I have read many articles by those who have trained at Westside who state that bar speed is the reason why. I was in error saying what the Westside people believe though, since Dave Tate and others have said RFD, etc. But it is irrelevent to this thread, so I’ll delete my erroneous post.
In something such as sprinting, wouldn’t taking this approach eventually lead to more of an endurance adaptation also?
In reference to my post #47 in this thread,
we must acknowledge that it is the peculiarities of the individual that must be closely scrutinized because the role and significance of weight training towards sprint speed improvement is as individually subjective to sprinters as the role of dynamic effort barbell lifting is towards maximal strength improvement with respect to powerlifters.
What yields a positive effect for one may very well yield a neutral to negative effect for another.
In these instances, there are no absolutes
In any case, it is not the fault or novelty of the means; but rather, the appropriate selection of the complex of means for the individual in question.
Not necessarily- volumes can be high and still yield improvements in the alactic mechanism. It is the regulation of work:rest intervals that must be closely scrutinized.
Well in that case, I think that both of us have presented equally valid explanations and any debate of ‘better’ should be left to the opinion of those other than you and I.
Is the volume increased in order to compensate for the lower absolute output or in order to reflect the greater role of SE?
Is the increased volume accounted for through increased repetition distances (i.e. longer SE reps), increased repetition numbers, or both? Will this depend on the individual?
Thanks for the help.
The greater vol is to aid the SE and is possible because of the lower maximal CNS output potential.
Charlie,
Say you did have someone who wasn’t fast enough to generate this speed leading strength gains phenomenon: would this change things in terms of weightroom planning, volume, intensity, etc. being determined in large part by the quality/volume of sprint work? Would strength (and maybe plyo?) work become more of a focus for this type of athlete?
Yes. It would probably lead towards a more general and extensive muscular development period before selecting a few lifts going forward.
This is both because it is likely that a lack of complete muscular development is part of the problem of generating a high enough speed and because that lack of speed means there is more CNS resource left over to devote to it.
I don’t want to start another thread, so I’m going to use this one.
Would strength gained while not sprinting at the time in a sense be wasted from a speed perspective? Since strength gains are obviously limited.
Edit: I was messing with the forum settings to display older threads, didn’t notice this was one of them. I’d still appreciate an answer.
I don’t think so and, in fact, max strength blocks are often initiated during an injury period to partially make up for the loss of CNS stimulus during the absence of intense sprinting. This was done successfully with Ben during a serious injury in 1988.
That’s what I wanted to hear.
Thanks for the quick reply.
What if the athlete is able to sprint but decided to take the summer off to focus on strength training only?
what’s the objective? Is this a young athlete in need of development?
I bring this up because some NCAA programs recommend there athletes to get off the track during the summer months and focus on the weights. Most of the athletes dont have year round therapy and need the rest after having a long NCAA season.
This is essentially the premise of Verkhoshansky’s block approach when applied to sprint training.
What initially began out of necessity, due to weather conditions and inaccessibility to facilities and so on, is what lead to the discovery of efficacy of concentrated strength/power loading.
During the course of such blocks the speed-strength is diminished; as a result of the overload presented by the strength/power work; however, what was found was that any temporary loss in speed would eventually rebound and surpass previous levels following the appropriate sequential introduction of speed work following the concentrated strength/power stage.
Additionally important to note is that the overload presented by the strength/power work demands a great reduction of the actual sprint work due to the increased potential for injury (eg hamstrings) as a result of the fatigue generated by the strength/power work.
Important to remember, if one were to chose to train this way, is that the nature of the strength/power work must transfer positively to the sprints; which is why it would be a grave mistake to simply concentrate on powerlifting or weightlifting training.
I suspect that a concentrated block would not run 10 weeks.
Tamfb’s question is a good one and one I’ve been wondering about myself.
In my case, it would be with current college athletes or incoming freshmen collegiate track athletes.
Would they be better off with a strength program along with possibly training other general qualities such as core/tempo while abstaining from actual sprint work? I did this last Summer also with a very small number of plyos but no actual sprint work. They will start into gpp w/hills/mb throws etc. come early Sept.
It completely depends on how much sprinting they did the year ending. if they competed extensively with good weather and advancing results, fine to stay away for some time BUT if, say, they didn’t have good weather or results as you’d expected, you might want to extend speed work into the good weather and advance the speed at least to where you’d thought it would go in season before leaving it. If you have been away from the speed you need for too long, it’s tough to get back.
That said, you can up the plyos a bit during the summer period to stay a bit closer to the demands of sprinting, along with the weights.
One particular individual I can think of did not have much of an outdoor season to speak of after making significant improvements during indoors. Not only was he sick for weeks during the transition from indoors to outdoors, he experienced greatly reduced training consistency and racing due to family/personal issues.
In that case, would it be necessary to do a sort of mini gpp with hills leading up to speed work?