Just looking for some insight. I have a gent who has a weight lifting class every morning (varies between 7:30 and 11), who then sprints for me every afternoon at around 3. I’ve been allowed to adjust his lifting, but what I’m not sure of is if given the proximity what kind of lifting he should be doing in relation to the day’s theme. My gut is that since its relatively close together he should do the same themes (ie high intensity on the track with olympics in the weight room) but I’m concerned if that overly tax him for the following sprints.
Pinky,
Have you seen any of these video’s? http://www.charliefrancis.com/products/cf-lecture-series-weights-for-speed-bundle
You need to watch at least the first one but ideally understand all of them.
Except for the spring and fall lifting for sprinters before and then doing speed not only waters down the energy envelope it wrong on so many fronts and it will dilute the end result.
Why people want to compromise the time spent with doing things out of method amazes me but likely they have already had some success.
What sport is it?
I am guessing this is a client who is paying you opposed to an athlete who is part of a group?
Typically if you are splitting training you can do general things in the am and med ball even but in very low volumes and not high intensity if the sprinting is happening later in the day. Of coarse some people are so strong and powerful they think they can get away with anything but it’s a relative thing. If all things are wrong and there is some success imagine if they are done correctly?
I believe HSI lifts before sprint training, which seems to have worked rather well for them (9.79 for men, 10.64 for women, 43.50 in the 400m 46.78 in the 400mH, etc.). You should be able to find some of their lifting routines online. They don’t go very heavy. Maybe lifting before sprinting provides some kind of stimulus allowing for better performance on the track.
Not sure everyone will benefit to be emulating the training performed by athletes who run 9.79 and 10.64 without more details.
More is usually not better for most anyone when it comes to lifting weights and running fast. It’s about how and why and when and DETAILS. How and why the implementation works.
But do the research and try and learn and experiment and see for yourself. Try lifting for a micro cycle as per how others say they do what they do and see how it goes.
Athlete is a high school senior football linebacker/tight end - joined the track team to get faster but “wants to get bigger” (not exactly the ideal combination of goals but that’s what you get). Haven’t seen the video (perhaps post holiday) but I have enough lift training to agree with the idea that lifting pre-sprinting isn’t ideal to put it mildly. The issue is this guy is going to lift no matter what, I’m just trying to figure the best way to minimize the disruption (or if possible increase the adaptation) from the lifting he does. Only good news is that he’s not a particularly fast athlete to begin with so I think I’m going to go with same themes for this first round and see what happens, put him something closer to a throws routine and then see if I can convince him to shift to medballs and plyo work if he buys in.
Most commonly accepted practise is to perform the most critical training element first in the day or first in a double session. Obvious reason of being most fresh to derive most benefit.
I dont see how anyone can train with high quality weights and sprinting in the same day for several consecutive days as implied by the athlete`s current programme. Thats too much voulme/intensity whatever the order of sessions.
Does he actually sprint in every pm session ? Have you considered something like 3 days of am weights/pm tempo and 2 days of sprinting only ?
Extrapolating from elite performers can be dangerous. The overall strategy of CF, Clyde Hart etc can have widespread use, however specific programming is more problematic. In particular elite athletes have superior rest/recovery opportunities - on site therapy on regular basis etc, above all they dont have to go back to work after their first session of the day !
This is a good way of explaining to others that what you see or what others see is not exactly what you get or what is actually going on. Thanks for the excellent summary Oldbloke.
Oldbloke (and Angie), my fault for not laying out the week plan, but we’re on a 5 or 6 day schedule depending on the week. Usually Neuro/High - Monday, Tempo -Tues, Recovery - Wed, Neuro-Thurs, Tempo - Fri, Intensive Tempo - Sat.
I’m hoping to have him go explosive/reactive for Monday and Thursday, let him go for hypertrophy on Tuesday, bodybuilding (a la Boo or Pfaff) Wednesday), and then base Friday on what he’s doing Saturday.
I completely agree this isn’t ideal, but his weight lifting teacher isn’t going to let him skip the class for track, so its all about managing the hand dealt.
Pinky, I don’t know your personality but I always feel a strong responsibility to make sure those I’ve worked with understand how things need to be for me to succeed for that person.
I think it’s really important to point out the disconnect in sport between the business side of things and the performance side of things. The two don’t have to be disconnected but as soon as profit is involved all sorts of conflict happens. ( Business of Coaching download discusses this at length)
Telling people how to train, especially high school kids and more so in certain sports like Football, is one way but showing them via experience is another.
What has always sold my skills has been the results. I try to never put myself into a place where I will have a mount everest climb to convince someone of something because then it’s difficult for me to do my job regarding the things I know for sure.
I know the some of the NFL and NBA coaches had issues and troubles telling their athletes what do to but there are always enough players that you get some that listen and some that don’t. A job a coach to some extent is to find ways to get the athlete to see what you know for sure so they feel it and experience this for themselves. Once people feel it there will be no going back.
Or you could do what some coaches would do and refuse to work with those who don’t listen ( Charlie ) . But not many people have that choice or believe that is the right way. Charlie as a coach could not be told to do things against the things he knew for sure. Charlie the trainer held is breath barely and made it work to some extent due to his extremely unusual circumstances.
Try to persuade his football/weights coaches that sprinting will benefit his football - I presume the issue here is that football is considered his primary activity. And weights is treated as a more important supplementary activity than sprinting.
Explain that improving his sprinting will be aided by cutting weights to say twice per week.
Otherwise you have 3 choices.
Accept status quo - knowing that 5 days per week of double training for a school age person is a large amount, has no de load, no taper for races etc etc.
Cut his training with you to say 3 days per week and achieve what you can with this.
Walk away. In this age group athlete health is paramount.
Due to having a variety of class schedules to work around with about 17 athletes I stick with what Charlie said: If necessary to do weights first, there should be a minimum of 4-5 hours between the end of the weights session and the beginning of the warm-up for the track session. With most I am able to get about 6.5 hours split. With another group they lift immediately after their track session. With those who have time to do so, I have a few who can actually take a bit more time to recover from the track session and they begin weights about 45-60’ after track work and after they can time to replete their glycogen levels via simple sugar/supplement consumption. The various options do seem to work well keeping weights in an important though supplementary role relative to the track work. I believe Charlie mentioned that John Smith did his more as a warm-up and as alluded to above, the weights were not particularly heavy in most cases.
Well John seemed happy with her strength so I guess that was good enough right?
Problem is people see this amazing athlete like Carmelita doing cleans and they really don’t have any clue about how good they are performed or that she will likely never get injured doing cleans like that as she is incredibly fit and healthy and strong like most people can’t comprehend.
I love You Tube but some of it is so damn fake. It’s miss leading in so many ways.