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.
I wouldn’t worry too much. Most people run significantly faster in meets than in training. Seagrave has said people often runs 4-8% slower in training than in meets, even with good efforts. The adrenaline and other factors just can’t be replicated.
Today:
4x20m accels
2x flying 20m from 30m build up
3x3 squats
Good workout, felt really quick, easy week.
Quick and easy
4x20m blocks head to head with a training partner, they felt good.
2x60m from blocks
Your first meet is soon??
saturday, we leave at 6am and its a 4 hour bus ride to the military base that has the indoor track. I’ll be bringing plenty of red bull to keep me awake.
So a couple hard starts and 60’s today, whats the plan for Friday?
today its 3x3 light clean in the morning.
So its been pretty much a normal reduced volume week.
So 500m of speed is a lot to run under turns out, lol. Meet did not go as planned,won bot heats and finals but ran
7.11s
7.11s
So things weren’t great, but its still early, I still have 3 more months to go and 1 more month of intensification.
Next cycle changes to speed 2 times a week at 3x60m with 15 minutes break and 4x20m accels, and speed endurance of 2x150m with 4x20m.
After that the vol. Comes down quite a bit and hopefully we’ll see some performance drops then.
That’s why I asked about your training for this week, the flys and 60’s seems like a lot. If you are anything like me you shouldn’t worry at all. Keep working.
Next time try not to compete with your training mate this close to a meet, keep everything submax.
yeah for sure, thanks for the advice.
I did a ton of hard work this week so I dont know what I was expecting. But then again things werent supposed to be set up for me to run fast now. In any case, January and February will be nice and easy months with minimal volume and intensity between competitions. I think this will play out nicely.
Good luck RB on your race in the upcoming week. This season will be a good one for us both I think.
Are you guys running the 150’s indoors?
Yeah we will be, I was also contemplating straight up 200’s but have never liked running those in training.
Kool, I will be working up to some fast 120’s before hitting my indoor season.
Block 4- The final block of intensification starts tonight.
I’ll be doing:
4x20m blocks
4x60m blocks (15 minutes break)
In the gym:
3x3 squats
3x5 hypers
3x5 pull ups
3x5 bench press
I expect this block to be quite demanding on the CNS and so my max speed workouts are dropping to 2x per week instead of 3. I’m adding in a speed endurance workout inbetween for some filler and so that hopefully it will make these 200s I will be running a little less painful.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading, searching and chatting with my weights coach about how to proceed during the competition period and what competitions are important and when exactly I want to be in peak form.
My championships are at the beginning of march and so its pretty important for me not to drop the volume off too quickly or else I’ll hit my peak too early and then the purpose of doing my final taper will be useless. From what I’ve read is that its much easier to drop volume and allow for adaptation to occur but its more troublesome if you need to add it back on.
Volume will drop during this period but I will proceed cautiously over the course of the competition season. Gradually taking away volume. Hopefully it wont take much decrease in volume for me to qualify for the championships. And so we’ll play it by ear, and if its getting too close to the Champs and I still need to qualify then additional volume may need to come off. The plan will be to start off quite conservative, dropping maybe 30% for the initial month and doing a mini taper for an important qualifying competition at the end of January. If this goes well then I’ll know that I can maintain a slightly higher volume then planned and let the final taper take care of things. If it doesnt I may need to chop slightly more volume in Feb. Maybe 20% of the new total, and see how that goes.
Its going to be my first competition season under this new program design and I think experimenting like this will prove to be useful in knowing how my body responds. My overall goal for this season is to make the final at the championships and then have a successful outdoor season ultimately.
15mins is too much for a lower level runner…
Well when I say 15 minutes its never 15 minutes, its 15 minutes if you need it. And so often when I’ve said 10 minutes recovery we typically are at 8 minutes, because we’re fully recovered. We haven’t been strictly measuring it either, we dont have a timer and just go when we feel is right. So I guess its a little misleading to put 15 minutes rest because we probably will never get there.
We’re typically recovered at 8 and go then. But we dont feel pressured if we need the extra time.