In Key Concepts Charlie spoke about performing 4hi days, has anyone tried this before with success?
Mon/Thur: Speed
Tue/Fri: SE
I thought that was an example of what is a common template in some circles and then followed by his Hi-Lo style.
Awesome setups
Remember, many successful programs are arranged to follow a weekly pattern:
1: Speed
Speed Endurance
Off
Speed
Speed Endurance
Sometimes, coaches who think their athletes are “behind” will use the four
high intensity day schedule. And while this can be quite dangerous, when
monitored closely, an athlete may receive some gains from this more intensive
schedule. The mesocycle with a four high intensity day schedule would most
likely have to follow the 2-1 work-recovery scheme, or the athlete would be
substantially overloaded with high intensity work.
as a 400m runner i found the 4 day set up to work particularly well in the early SPP when the work was a little less intense. we would have one speed (tues), 1 special endurance (thurs) and 1 split special endurance (sat) day (i.e. 2x120, 2x150 etc), and a strength endurance day on the sunday (long hills). gotta be very careful on the sunday though as the high speeds from the split special endurance tended to make me fairly sore in the hammies and the hills were never quite 100%. hill distances were up to 200m btw. so basically, its achievable but you’ve gotta be careful with your maintenance - plenty of self massage/stretching/therapy etc. good luck!
For a short sprinter I was thinking:
Mon: 4x60
Tue: 2x150
Thur:2x3x30
Fri: 2x120 or 2x250
I agree with Charlie that the coach would have to decrease the volume. You could probably get in just as much volume with a typical MWF setup.
And it would probably be at a higher quality, which is another plus for the 3-day set-up.
I would think that alot of massage and other regeneration techniques would be required.
I concur. I’ve had athletes that handled an SPP split phase of 3 weeks on with four relative HI days, 1 week concentrated LO tempo, 2 weeks on four HI days.
These athletes demonstrated progressive recovery cycles prior to this phase and received consistent recovery therapy during as well. The one disadvantage I found with most of these athletes was an inability to maintain a progressive compensation cycle beyond two micros during comp phase. Quite different with those athletes using a 2-3 HI day micro similar to that often discussed on this forum.
I often felt that some latent overtraining pattern had kicked in. However the performances with the former during initial comp was outstanding.
[b]I like to see some stimulation closer to the meet, but not always the day before.
The time you can maintain the required stimulus usually depends on the athlete’s
level- the higher the longer. Also, it depends on the vol. and intensity of the
previous training- again, the more the longer.[/b]
With the above comment from Charlie, if the athlete perform a low volume speed session 48-72hrs before competition would this be enough stimulation.
I concur as well.