Sun Jan 2nd
3xflying 25m
2xflying 50m
4x10 hurdle hops
5x10 high knee bounds
2x10 squats
3x10 bench
Tues Jan 4th
Relay pass practice (nothing fast)
4x200m tempo with 2mins rest
Thurs Jan 6th
Relay pass practice (sub max accels)
2x250 @ 30.3s
2x10 squats
3x10 bench
Bit of an easy mid week, my coach says that sunday will be another high int. speed session.
Sun Jan 9th
Big stimulation day. I think me and my coach have found the right mix of stim and recovery. Things are coming back to where they once were quite quickly.
3xflying 25m
Down to 2.44s on the third rep and missed the 2nd which was feeling faster. The trend has been over the past 2 1/2 months:
2.40s
2.44s
2.49s
2.53s
2.47s
2.44s+
So a positive
flying 50m: 5.03s
7x15m heads up blocks
My brain wasnt in the right place, false started on one, and wasnt my usual self on the reaction. Think the fatigue from running was getting to me.
5x5 bounds
personal best of about 17.8m, with a 5 step approach in shoes.
2x10 squats
3x10 bench press
I’m still keeping things very general with the weights to avoid excessive CNS fatigue but to keep the strength stimulus. I can finally say with confidence that things are headed in the right direction. The stimulation is well timed with rest. Theres a meet this saturday, and we have opted for a wednesday session and then race saturday as a weekly setup. I’ve used this before and liked the 72hrs pre meet the best.
Wed Jan 12th
3x15m falling starts
4x20m 4pt
4x25m with 25lb sled
4x15m block starts
2x10 squats
Competition on Saturday
Meet this past Saturday
7.16s heats
7.10 finals
http://www.upmygame.com/watchv/5072/0/
They felt good physically. Had a pretty good finish. Looking back at the tapes my acceleration was very rushed. Was upright right away, and my steps were short and I had some incomplete extension. So for next meet I’m going to focus more on a relaxed acceleration and trying to get that full extension during a competition. Physically I’m there, its just technically I need to get my acceleration to match what I’m capable of during practice.
Tues Jan 18th
4xblocks- felt great, had great arm action and really focused on extension
2xflying 25m (2.46,2.48)
1xflying 50m (5.04s)
1x150m (16.94s)
2x10 squats
2x10 bench
activation session on friday and a competition on saturday
Fri Jan 21st
Did an activation session for the meet the next day.
Practice warm up
2x20m blocks
1x80% 60m stride
Sat Jan 22nd
This competition was a little meet to test out this new local facility. They only had straight finals for the 60m, so I already knew i was going to be disappointed not to run a final.
7.03s
By far one of the fastest “heats” I’ve ever run. I had made some technical changes with my acceleration phase. Noticing primarily that my steps were tiny and I was rushing things. I focused on relaxing, and driving with the arms more to create that larger stride and faster acceleration. Just last week I had run a 7.16s in heats and I’m not in any real better shape. I think I still have a bit to improve on the start too, especially off the initial split.
Given the fact that 2nd place ran 7.43s (I historically run slow when no one is pushing me) and that I always run faster in finals, I think its safe to say I had a good chance at breaking 7. Anyway, big meet this friday coming up. There will be a ton of people there that are faster than me, and I’ll hopefully get the chance to run twice.
Since I only ran 1 60m I went to the gym after and lifted.
2x10 squats
2x10 bench press
Tues Jan 25th
I ended up catching a bad chest cold and felt so weak I could barely do anything on this day. Bad timing on the cold
Fri Jan 28th
Despite the cold I raced anyway
7.06 heats
7.03s finals
I felt fairly good technically and was quite consistent. I need to rest up a little over the next few days and then get a good week of slightly harder training before the next little competition block comes. Things are looking good for me technically. Now if i can get healthy and drop a sub 7 I’ll be happy.
Tues Feb 1st
Rested up a ton after the weekend. Still feeling sick, but on the verge of recovery.
2x250m
2x10 squats
3x10 bench
Light day, but should be going much harder on thursday or friday.
