What would a 500m speed session look like for you and why do you feel this is what works best?
Tempo I’m going to build up to 2000m x3/wk and just maintain it for a couple of months. I’m going to stick to 300m Spec for a while just because I probably have a lot to gain at that range.
Hopefully we’ll both have a great season.
Starting at 8x50m, or 8x flying 20m from a 30m, then progressing to 8xflying 20m from a 35m, to eventually 6x70m.
In the past I’ve done my accel volume followed by 4x60m, for about 400m of speed work. But what I found, for me anyways, was that the accels lowered the quality of my speed work, and that 4x60m wasnt enough to stimulate speed for me (at my level anyway).
So I tried switching to a high volume of pure speed work and it worked very well. Mind you I could only do this 2x per week vs 3x per week from before.
I timed all runs, and the quality stayed consistent throughout the runs. It got harder after the 5th rep, but the quality never dropped.
You have a much better chance then me, I’m not sure if I’m even running because I won’t have the time to focus on the proper training. Are you going to be able to handle that much tempo?
You are pushing the limits. Those flys must be submax?
Not sure if I can handle the tempo. I’ll progress slowly into it and see how it goes.
The fly’s are slightly submax. Especially indoors, its difficult to get even close to max in the facility i run in.
Its been almost 2 weeks that I’ve taken off. I’ve been mostly just relaxing out in the sun and playing a bit of basketball. I plan on starting to ease back into things this sunday. I’m going to keep the workouts fairly easy and just do whatever I feel like on that day.
I’ve got my diet in check. This is week 2 and things are going steady. I’m shooting for a 1-2lb fat loss per week and I think so far its getting there. Weighed in at 196 today. I’m reactively changing my calories if I notice that I’m dropping weight too quickly or if I dont drop any weight.
Sorry for quoting something that old. I have just started reading your journal.
I have exactly the same problem- constantly worried about the volumes and if it’s ok and if sth is enough specific. Did you get used to it? I mean to coaching yourself
It was tough for the year or so that I tried to coach myself. Eventually, I think I was getting used to it, although it took so much trial and error to get to a point where I wasnt ruining myself. Its because the experience isnt there to say oh yes this works because i’ve seen it. So the more you experiment and go through the process and see the result you get way more comfortable with planning things out.
I got to the point towards the end of this season where planning was very easy and I didnt worry so much about what I was going to do, because I knew what needed to be done and with a bit of experience I had seen what worked and what didnt. So the confidence comes with experience
Going to update whats been going on. I’ve been on a healthy diet for the past month since I ended my outdoor season. I’ve lost 8lbs and am feeling fantastic. I took a couple weeks off and then resumed lifting and doing random explosive workouts. Sometimes accels, sometimes jumps ect…
This is me at 191 this morning. I plan on getting down to 180-85. Keep in mind this is me flexing, I dont look like that just static, lol. My strength is up, squatted 355x8 and am not feeling any major detriments from the calorie restriction. When I hit my goal weight I’ll just increase calories to maintenance levels. Lyle’s site has helped me tremendously plan out my diet correctly.
I have been talking to my old coach from my school and we are working things out together. He asked if we could work something together and I welcomed the change. I’ve been sharing my ideas and a lot of info I have learned from this site with him. He will now integrate this into a program and I will help plan it with him, but he will administer it and help coach me. This should be a good change because I wont have to worry about the workouts and such. Plus there is a fairly big group with him already so it will be much more social.
The gist of the setup so far will be accels 2x/week, 1 on falt surface, 1 uphill and 1 long hill session. I’ll be keeping the medball throws, weights and plyos in as well.
My vert is getting up there with this weight loss. I was officially clocked in with a 37 inch vert the other day with the digital pad (straight leg landing). I was 200lbs when I ran 11.05 into a -1.4 wind. Be interesting to see what being at a healthy weight will do. Realistically, my diet is healthy now and I’m probably on par with calories. My old diet was shit and I was a fatty.
First workout back:
3x3x70m hills with 2mins break between reps, 8 minutes between sets
70’s were done in 9.5-10.5s.
The hill is quite steep. My head was spinning at the end of this one. The circulating lactic is quite high.
This will be my lower high CNS day in the mix. I havent quite planned out my weights yet because I’m going to wait and see what the rest of the week is like.
