As mentioned earlier, most people think they have strong glutes, but they don’t. They believe this because they think that squats, deadlifts, and lunges are the best glute exercises, and they’ve spent years getting very strong at these. Even though they can make your glutes very sore, squatting, deadlifting, and lunging don’t strengthen the glutes much. They target the quads and erector spinae. Even box squatting, walking lunges, and sumo deadlifts don’t activate much glute in comparison to the exercises below.
If you studied glute activation like I have, you’d be blown away by the data. Most individual’s glutes contract harder during bodyweight glute activation exercises than from one-rep max squats and deadlifts.
This isn’t due to the fact that the individuals don’t know how to use their glutes or don’t adhere to proper exercise form. It’s due to the fact that biomechanically the glutes aren’t maximally involved in squatting, lunging, and deadlifting. They’re only maximally contracted from bent leg hip hyperextension exercises.
As soon as I got to the track today it started pouring so I went inside.
4x20m accels
3x100m (11.26s,11.16s,11.09s)
Speed felt good but my legs are pretty tight. Next week is my taper week and I’m looking forward to it.
4x5 8kg medball over head throws
9x5 hurdle hops
I skipped squats today because it was the first day my groin was actually feeling better so I didnt want to mess it up. Did a little extra volume on the throws and plyos to compensate.
My legs have been incredibly tight lately. I’m not sure if it related to training or what I’ve been doing outside of training but I’ve decided to take so extra precautions to help this out.
I’ve been icing my groin 3x/day and applying some voltaren anti inflammatory cream. This has been extremely effective.
Started supplementing with calcium/magnesium, 3 doses per day.
Contrast showers once a day. Started going full body vs local, which makes it much more difficult but more effective.
EMS session at low frequency high intensity and high frequency low intensity.
extra attention to stretching on tempo days, holding stretches for 30s instead of 10s.
Rolling out my hamstrings and glutes after tempo with a softball.
Its been a couple days since I’ve ramped up recovery on my muscle and its been working very well. My groin is healing and is nearly 100%.
Another aspect of my training that I need to iron out is my weight. In march at CIS championships I was 190lbs. I ran a 250m in 30.2s. A week later I binged a little and was up to 200lbs and then couldnt break 31s in the 250m until I went outside. It made a big difference. So then I got my diet straight and started supplementing with creatine to boost some of my lifts and maybe add some leg mass. Creatine makes me gain mad water weight. After 2 months, I’ve cut creatine, I think I peaked at 205lbs during that time period, and now im on my way down again. Back to 199lbs this morning after quitting creatine a couple of days ago. My goal is to be at 190-193 by comp season, which will probably make SE a little better along with speed as well. Comp season tends to melt the pounds off anyway.
I’ll start back soon, they wanted me to layoff. This outdoor season has been Ok, injuries can be a bitch. I have 2 more meets to my spring season before I open my summer season with 6-8 meets.
Yup Hand timed. From time to time I get some gates but that is rare.
My timing method:
Hold the stop watch in hand. Stand at whatever distance I’m running (100, 150 ect…). Timing is started first and then the run starts. Almost like a reaction to the beep of the stopwatch but since I know its coming the reaction isnt very long.
Once in a while a friend times me and I tell them to get first step instead just because it makes it more consistent when comparing to other times.
Not sure how accurate this method is (probably not very), but I have found that hand timing fly’s are not too bad.
Ok. That’s how I’m used to do it too. I just thought maybe it’s not HT because you declared hundredths too, it’s not that precise for sure. However the timing method is not so important as long as you keep using the same method, in that way marks are fairly well comparable at distances 100+.
It wasnt completely shitty when I got there. Just spitting a little so I did my 230m then it started to pour and figured I was already half way through and might as well finish.
230m- 26.5s
150m- 16.43s
Ran with a training partner and he pulled up after 50m of the 230m, so I kept looking back while running to see what was up. He saw a football flying towards him and stalled and tweaked his hamstring in the process.
Hit my seasonal goal for squats for reps of 10. Next goal is 5x405lbs and I’m not too far off from that.
I just found out that the bobsleigh tryouts are coming to my town and was asked to come and tryout. I figured I would seeing as its mostly running stuff and that it will be a good opportunity to get some some stuff electrically timed. The tests are
30m/30m fly- separately timed in a 60m
5 double leg bounds
Power clean
Front squat
I’ll take the lifts pretty easy, wont try to push anything. Probably go 225lbs for cleans and will attempt 315 on the Front squat.
My buddy was at the track today sporting his fancy electric timing gates and camera. Couldn’t pass up that opportunity seeing as I havent been timed for real in months.
4x20m blocks
3xflying 30m (2.96,2.96,2.93) from about a 25-30m run in.
Fastest flying 30’s Ive done in a real long time. Indoors I was having a tough time staying under that 3s mark but today it was no problem. With a little more training I think I can hit the 2.8s, which is completely uncharted territory for me.
My groin was bothering me slightly because I had just gone to see the chiro and he did some pretty deep ART on it. Usually I dont schedule in that close to practice, or even on a practice day, but its all he had.
I started 10s a couple months back, on my lower CNS day. I never stopped doing them because I didnt stop making gains. I was initially going to switch exercises on that day and make it more of an assistance day, leg curls, weighted hip thrusts, ect… But the squats kept improving and I figured why switch them out.
I like 10s on my special endurance day to lower the CNS stress overall but still get a major lift in. I’ve been doing 10s on tuesdays and 5s on thursday. Its worked pretty well so far. I’ll admit, its weird to have this set up, but I dont see how it could be bad.
First day that my groin hasnt bothered me during the runs. It was holding back my acceleration the past week.
1x60m
3x120m (12.75,13.05,12.83)
After the first run I mistakenly took 8 minutes rest. Typically I’d take between 10-15 on 120m. So on the next one I took the full 15 and the quality was much better.
4x30m block starts
6x10 bounds
15x hop and throw 8kg medball
2x5 squats @ 365, 1x5 @ 375