Tough practice today.We were a big group, me being the only sprinter and we had some jumpers and throwers training as well. They were doing testing while I was doing hills.
I did 3x4x40m hills, very good pace, I like how these are progressing, feeling much more powerful at the start. My hamstring are still sore from the deadlifts on thursday.
Since they were doing some testing I jumped in for the fun of it.
Overhead shot put throw (16lbs) 13.9m
Forward shot put throw (16lbs) 14.9m
I’ve never done these before so I don’t have a comparison for them but its a benchmark now.
In the gym:
3x8 Front squat
3x8 incline dumbell press
3x8 1 arm rows
Saw the chiropractor earlier today as part of my usual maintenance. Did some massage, interferential current, ART, adjustment and some stretching. My insurance allows me to bump up my visits to twice a month so I’ve done so. I originally went to see him when I pulled a muscle in my back and tore my hamstring, he got me healthy again and I’ve been injury free ever since, and I think he’s helped a lot.
On to the workout:
3x4x20m tire pulls
These felt great today. I think my acceleration is coming in nicely because before I could drive to about the 20m mark with the tire and it was pretty much the end of my acceleration zone. But in todays practice I felt like I could keep driving for further, I think its time to bump up the distance to 25m and see how things go from there.
Our group of throwers joined us for some tire sprints and you could see it on them, driving to about 10m and then straight up. It’ll be interesting to see how their power develops over the next few weeks.
At the end of these tire pulls the jumps and throws group joined together for a little relay sprint competition. Of course I needed to jump in. It was two teams and each team needed to go up and down this hill 3 times each. It got pretty painful near the end. I wont be doing that again.
At the gym:
4x5 power cleans
I was pretty much useless after that so called it quits there but originally had push press and back extensions in the mix. If I hadn’t pushed it on that relay I think I would’ve been fine.
3x4x60m with 20m intensity limit
Feeling great, like my stride was much stronger and longer without actually trying. I think I’m handling this volume quite well, I feel fresh each workout.
Not nearly as sore as I thought I was going to be after those deadlifts. Just getting the hang of sitting back on the deadlifts and using my glutes and hams to start the motion instead of the low back. Its having an amazing effect on my other lifts. Along with my hip flexor flexibility training, the deadlift and “sitting back” I think they’re going to be major factor in progression at this stage.
Comparing my old clean and dead techniques, they were a mess and I was just muscling through them. No major benefit to glutes or hams there. But now I can feel it in my cleans and squats that extra push from the back.
Yesterday:
3x4x40m hills on grass
They didnt feel as good as previously, I did a tempo session on friday instead of taking two days off, that might have contributed. This is also the beginning of my 3rd week and I was working out alone. We’ll see how I feel on Tuesday.
4x8 front squat
3x5 leg curls
4x8 incline press
4x8 1 arm rows
My track workouts have been amazing and as a result all of my weight workouts blow. Especially the cleans. After the cleans I’m completely wiped. Because cleans and sleds are probably the two closest stimulus on the force velocity curve I think I’m going to switch cleans to my speed days instead. Well see how it goes.
As far as the weights go, I think its good that I’ve been either doing half of the planned loads or dropping certain exercises. I think this indicates that the track workouts have been doing their jobs. My weights coach said that he doesnt care if I don’t finish my gym workouts because im so wiped from the track because I’m fresh every speed day and wiped by the end of it, so no worries.
A few videos of sled pulling, on rep 11 and 12 so im a little tired.
In terms of my 60m performances go, my acceleration.
I’ve typically had a slow 0-30m in my races. At my regional champs last year I was about head to head with 7.1-7.2s guys at 30m, than at the end pulled away for a 7.00s performance.
At our conference champs, running next to a guy who ran 6.8 flat, he killed me in the first 30m, and then I made some slight ground, and again ran 7 flat.
I’ve always said that I had the speed of a 6.7 runner but the acceleration of a 7.2 runner and so I’ve previously ran 7.0-6.9s.
I’ve made some solid gains in strength and power since then and I’ve been hammering out some quality accels. I’m hoping to lower both my accel and top speed times this year but more so accels. So far I think that I’ve really improved this aspect.
Flying runs is pretty much all that I’ve done in the past. I remember having done some FEF type of work but only over 150m, so 50F 50E 50F and I remember that it seemed to have an outstanding effect on my SE for my 100m. The thing about my old coach is that when we worked speed it was either 8 accels or 6 or so flying sprints on a given speed day and usually all with about 4-6 minutes break. I always found that I was able to progress a little smoother when I took longer breaks in our speed sessions.
With this season I’ve got 60m FEF and 6xflying 30’s (8 minutes rest) and then going doing to 3x60m with 15 minutes rest in the next block. I’m excited to see how that works out. The thing with progressing speed is that its really easy to progress but it also plateaus quickly. So after 4 weeks of speed with my old coach we would see zero gains in speed because he never progressed the workouts to greater quality, they were always essentially the same thing with the same rests.
Roughly my progressions from block to block for speed is
12 reps @ 3 minutes rest
8 reps @ 5 minutes rest
6 reps @ 8 minutes rest
3 reps @ 15 minutes rest
With my old coach he only ever worked me in block 3 so I’ve had limited speed gains. I actually had a chat with him the other day, because he is still my school’s head track coach so I need to be in contact with him, and he was asking about what I was doing and was suggesting that I’m missing out on a “base” season because I’m doing speed all the time. He insists that I should be doing his 15x100m workouts in 14-15s with 90 sec rests for at least one month. No thanks, haha. The worst part is that this guy has coached an Olympic athlete, so he thinks he is completely justified in his training but in reality he lucked out big time with the talent and has barely progressed her in relation to that talent.