Thurs Feb 3rd
3x15m falling starts
3x20m 3pt
4x30m 25lb sleds
4x20m blocks
6x5 alternate leg bounds
2x5 1 leg hops
Finally completely over my cold. Things are looking up, block technique is looking much better and CNS is feeling fresh.
Interesting last month of training and progressions.
You seem to group workouts like:
Day A: Accel work
Day B: max speed
instead of incorporating both??
Curious as to your reason. I have always done both, i.e. accel and max speed (day A), accel and SE (day B).
I also agree that in many cases 72 hours is better to recovery. I’m almost in favor of this type of weekly format:
Mon: Hi, full body weights
Tue Lo, massage following
wed off
Thur Hi, full body weight
Fri lo, massage following if no weekend workouts
Sat lo, upper weights, massage at end
sun off
Hey Esti,
This is a great point and something I have wondered before. My coach groups the accels together on a single day. I think he feels as though the volume of accelerations necessary to progress deserves a day of its own. Although, when i’ve programmed things myself I’ve included accels on the same day as speed work, in order to squeeze in more speed and less accels.
The main thing that I found, and maybe I have a low work capacity, is that if I do accels first, it takes away from the quality of my speed work. So in the past i’ve actually placed the accels after speed. But in general I would prefer to have accels and speed on the same time as a way to do more speed within the week.
I’ve been separating accel and maxV/SE work as well with good results. I took a general rule used by pfaff and modified it for 2 HI days plus meets for comp period.
Pfaffs template was 3 HI days: 1 with accel focus, one maxV, one SE in no particular order. I condensed it by mixing maxV and SE work and have taken .07 off my 55 PR, .27 off my 200 PR:
mon: flies/2-3 SE runs 150-300
tues: general strength remedial work
weds: accels/lower
thurs: upper
fri: premeet neural work and block checks
Sat: compete 55-200
Sunday: Off
I really like that setup. I think its a great way to maintain all qualities during comp season. What my coach has set up is really similar. Typically his setup has been an SE day, accel day and Max V day. During comp season we’ve used long low volume SE as an intermediate from comp to speed/accels. During SPP I wasnt a huge fan of how much volume the SE day would include, and it lead to me overtraining the CNS. Following the 72hr rule, I think we have found a good balance during comp season. Its either I can go very hard 72hrs after a Hi workout, or go 48hrs with an intermediate, lower volume or intensity, workout. This makes each week look very different but has the potential to adapt to any situation.
This summer, the focus will be Max V and SE, and the long SE and accels will serve as intermediate work.
No doubt there are many ways to get to Rome…
I have used a 2 day accel, and max vel with high school team sport athletes recently.
On max vel days, we still do accel work, but not as much as accel day. So far, accels to 20m has improved but max speed has not improved much.
In my training journal, I outline my versions of Charlie’s S-L doing a 2 day Hi with accels on both days, and SE one day, max vel the other. It has worked well for me. My volume is quite low however. I also add in med ball throws and some jump work as a supplement.
Curious how things finish up for you in the coming weeks. 
Thanks, I am excited to see what happens in the next few weeks as well.
I like to hear how people apply the “fill the cup up” philosophy of Charlie’s in terms of CNS stress.
Tues Feb 8th
Some relay passes
3x150m easy runs
a couple easy starts
Fri feb 11th
Warm up
2 starts
1 easy stride
Sat Feb 12th
Race day
Oddly reverted back to some old start technique when I was running. Ended up running 7.15s in the heats. then sorta got my head on straight and ran 7.06s in the final. Almost like I forgot how to start.
Somehow the cue, sweep through the knees helped me get back to it, but I think my first few steps arent that great. I gotta figure out how to get into that rythm from the get go.
I’ve been pretty lazy at keeping track of this past week. Things have been going ok. I’ve come to the realization as this season ends of the effects of my SPP on my entire season. I will discuss what I believe is at play and how my season has ended up.
