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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, it’ll be more of a timed practice more then anything.
I’m in recovery over drive today. I did tempo, stretched, hot cold sauna/shower, I’m going to roll tonight, I had a chiro appointment earlier today, body rolling tonight (especially on the quads), sleeping in tomorrow until noon and then I have a massage appointment on monday.
This week has been a little rough with a few mid-terms at school. Less sleep, extra stress and too much coffee. Now that its over with im all set to recover a little better.
Today was so much better then Tuesday. I was down in the dumps on Tuesday and today I was definitely bouncing back. Not quite 105% yet, but probably around 95%. Which means Sunday I should be fully bounced back in my supercompensation cycle.