Anyway, in the gym I’ve found that if I’m really hammering out max strength, I’m talking 1’s and 2’s, then it kills my CNS big time. My CNS becomes incredibly fried in that rep range when I combine it with speed workouts so I try to be really careful about no hitting too much max strength work in that rep range. I guess depth jumps complexed with a 85% squat at 3 reps is my favorite combo for speed work, but it hits the CNS incredibly hard as well. I’ve sort of learnt my lesson about killing it at the gym and not on the track. I fell in to this last season and all my lifts and jumps went up big time but my speed just died a bit. So now I’m really careful to plan bigger track loads and smaller gym loads.
Felt good, right hamstring was a little tight. I skipped out on tempo yesterday, that might have affected things a little. Overall , this workout has been tough. 3 minute breaks in between reps gets a little tough for me, not in terms of quality of run but I definitely feel it at the end of a few runs. The good thing is that the first 20m is very good quality throughout the workout, and degrades a little on runs 11 and 12.
I just got hit with a nasty stomach flu this morning. I woke up with some aches and it quickly progressed to the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach and complete lack of energy. It sucks, I look forward to workouts so when I have to miss one it drives me crazy, but oh well.
I would have done 3x4x40m grass hills. Instead a trip to the store for some pepto is all I’ll be doing today.
Hell of a day, I felt so crappy with the chills and the worst stomach pains i’ve ever had, so I went to the emergency room. They took a urine and blood sample. I waited about 3 hours and they determined it was probably a virus or bacterial stomach flu. I feel much better now but im incredibly weak from not eating and a slight fever. The results of the blood tests showed that I was slightly hemoglobin deficient, which was surprising. They said its possible linked to iron deficiency. This could be contributing to my terrible aerobic capacity problems too. Anyway, hopefully this will clear up by tuesday.
Ok, so this whole week has been a bust due to my illness. Damn.
Anyway, it coincides with my down week so less harm was done to my overall training schedule. Today is the first day where I’ll actually be doing some work since last friday. I’m going to be doing some jogging, light plyos and stretching.
Next week marks the beginning of phase 2. This is the fun stuff. I feel as though I’ve got a decent amount of acceleration work in and my general fitness is definitely up. Gone from struggling to run 1 lap around my track to doing 4 no problem. During this phase, acceleration is moved to a single day of 12x40m tire pulls. So the overall intensity of my accelerations has gone from:
12x20m tire pulls and 12x40m hills
to
12x40m tire pulls
Although the volume will be down, the intensity is higher on those 40m tire pulls. I doubt I’ll be able to lift after doing that, but I’ll see what I can manage. Speed now comes in to play and this is where I’ll start to see some improvements. From what I’ve previously posted:
from 12x60m 20 intensity limit 3 minutes break
to
8x60m FEF 5 minute breaks and 8x60m 30m intensity limit 5 minutes break
This is an interesting month since it marks a decrease in acceleration volume, increase in intensity and increase in speed volume increase in intensity. The overall load will surely be higher than the previous month on the CNS, but muscle wise I think the weight room will serve a good stimulus to balance things out. I might try to hit up some speed testing towards the end of this month to get a handle on progress. I already have a feeling I’ve improved my crouch 30m time slightly. I’m not too worried about that aspect anymore like I was in the past, I think i can finally say that my acceleration is decent. My new focus for this season is to see a solid increase on my flying 30m time, which hasnt seen a decent increase since I started sprint training. So this will be a great test of how all this planning is going. I definitely think the intensification plan will result in some solid improvements. My guess is that I’m now entering the 3.7x high range from crouch 30m and my flying 30m has pretty much always been 2.9x mid to low.
My goal is to hit a consistent 2.8x by the end of November. Lets see how it goes!
Overall phase 1 has been successful in:
1-Improving general fitness
2-Phasing in to high intensity work
3-Establishing acceleration
4-Setting up a 60m work capacity
Just got back from my workout. My legs were incredibly fresh. The tone in my legs was amazing today, definitely a result of the down time.
Did about 1500m warm up jog and then some random broad jumps, skips and about 20 50inch box jumps. All felt pretty good. Hopefully sunday will go just as good, if not better.
So, I thought that coming down from 12x60m(20m intensity limit) with 3 minute break to 8x60m FEF with 5 minutes break would be a cake walk. I was so wrong. What a tough workout, the increased breaks made it so much more difficult.
Here’s how it went:
4x20m accelerations
2x4x60m FEF with 5 minute breaks
I had to call it at 6 60m FEF, I figure I’ll build up to 8x60m FEF over the next few weeks.
My weights workout only got to:
3x5 front squat
3x5 1 arm rows
I was messed up after this workout. Luckily, I have a great ability to recover from high CNS loads in between workouts. Mainly because I get 10 hours of sleep pretty much daily. I figure if I can manage these types of workouts for a while, my CNS will be stacked in no time.
This was my first workout on a track off the grass so it could have contributed to the difficulty as well as my first day off of a down week.