I would suggest you consider having two days off each week. These in your case should be Tuesday and Saturday. Build from there. The rest days are an automatic circuit-breaker against injury and will allow you good recovery as well as “a life” away from the track.
sprint coach,
I really couldn’t add to what Charlie has posted and, read in conjunction with Nikoluski’s excerpt from Speed Trap, the argument for the importance of massage as a restorative and manipulative tool is compelling.
I like CF’s advice on cutting the reps in your weights now also. It’s the reps which kill, not the poundage when carrying the lifting forward into the competitive phase.
I cut weights about 10 days before the first round of competition at each peak, ie your trials and then the CWGames.
But for a while before that, I’d bring the weights down to two sessions a week for men (maintained it as long as possible at three per week for women) and went to a type of needle-thin simple model. Hardly any reps, maybe no more than six sets from warmup (eight reps) and then jumping to 4 reps, then singles up to the poundage we wanted to max-out at (Making Sure The Lifts Were Comfortable).
We always tried for a bench-press pb (sometimes a clean too) in that final session (or at least in the final week of weights before the ultimate taper).
It was surprising but it seemed to have an energizing effect on the whole athlete (back, legs etc).
KK, Why more weights work for women?
For SprintCoach,
As far as I can remember the contrast shower protocol was:3x (3.5min hot, 30s cold). I use these to good effect personally and with some of my athletes.
Charlie,
When would contrast showers be best used in SprintCoach’s weekly plan? Can you overuse them?
Cheers,
TC
Coz I don’t like them . . . nah, mainly because I found the women I’ve worked with lost too much strength too quickly on two sessions per week. Plus they don’t seem to stiffen up from weights to the degree that most men do and therefore the girls can keep lifting consistently without much detriment to their track performance. The other thing is that there are still a lot of women who are indifferent to weightlifting or drop it over summer, so the women who do stay strong through to the peak will have an advantage over those who do not stay strong.
Thank you VERY MUCH - ALL of you, especially kitkat and charlie (Nikoluski, Nanny69, tc0710 too!!)- for the recommendations, solutions, etc. It seems that I have a whole team of professionals, from all over the world,working on my athlete! (I think that was the main idea of Charlie, when he started this web site.) I do appreciate your time and assistance.
I will follow the recommendations this week -
(1) the contrast showers;
(2) more frequent massage sessions (the medal at CG will “pay” for the extra sessions!!);
(3) adapt the WT - days and weights and reps/sets.
I am looking forward to see what the difference will be, in comparison with the past few weeks. I really am excited!! Will keep you updated.
Just curious to know why you have cleans, squats, leg presses, and deadlifts all in one session?
This something that I’ve seen often, which is the over-emphasis on having many different leg exercises in one session or week.
Also, as they don’t lift as much weight, the effect on the CNS isn’t as great, so they can prob do more reps, I’d think, though I had both men and women go 3 x per week. Also we used the bench press in the final taper very effectively for men, but it’s a bit trickier for women, because their upper body capacity for lifts/body weight vs men is much less relative to lower body (65 to 70% of upper vs 90 to 95% of lower body). That indicates that lower body weights should be kept a bit closer to the final event for women, though the individual differences are so great it’s hard to come up with a separate rule. Just use the same principle for both and adjust for the individual from there.
Right, I planned on having two rest days, but didn’t know where to put the other one. I also thought about putting the two rest days on Saturday and Sunday.
Ok, GPP:
Sun: Rest
Mon: Max. Velocity (20m flies); Weights
Tues: Tempo; Abs
Wed: 300m Special End; Weights
Thurs: Tempo; Abs
Fri: 200m Speed Endurace; Weights
Sat: Rest
I havn’t put sets or reps by the Mon, Wed, and Fri, because I’m not sure how one should start and progress with those days. But, with this being GPP, should I put hill work somewhere in place of something? Is this schedule more of a SPP type schedule, or is this correct for a GPP phase?
My tempo sessions would begin a 1000m, then 1200, 1600, 2200, 2600m, 3000m and drop it back down before competition. I may ajust that, but that would be the basic progress type style of the tempo. Also, tempo sessions would be at 70%, for recovery.
