Why the explosive squats?
Its my weights coach’s plan. He is a fan of them, those and jump squats. They’re light squats, pause on the box and explode up. I think they work well. I’m not really sure to be honest, I’m so dead nowadays after my sprint workouts that weights are nothing more then an after thought.
I bought an EMS for recovery purposes, I hope this can help with some tightness I’ve been having and speed up some muscle recovery.
Not the greatest workout today.
My hamstrings were stiff and sore as hell from sunday’s stiff legged deadlifts. On top of that I had some deep ART done earlier today. My hamstrings burned so bad by the last rep of this workout. I jumped right into the ice tub after practice.
This week’s workouts have been slightly sub par mostly because of the soreness of the new exercises (depth jumps, stiff deads) not because of CNS stress. Muscle soreness is easy to work through but puts a damper on the intensity somewhat. No big deal though, as long as its not CNS fatigue.
4x20m
2xflying 30’s from a 10m fly in
3xflying 20m from 30m start, progressive acceleration
Gym:
4x3 squats
We did some flying runs because the coach at the track was timing and I hate to throw away the opportunity to get timed electronically. Although I was completely screwed from Sunday and knew I wasnt really going to break any records we said screw it. Managed to run a 2.99s flying 30m from 10m out. And the way our indoor track is set up, there arent turns per se but rather its a 16 sided track with all straights. Pretty messed up. You can almost get a full 40m straight without having to turn slightly. So my 10m run in was around a corner! So all things considered that 2.99s isnt so bad at this stage.
My training partner got a full massage yesterday after a tempo session and he had a much better session, although he was still slightly sore. I think the key thing that I’ve missed, especially when I’ve got some residual soreness is tempo. So far i’ve had to skip a few session due to scheduling but I’m definitely going to find the time to fit that in.
With my new EMS machine I’m looking forward to some recovery modes after tempo sessions to get things tuned up a little faster. I think it’ll really make a big difference after these sore sessions.
Tempo session today:
2x4x100m
1x300m
stretch and sauna
Good to get the blood flowing
Very good session tonight.
4x20m blocks
5x50m blocks
Speed was coming easy, very high intensity
Ice tub after the speed
Got my EMS in the mail today. Looking forward to some recovery programs on off days.Ive got my jumps and weights in the morning.
What kind of EMS do you have?
Its a cheap one from medical products online, like 60 bucks. Just bought it for the recovery settings.
Its goes to 150Hz and has on/off times of 2-90 secs. I’m not sure what other features are necessary for strength training. Decent unit. Only has 4 electrodes so it may take long to do each muscle one at a time.
For strength training, you will want a ramp time of .5-1.5 seconds and a pulse width up to 450, although lower will work, just not as well.
yesterday morning:
4x3 cleans superset with sets of 5 drop jumps
3x6 depth jumps
3x5 one legged box jumps
3x8 bench press
3x5 pulls ups
Good workout
Today I did some recovery ems from 10-2Hz for 30 minutes on my hamstrings to loosen things up.
The pulse width on the machine only goes up to 300, but all other features are on par for strength training.
That pulse width is the same as my unit, which can definitely develop a strong contraction! I would recommend not starting with the full 10 reps for 10 seconds the first few times because you will find yourself very, very sore!
Excellent workout tonight
4x20m blocks
6x50m blocks
Speed felt awesome, decent starts made for an overall good workout. Things are ramping up this week so that the taper week will go smoothly. Competition in less than 2 weeks. Pretty pumped to see where I’m at.
12x2 box squats
Is this your first year using the explosive squats?
Yeah. In the past years I’ve only really done normal squats and hamstring curls for weights.
Have you ever used them?
4x30m
2x50m
Times were slow today as expected since its week three and sunday was such a good workout. My CNS was trashed and so was my training partners.
We figured there was no point in trashing it further so we did some hard tempo instead.
200,200,150,150,100,100 and then we jumped into the ice tub.
Legs were just dead flat. Which we sort of planned by making sunday a little harder by adding an extra rep. Thursday should be quality and we should be a little in the dumps by sunday, ready for my taper week.
