprinter might do 2km - a mid distance might do 10km including warm up. Otheriwise, chicken soup is chicken soup, serving size is different.
This past year i’ve had sessions planned for my ‘horse trackish’ grass track, where they turned into extensive tempo/intensive tempo/controlled speed work. Also, part of the planned session was 'shoe periodization, starting with a 24mm thick sole trainer working towards a 4-6mm thick barefoot shoe and back up to a thicker.
The main work of session ended up occuring as:
4x120m extensive tempo ; altra torin 24mm thick trainer ; runs on the minute at 3 minute intervals;
12 minute recovery after set.
4x120m extensive/intensive tempo ; nike pegasus 22mm thick forefoot sole trainer ; runs at 3 minute intervals increased to 4 minute intervals for ‘rests 2 & 3’ ; 15 minute recovery after set.
3x120m intensive tempo ; nike free 3.0 trainer 15mm thick forefoot sole; runs at 5 minute intervals ; 15 minute recovery after set.
2x120m intensive tempo ; vibram spyridon five finger barefoot shoe 4-6mm thick sole ; runs at 6 minute intervals; 15 minute recovery after set.
2x120m speed endurance ; nike zoom ja spike ; runs at 8 minute intervals.
Workout notes:
-the last 2 runs in spikes were PR’s(for this grass track).
-for the last run of each set I was already fatigued, but kept going. Its possible i may lack ‘upright running work capacity’ for ‘dense multiple run short recovery sets’.
-including the mini-warmup, the session ended up being 2 hours long.
I think some people get caught on numbers - I can do 2000m of tempo or I can do 5000 abs etc. I prefer not to do crazy volume on drills because if you’re not getting Charlie type of therapy you will have issues - I think for the normal athlete there’s no need to do crazy number of abs, strength endurance exercises, and tempo - only bad things can happen.
I could probably do 6000m per week esp if the speed/weights were low but do I really need 6000m of tempo per week?
Tips to my fellow tempo runners:
1: Start out very low and build up very slowly.
2: Put away the stopwatch and ipods.
3: Let the day before and the day after dictate the tempo speed.
That’s crazy, even if James did it - it’s still crazy to me. Look at how Boyd Epley trained his athletes back in the 90’s small amounts of running and they killed their opponents on the field.
Boyd - no tempo - you can seeing the winter program below:
How was James able to do 6000 of tempo with the NCAA rules - last I heard was Mon/thur speed/wts and Th/fri 2000m of tempo/mb/abs/aux wts. Tempo 1: 2x10x100 and Tempo 2: 2x5x200 with 100-200 walk.
They probably only did it 2x so 4000m. He described somewhere on the forum a couple years ago.
You might be reading too much into what I’m saying i do. I might do 2000 one day and then 2 days of 1000-1500 and then maybe another day of pool or bike that would equal 1000. I have to use a rolling schedule because of work so the amounts fall unevenly but if they were graphed and distributed over 7 day periods the volume would average 4000-6000m per week.
And those coaches running 3miles no longer have jobs - lol. Boyd said that’s the one thing he tried to get Dave to drop when he was the strength coach at neb. With Saban 4th quarter program they only do 110’s once a week.
I’m not sure how much running most teams do during spring and summer practice but from just watching, it’s a lot. I would think some type of low intensity running is needed to get fit aerobically and top prepare the muscular/tendon unit.
My point was just because James did 6000m doesn’t make it right. Shit - let’s take a look at Baylor they are doing a GREAT job and they do tempo work early offseason but not 6000.
Baylor:
Post season: Focus on tempo/circuit work
Winter block 1: Focus on building strength and aerobic development - secondary speed/power.
Winter block 2: Focus on speed/power - secondary strength and alactic capacity
Having lived and coached in 3 different countries as well as coached and consulted for dozens of high performance programs and athletes (some of which are or were the very best in the professional, national, and international ranks) I can state two things with absolute certainty:
You must enhance the skills respective to the sport in which you compete
The physical preparation component of the program is only one fraction of the relevant sum total training load
I know of very knowledgeable and well practiced physical preparatory coaches who are associated with teams that can’t win a game and I know of physical preparatory coaches who are less qualified to interact with athletes then the chairs you are sitting in as you read this- and they are with teams, or were part of teams, that won national and world championships.
Keep this in mind when the discussion pertains to the relevance of a physical preparatory coach in the scope of a competition outcome; particularly in regards to team and combat sports.
As for the tempo volumes I had my players perform at PITT, the small skill performed no more than 2000-2200yards per session two sessions per week. By comparison, I’ve had rugby union backs and sevens players perform up to 7200meters and even 9000meters per week split over 3 sessions in conjunction with 3 days of alactic speed work. Keep in mind that the training loads are prescribed in optional ranges so the athletes who performed those high end volume ranges did so because they wanted to.
As an aside, a former commonwealth games hurdler that I worked with told me that she worked with a coach that had a tendency to switch training programs, drastically, every few seasons and the best she ever felt was when the training was based off of Charlie’s outlines.
No, jogging is jogging and shaking some feel ( yes, especially the guys… aka… " I am not doing that , it looks stupid blah blah". ) silly doing it.
Say we did 100 meters of bumkicks and shake 100 meters,
then some exercise / could be sit ups ( often was ) med ball throws to another ( also very common choice)
And then repeat bumkicks down same distance ( which is usually a fair distance btw for bumkicks) and again shake 100 meters back…
When the bumkicks and shaking was done ( maybe we did 6 x 60 meters of this as typically this was something we might have done indoors before xmas) the shaking could be down one length and tripling ( another variant of a drill CF liked using / doing) back.
Generally speaking this was something he would use if he wanted to create something continuous but active at the same time while involving the hamstings.I did a fair bit of this and I think some would be surprised to understand how a warmup which really leads to " the workout" might replace ( if need be) a full session.