Lets start at
Tues Feb 15th
4x60m submax
1x200m @90%
1x6 squats
3x8 bench
Fri Feb 18th
A couple starts after a warmup
Sat Feb 19th
Race
Heats 7.09s, finals 7.08s
Despite having slightly poor starts, then entire race felt great and my CNS was feeling amazing.
To confirm my sharp CNS I pulled out the jump mat to test my vert. We turned this into an unofficial event, a lot of kids came over and tried it, testing their verts. At one point the meet announcer came over and was announcing the results like it was an event. It was lots of fun. Anyway, my vert tested at 39.2 after a couple warm up ones. No cheating with the contacts either. My previous pb on this system was 37.5. So this did validate how good I was feeling.
I have one race left in the season, and at this point I’m battling for hundredths with technique vs the tenths that should come from proper planning of a season.
So I’m over 10lbs lighter than last year, yet running the same times. I’m going to do a slight review of how this season went and where things could have gone better.
In september and october I was coming in off significantly high speed volumes in august and also started losing excess body weight. The past summer I had a great experience with training. My focus was predominantly on bobsled testing camp, and I came in in the best shape of my life and killed it despite being over 200lbs coming back, I was in great shape. In September I started to train with my old coach, and he structures things in a similar way to me, but has less of a consideration for CNS stress. Its more of a 3 Hi day setup, even with the 1 speed endurance day, the volumes are such that the CNS stress are equal if not greater than a speed day. Intensities in sept and oct were such that the setup did not affect much in terms of CNS stress, and so my high fitness from the summer and the loss of weight made for a great combination in early testing at the end of october. Setting massive personal bests in standing 30m and flying 30m electric times. Things were looking up for a great season. Just as things began to intensify in November, the lack of consideration for CNS stress management took its toll. High volume, high intensity and a higher frequency than I would have preferred quickly turned into overtraining. This was apparent in the crash in testing times as well as strength over November. To get out of this funk, december was an incredibly low volume month, I did a lot of recovering, in an attempt to get fresh again. My openers were bad in Nov, Dec 7.1x’s. Come end of December and the start of January there are signs that my performance is coming back. Things begin to feel fresh again, and I run in the 7.0’s for most of the season.
Now what has this taught me. You overtrain the CNS, its overtrained. There is no great bounce back to higher levels than previous.Just a slow miserable hoble back to homeostasis. The other thing that this has taught me is the importance of the accumulation of volume preceding intensification. In january, when we just jumped back into intensification in order to get back to shape, only hundredths of a second were regained. Whereas, I believe the role of a proper accumulation cycle set the circumstances hormonally for greater responses to intensity. And I think this was an important lesson, because I always underestimated the value of accumulating volumes of submaximal sprinting, things like large volumes of accels, sub max fly’s, EFE’s and 95% SE runs.
Congrats on the PB syrus.
I was wandering, does having a good vert/training the vert, correlate well with sprinting?. More so than a good broad jump, since sprinting involves more maximum horizontal propulsion?.
The reason I ask that is because Dwain Chambers has a 62 inch Box Jump (video below) & regular gets smoked by guys in the 100, who I would bet a bit of money on not having the same jumping ability in terms of height, as Dwain?.
What do you reckon?.
If you could choose between Jonathan Edwards broad jump of 3.14m or a 62in vertical, what would you choose?/why?.
That is surprising. I would have thought that would relate to faster times (greater relative strength)?.
I think that vertical jumping has more to do with relative strength than sprinting speed seeing as how long the vertical ground contact is. I’d rather have better reactive strength via hurdle hopping and bounding than a good vert. My reactive strength is pretty bad.
Initially my weight loss did make me faster, going from a given state of fitness and losing weight while maintaining that fitness yielded better performances. But i think some training considerations led to overtraining which ultimately saw me go back to my original performances. We’ll see what happens this summer when I get back to some volume and intensify from there.
Looking at what you posted, you ran several races under 7.10 in the past 4 weeks. Not sure what your entire weekly training is like but I would say there should be a drop in time coming. What are you doing on the recovery end? hot colds? Massage? microstretching?
Maybe the training isn’t the issue.?? 