Yes I have.
Yesterday:
4x20m blocks
5x50m blocks with 8-10 minutes break
Feeling much better then tuesday but still dont have that extra pop that I had on sunday. That was one hell of a good speed session.
This morning:
5x3 cleans superset with sets of 5 drop jumps
3x6 drop jumps
2x5 vertical bounds
These morning sessions have been a great experience. They allow for a good volume/intensity on the olympic lift and plyos. It has helped me get a good handle on where to put in my plyo work for future seasons. Next fall I’ll have friday mornings as a high volume concentric jumps day, which progresses into lower volume, higher intensity drop jumps.
Time for my taper week leading in to my season opener.
Today: Nothing spectacular
4x30m accels
2x60m blocks
Gym: 8x2 box squats
Starting taper week, kept the intensity quite high but am starting the reduction in volume.
The 60’s were slow, timed them at 6.96 and 6.93s electric out of blocks with a touch pad. Whatever happens in the next week will be a result of dropping volume. Coming down from over 1000m of speed per week to 500m. My last little taper had me come off of 1500m of speed per week to 750m and was able to reduce my flying 25m by over a tenth, which is quite significant. I’ve definitely been learning the loading and unloading effects of training, and how critical each aspect is in relation to the other.
Looking for a sub 7 season opener on 500m of speed vol. If this happens the season should be quite good. After another training block of roughly 750m of speed per week at quite a high intensity and will drop down to 250m per week at the final taper, this should allow me to hit my goal by the end of February.
When you say you are coming down in volume from 1000m to 500m, do you do it all of a sudden, for example 3 weeks of 1000m then 1 week of 500m; or do you do it gradually stepping down each week?
Pretty much all of a sudden. Just cut volume in half and keep intensity the same on that 4th week.I think more ideally I would build up the volume more gradually over those 3 weeks and then cut on the 4th week. But the way I’ve done things this season is more of a flat loading scheme.
For a competition taper though I would go gradual, something like an exponential percentage drop over the course of maybe 4 training sessions, or a 10 day period.
I’ve had decent success on my last taper week cycle, dropping 1 tenth off of a flying 30m time.
This is a good tie in to something I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading about and thats the whole idea of tapering and training effects of sprinting.
Over the past 2 months I’ve been keeping a somewhat accurate account of my performances each week as I’ve been loading and unloading volumes of sprint speed. I wondered why my times fell starting from the first training day of the cycle to the last day of the 3rd week of the cycle and then rose at the end of my 4th week taper week.About a .07s difference over a one week period in a 50m and up to .12s in a 60m over a 3 week period.
In one of Charlie’s videos he explains that the nature of the load is such that you will decrease in performance during week 3. But for me, I was witnessing this dip in performance from week 1, and as the weeks went it would decrease in performance.I think this could be explained through my flat loading scheme, were the volume is fairly constant and the load quite high.
This made me question well why do we go 3 weeks on and 1 week easy? And why does my performance drop and come back up when I unload. I just thought that we supercompensate over a 48 hour period and are better for our next workout and so according to this model shouldnt we constantly be getting better?
Well I figured I should probably inform myself a little and figure out why this is what it is. I read a few things here and there and know I think I’ve got a much better understanding of why things are. Although this doesnt change the way things are set up in training but just makes me trust this system much better.
In Zatsiorsky’s science and practice of strength training, he outlines the tow factor model of training. In which fatigue and fitness are accumulated at the same time. Fatigue is in magnitude 3 times larger than fitness but recovers 3 times as quickly also.
This has helped me understand a little better understand my training process.
My first workout of the cycle is fresh, I train and induce a fitness and fatigue gain. We wait 48 hours to return to speed and train again, at this point fatigue is quite low and fitness is still above resting levels. I think the way I’ve set things up is such that some fatigue persists throughout each cycle and accumulates over time. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily. Fitness is constantly rising but is somewhat masked by residual fatigue. And thats where easy weeks come in to play. They allow for fitness to be maintained while fatigue is dissipated.
Anyway, thats my little rant for today, I’m late for class.