I’ll probably do 3x8 squats and 3x12 weighted hip thrusts.
I did end up doing squats on sunday but needed to wait several hours until the lactic cleared from my brain.
3x8 squats @ 335lbs
3x10 weighted hip thrusts @ 225lbs
I’ve planned out my lifting for GPP and it will be very simple and involve squats 3 days per week. 2 days of 8 rep squatting and 1 day of 4 rep box squatting. This is based off of my lifting from last season where I concurrently did 10s and 5s and this worked very well for my lifting and helped match the CNS demands of each training day. I switched up the reps scheme a little though to add some variation. As we progress through GPP and get into SPP I’ll switch one of the 8 rep days to a 4 rep day to match the increasing CNS intensity. I might change things up by switching to front squats for a month, and then to banded box squats ect…Eventually, the 8 rep day might be removed completely I havent planned that far ahead yet.
I’m thinking of leaving cleans out for this season. I’ll replace them with a higher volume of explosive throws. I think the throws are fantastic, closer on the force-velocity curve and not nearly as technical. My clean form just isnt going anywhere. I think I need some technical lessons from an actual Olympic lifter because most coaches here just cant teach it properly.
Tonight is an acceleration day and my highest CNS day of the week. The workout will probably consist of Accels, throws, plyos and lifting.
tonights workout:
2x4x20m accels, superset with 15m sled pulls with 45lbs
2x20m with no superset
15x overhead medball throws 8kg
Plyo circuit of sorts
2x20 stiff legged hops
3x12s tuck jumps
2x12 box jumps
3x10s high split jumps
3x10 large amplitude vertical jumps
The plyo circuit killed my legs so I’ll have to rearrange my lifting around this. I’ll stick to 2 lifts per week for now until we move past these plyos circuits.
great success with the loss. It seems you are quite muscular. Cut it down under or around 6% of body fat and you’ll look terrific! I’m not saying you are fatty now, just you know with every other percent down you get much more ripped and eventually faster 
Good luck!
For me it would be impossible to work with my old coach. It’s great that there are coaches who would accept something new and wouldn’t hesitate to try it out.
Today:
4x2x100m hills, 1.5 minutes rest between reps and 8 minutes rest between sets (best one was 12.6s)
Pretty tough hill, its a steep one.
4x4 box squats @ 345lbs
3x5 vertical medball throws
Long workout today:
Hills
3x60m 3mins break between reps, 6 between sets
3x50m
4x40m
1x120m
Plyo circuit
2x20 ankle hops
2x10 pause jumps
3x12s tuck jumps
3x10 tuck forward jumps
3x14s high split jumps
2x10 low split jumps on each leg
Went to the gym and just really messed around. Tried doing bench press again but my damn shoulder still hurts when I go it. Its been 3 months now since I’ve injured it and it only really stops me from doing bench. Oh well.
4x2 sets of easy cleans @ 205lbs
3x8 decline shoulder press with 50lbs
3x12 tricep cable extension
3x8 cable cross overs
50 pushups
Weight is at 189.5lbs now, finally broke the 190 barrier. I’m sitting at about 10% body fat just from a visual point of view. I’ve been tested before, like 14 sites or something crazy, at 9-10% when I was 196. But that wasnt true 10% bodyfat. Anyway, weight down, strength up, cant complain.
How steep is the steepest hill you use?
The hill is around 35 degrees and very flat and constant for about 150m.
Today:
5x30m
4x submaximal flying 30s
3x8 squats @ 335
2x5 vertical medball throws
Quick workout today, had a meeting afterwards so planned for a little something less. My coach wanted me to hit some up right sprinting today just because we’ve been doing so much hill stuff. So we went submax on the flys.
Strictly for sprint performance, do you think hill sprints are better or sled resisted sprints?
And you getting any tempo in? or just some here and there. I haven’t been doing that much tempo… will get in more during SPP + some int. tempo… but do you think it’s gonna affect me much going into speed endurance work later on? if the 200 isn’t my focus at all…
I think sleds have a better transfer to accels than hills. I’m not a huge tempo guy, but I get it in on a weekly basis just to keep fit and burn some extra calories. I also find it helps with recovery, I hate going cold from nothing the day before to a sprint workout. Although, its really not fast at all and my volumes are quite low compared to others.