Comanch09,
it will be more effective to have one of the rest days during the week, so you can better spread the load.
Hope it helps!
Your probably right, I’ve just been used to doing it that way.
Ok, so GPP:
Sun: Max Velocity (20m Flies); weights
Mon: Tempo; abs
Tues: Rest
Wed: 300m Special End.; weights
Thurs: Tempo; abs
Fri: 200m Speed End.; weights
Sat: Rest
Still need an ideas for sets and reps and how to progress with the Sun, Wed, and Fri though?
You can use these sessions as general fitness as well if you make them challenging enough (tempo with low rests inbetween; add in medball and ab circuits; etc.).
Damn, he’s always right!
Thinking back now (as opposed to going to the training logs) I remember that the best female sprinters I worked with PBd on cleans, rather than any isolated upperbody exercise. They did the bench, but not all the women managed to PB in that one during the taper, whereas the men always did. So perhaps the women should target the clean and the men, the benchpress when tapering their strength program coming into a peak.
I always called the bench press the RE-stimulation of the CNS because the principle stimulus is lower body. The problem is, lower body work must be stopped 6 days out- too far away from the event for optimal stimulation so these event specific muscles can be fresh.
Those of you having the Muscle Motor Involvement graph can see that the squat uses about 65% of all Muscle Motor Units, so, to re-stimulate back up to an optimal level without involving muscle groups directly required for the event, you can use the Bench Press, which involves around 35%, 2 days closer.
A possible adjustment for women might be to use the clean, which uses around 80% of MUs on day 6 or move the last squat session to day 5 and the bench from 4 days out to 3 in both cases.
I always liked the squat though because of its relative safety, as sometimes the athletes get a tad distracted close to competition and things can go wrong. Case in point, Heike Dreschler got hurt doing the snatch 4 days out from Seoul, compromising her best possible performance. She was very well coached and experienced but just had a moment of loss of focus.
Not that you were her coach or anything, but how come and she did a snatch 4 days out? Or, is there a difference between Snatch and Clean for this purpose? Would you treat the two the same? Would you prefer one vs. the other for an athlete comfortable with both lifts?
Thanks!
kk
in regards to the bottom bend last week (see earlier post for splits) did you work on any particular race modelling that would help rectify this or is it something that will tend to correct itself after she get into a rthythm after 3-4 400m races…
as mentioned we had worked on a 26 out and it was 26.4 into a hw, after the race she felt that she didnt quite get up to race pace over the 2nd 100m building into the bend.
with a short turnaround this week before fridays 400m race we have the week planned as follows
sun- pool recovery session
mon - speed - weights
tue - tempo - core work
wed - rest
thur - warm up & race model work, maybe 1 x 60 to 80m at RP working onto bend
fri - 7.30pm 400m race
Sat - 8.30pm 400m race
In the pursuit of specificity (as opposed to my approach), the East Germans used only the Snatch lift for her weight program, believing it could hit the most MUs with the least lifts. This left them with only one option, lift close enough to generate adequate stimulus for an optimal performance in the competition with an inherent risk, or not lift at all.
I outlined my approach to this on both this thread and on the thread related to running the bend. Sorry but haven’t got the time at the moment to go back over the pages to find and re-post here. The most important things are maintaining velocity entering the bend through the 200m start zone and doing that with maximum efficiency through maintaining good mechanics (left hip tall) and thereby good rhythm.
Are you actually always going for a PB during the taper? I thought Ben’s PB wasn’t planned (great story). Won’t a maintainance lift that you know you can get (e.g. 97%2RM) be enough?
As for the Snatch. I think that is the most difficult exercise to PB safely because you have to drop so low under the bar and take the strain in your shoulders. Get it wrong and you can at least mildly pull something or risk dropping it. I’m forever dropping the weight on myself! Career hazard! Fortunitly, I don’t attempt max lifts all the time.
I find it strange that the East Germans were so clever with their training in some respects but at the same time were so foolish with others.