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.
It’s the worst feeling; wanting to train, but instead have to stay at home because you’re sick.
Heal up man
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.
Workout today:
8x30m tire pulls with 5 minutes break
In the gym:
3x5 deadlifts
various core exercises
Overall great workout. I feel as though my acceleration is progressing nicely, and that I can accelerate past 20m to almost 30m. Overall CNS stress for this workout was much lower then sunday’s workout. I think it can handle 8@40m with this workout, so I’ll test it out next week. Not this weekend but the next I’ll be getting tested with some electronic timers. The timing of the testing isnt the greatest because I’ll be at the end of week 3 of my 4 week cycle. So the times probably won’t be as flying as they could be but hopefully it’ll give me some indication of where I’m at.
Did some tempo yesterday.
2x4x100m
After 1 month, general fitness is way up. Probably from a combination of the past months tempo and the few extra laps I jog during my warm up. Typically by the 4th rep in my tempo I’m breathing all heavy and go to my knees for a breath but now I can walk it off no problem. I think its time to step up the tempo. Maybe either 2x4x150m or 3x4x100m.
On thursday I did:
2x4x60m with 30m intensity limit 5 minutes break.
3x3 cleans
3x5 push press
4x5 back extension
Feeling vary fast on those 30m run ins. I’m now trying to learn relaxation, I feel as though all this new acceleration and speed im having a tough time holding form and staying relaxed. I think this is a good feeling, because usually whenever I’ve felt this way its all an issue of speed endurance and relaxation. Now that I’m moving acceleration up I need to adapt to it.
I had a similar feeling last outdoor season during my season opener. I ran a windy 10.91 and it felt like I had so little control over my speed. But what that told me is that when I did learn to control and relax I would run much faster. And I did, 10.7s by the end of the season in total control. So I think that uncontrollable speed is a good indication of progression.
Today:
2x4x60m FEF with 5 minutes break
Focused more on the relaxation in the Easy portion. Workout went really well. I wasn’t nearly as messed up as last sunday.
Gym:
4x5 front squat
3x5 hamstring curls
3x8 bench press
3x5 1 arm row
Today:
2x4x30m sleds with about 32lbs
Stepped up the weight a little, felt good. I’m having a tough time figuring out where to fit plyos into my workouts. I’m usually exhausted between sprints and weights so I figure that everything in between is doing just fine. With the majority of my work and fatigue coming from sprints. Well see, I might try to squeeze in some low vol plyos in at some point in my spp. Going to read up a bit more before I do anything about it.
Yesterday:
2x4x100m tempo, big time stiffness from tuesday’s workout
Today:
2x4x60m with 30m intensity limit 5 minutes break
gym:
4x3 cleans
4x5 back extension
Another great workout. Started to feel CNS fatigue at around rep 7,8. Its crazy how hard these actually are. When people see us working out they say “You guys take so much break inbetween reps”. I’m just thinking, these workouts are tough even though 5 minute breaks are being used, and during competition we’re up at 1 hour between rounds, so thats not a long recovery at all. Anyway, things are going great. 9 hours a day of sleep.
When is your first meet?
My first meet is Nov. 28th. Which coincides with the end of week 4 of my 3rd block. I won’t be changing anything leading up to the meet.
Yesterday:
I had my first day of testing. We tested standing 30m. While I wasnt expecting big pb’s at this stage because I was just hitting week 3 of my 2nd block and I was feeling the effects of the previous 2 weeks. I would get a good idea that if I ran something half decent that I was definitely on track. The past 6 weeks have been focused on my acceleration and making sure that I’ve got a pattern that can take me to my goal.
Standing 30m electric
4.02s
3.90s
3.93s
I was sort of stumbling running these because we were using 4 point starts and I’ve been using 3 point in all of my training, so the pattern was somewhat unfamiliar. I think these were pretty decent. If I consider after this block, acceleration volumes will taper down a bit and I’ll bounce back from this difficult week that would probably put me at 3.85s, and then with a solid taper before competition I think I could hit 3.8s once all of my speed (30-60m) is in place.
Considering this time last year I was testing at 4.01s I’m definitely going somewhere.
Now for my next two blocks of training they focus on top end speed. My current pb in a flying 30m is 2.91s. If I can get that down to something in the 2.8s range I think I’ll be in pretty good shape.
Now we’d be looking at 2.85s+3.80s+.15s= 6.80 and I’d be really close to my goal for this year. So by the end of december I’ll be looking to test out my flying 30s to see if I hit my goal.
After the testing I did
4x60m FEF
5x5 front squat
3x10 incline bench
2x5 1 arm row
Sort of a proof of concept right here:
My strength has been increasing pretty consistently even though I’ve been completely coping out on the work doing sets of 2 instead of 4, cutting out exercises all together and so on. Just as Charlie had explained in his weights for speed video. Even though i’m not doing 5x5 all the way through it is still 5x5 because i’m getting that component before.
Even though I have felt as though i’ve been completely slacking on strength work my front squat max has gone from about 235 to 315.
I know things are going well if strength is increasing without even trying, that means im hitting my acceleration component really hard and that its affecting a large portion of the fv curve. Next test will be if my jumps improve without even trying when I’m hitting speed hard.
Yesterday:
2x4x30m sleds 45lbs, with 5 minutes break
3x5 deadlifts
Core work
Great work out, my legs are fried for this entire week, which is sort of the point of week 3. I want to make sure I’ve dug myself a good little hole that is just deep enough that next week I’ll bounce right out. By thursday I’ll make sure that I’m a little more tired then usual in the sprints department and then week 4 will be quite easy.
Yesterday:
Tempo 2x4x100m
Today:
2x3x60m (40m intensity limit) 8 minutes rest.
Weights: 3x3 cleans
Pretty intense workout as this is week 3 of 4 in this block, this is my last hard workout before a fairly easy week. I ramped up the intensity on these runs to 40m limit so that in 2 weeks when im up to 50m out of blocks it wont be so bad. This is the first time I’ve actually fully accelerated out to 40m and I could definitely feel it in my hamstrings. I was using a 4 point start and I felt as though my first few steps were really weak. I think its because i dont have anything to pus off of and because I dont have the accel pattern down. We’ll see in two weeks when I start coming out of blocks.
It feels good to finally be hitting some speed. The next blocks gets quite intense with 40-50m intensity and 8-10 minutes break at reps of 5-6. Can’t wait.
Today:
2x20m blocks
3x60m from blocks (40m intensity limit)
3x5 front squat
3x5 leg curls
2x10 bench
2x10 pull ups
Nothing special its my taper week. First block session, I figured I’d get a head start on the pattern for blocks. It was a struggle the first few reps. But the last one felt pretty good. First race is at the end of this coming month so by then I should have a pretty decent block start and be pretty decent to about 40-50m. If I run 7.1x then I know im in trouble, if I run 7.0s then things are going decent, still lots to improve, anything faster would be fantastic at that point in the year.
Today I was definitely not recovered. Not sure what it was from, could have been from sunday, but that was a taper day, could have been from the accumulation of the past 3 weeks. Although I felt great on sunday and really down today. Just no power, no drive and a decrease will to train.
Anyway, I took it really easy today, even easier than the taper required.
warm-up
3x20m
Core
jog stretch
No lifting at all. We’ll see how things go on thursday. If I feel the same I’ll basically repeat what I did today. If not I’ll just continue with the taper but perhaps at a slightly lowered intensity.