I just ordered and skimmed through Charlie Francis’s Training System aka “Training for Speed.” Now I am thinking about how to integrate this information into my own training. I am a senior in high school (i.e. no more sports) and 17 years old. My bodyfat% is pretty high, around 25%. I am primarily interested in strength, but would I would like to lower my bodyfat and increase short-distance speed. My diet has been fairly clean lately, and obviously that will help with the bodyfat. I haven’t really done any running since football season, though. I was thinking of the following template:
Monday- ME Upper Body
Wednesday- Accessory Lower Body
Friday- Accessory Upper Body
Saturday-Warm up, then sprints (Something like 2 x 10’s, 4 x 20’s, 3 x 40’s)
FYI, I can only really access the weightroom on M, W, F. Do you think it is necessary to add in any tempo work? Any suggestions and/or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Oh yeah, forgot to give more details about strength/experience levels.
Weight: 215 lbs.
BF%: ~25%
Bench Press: 235 lbs. Have shoulder problem, so have been doing partials lately
Squat: ~400 lbs. Again, due to shoulder problems, I’ve been restricted to lunges and step ups the last few months. These squats were a few inches below parallel to bench
I don’t have any reliable 40 times or anything like that for sprint speed, but I’m pretty fast getting off the ball (first 5m), but I have slower acceleration and top speed.
not a bad plan, but here’s what I would do differently for your stated goals -
Monday - Sprints + Weights- get in a full, excellent warm-up for the sprints. I like to go light jog (400-800m), some jumping jacks/mountain climbers, gentle stretching and push-ups, joint mobility drills, ab work (Vestergen has detailed work on this, but what I like to do is 10 reps of every concievable sit-up), Knee lift drills, Heidens, leg swings, A-B skips, Skip for height (both legs one rep) and the don’t stop long jump (kindof like a triple except you dont stop) and then 3 20 m striders (one at 25%, one at 50%, one at 75%). NOW you are ready to sprint, that takes me about 30 minutes. work short to long on the Accelerations (10-40m) and keep the volume below 320m (in other words, the absolute most you should do is 8x40m with full recovery, at least 1 minute per 10m). Then lift. My suggestions are Front Squats, Romanion deadlifts, Incline presses and Bent over rows. Go heavy on the RDLs and BORs (3-5x3-5), lighter on the FSQ and IP (2-3x6-10). finish with some low back hypers (reverse hypers if you have the machine) and Deep stretching.
Wednesday, Friday and Saturday - Tempo. Be sure to do the full warm-up everytime. if you have a medicine ball, GPP work with that would be excellent on these days. start slow - 60% and 1000m a session, broken up into 100-300m segments. Hill or stair work in lieu of traditional tempo once a week is fine. If you must lift - keep it quick Snatch Grip Dead Lifts and a press for 5x5 and get out of there