My quest for 6.7

How’s your season going and how many meets do you have reminding?

Its off to a decent start. I’m racing this coming friday and after that I have about 3-4 more meets to run in before the championships.

This friday is going to be a good time drop I have a feeling.

The plan for the week is as follows:

Sun: 4-5 block starts, 2x60m, 4x2 jump squats
Mon-Off
Tue- 4-5 Block starts, 1x60m
Wed- Off
Thursday- Travel, in bus for 8 hours. Stop over night in a town. Planning on doing some low vol. CNS activating stuff to wake up my legs from the horrible bus ride. Possibly some shot put throws in a parking lot.
Friday- Compete 60m, 4x200m

I thought you ran this past weekend??

No meet this past weekend unfortunately. The comp schedule isn’t as frequent as I would have liked it to be.

Ran 7.04s again in the final. I am in dire need of some start technical work. I barely push out at the start. Its seriously lacking.

I’m getting murdered to 30 by these 6.8 guys and catching the last 30.

I’m thinking of some tethered starts to help fix this. Any suggestions?

Join the club, I think it’s more of a reaction thing with me. I’m hoping to get shit on track tomm.

I might as well not even use the blocks like the children do. Everyone else gets a running start and I’m at a standstill when the gun goes. Haha. Ah well, I’m going to takle the tethered starts. Try to get my hands on an isorobic exercise would be nice.

I’m not concerned my start is getting better each meet, not looking to make any changes with my training esp at this point in the season.

With all these bad starts it prompted me to go back to the tapes and review what my start looks like. I’ve known for a long time looking back that there was something that just wasnt clicking with them. The angles just werent popping out when you watched it and it showed in the acceleration. I havent actually really attempted to change anything technically on my start in a long time now.

What the tapes have shown me when I slow motion them is that my front arm action is really open. So instead of having a nice arm split of 90 degrees at the elbow or whatever elbow flexion is optimal for the start, I’m more down towards 170 degrees. Nothing like my profile picture, now that I look at it.

So what I’m seeing is happening is that I’m pretty much reaching out with my front arm in the direction of running motion sort of like my rear arm action. The thing that is causing the problem is the front leg. As what I suspect is either a result of the arm action or a relationship with the arm action, is that my front knee angle is open as well. So instead of striking the ground behind my center of gravity, I’m pulling it. You can see it pretty clearly in some start videos I took at the end of the summer.

With this in mind, I’m going to make some technical tweaks that will hopefully help out quite nicely along with some new start videos. I’m going to stick to the original competition arrangement that I set up initially so my training wont change much. I know its easy to get carried away with the analysis but I think I’ve pin pointed something pretty specific that I can implement and observe what happens.

My legs are still pretty sore from the meet, so tomorrow is going to be a good recovery day.

Stop thinking just sprint!!!

If I had a coach I would totally do that. I would love to so much.

Been taking it pretty easy since the meet this past friday.

Mon- Tempo, 8x100m
Tue- Start technique day, 8 block starts from 5-25m
4x3 hang cleans
wed-Tempo, 8x100m
Thurs- 4x5m blocks, 4x20m blocks, 2x flying 30’s
3x3 squats at 315lbs
Fri- off
Sat- Compete 4x200m relay

Thursdays workout was a little bit tougher then I’ve been doing. I did a bunch of block starts and ended up with 3 flying runs over about 40m. I’m competing in a 4x200 relay today, which is more of a practice run to get the passing down for the next few competitions.

I’ve got 3 more meets to run the 60m in. I’d prefer that the middle one be the best run of the 3 because the competition will be the best, the surface is really fast, I’ve set pb’s there in the 60 2 years in a row.

The last of the 3 meets is my area champs, which will be an easy win since no one around here runs faster then 7.30. So no need to save my top form for that meet.

So with thursday and today these will be the last of my substantial workouts. Everything in between will now be very low volume and maintenance between meets. I’ve found that the meets take a huge toll on my body and taking it easy during the week will be necessary if I want to hit top form.

My workouts will consist of either a warm-up a few days out before the competition or some block starts with some cleans to keep fresh but not create any sort of fatigue. The meets themselves will be the training in between.

How did that 4x200 go this past week? Any goals for the outdoor season?

That 4x2 went ok, my run was great but our passing was awful, probably tagged on 2 full seconds on our passes. The guy I was passing to just took off on me, and I was dying quickly.

For the outdoors what I want to focus on is my start and hit some really decent SE. My goal for now is to be consistently faster then my current pb. An exact time will depend on how well I do in the indoor season.

The next few meets I’d like to be at my best at so this is what im doing to get there.

Sat- Competed in a 4x200m relay ( wouldnt say this was a maximal stimulus because we were running alone, so it was more of a practice 200m)

Sun- Hurdle mobility
3x4 Bench press

Today:Tempo 10x100m, 2x3 cleans

Tuesday: Warm up, 2x20m submaximal block starts

Wednesday:Tempo 10x100m, 2x2 Bench press

Thursday: Warm up

Friday: Travel

Saturday: Compete

My korean friend said he might come down to the meet this weekend. If so it will give me some good competition to run against. I was initially use this meet as a technical practice to try out some technical adjustments in race, but this should be a good opportunity to run a fast time.

Are still trying to hit 6.7’s indoors? I probably wouldn’t be doing much tempo at this point. Why so little speed work?

If possible, but at this point I’d be happy with a 6.8s. I’m lowering the speed volume to maintenance, racing once a week and maintaining CNS stimulation with frequent low volume workouts. The tempo is dirt slow, like jogging really at this point. I dont have many meets left and I still need a 6.8 to qualify for the national champs. So I’m looking for peak freshness at these next meets. The lifts will hopefully maintain the CNS and the racing will be the training for the most part.

My friend I understand what you are trying to do, I would do something a little higher.

Speed Session 1:
3x30
2x60 30m int limit

Speed Session 2:
4-5x20 blocks
x15 throws

Tempo 1:
6-8x100

Tempo 2: (I would only do one tempo session but if you must do two)
20min incline tread walk or pool session.

If you read the 10day taper thread TC talks about keeping longer runs into the program even when tapering.

Thanks I’ll go check out the 10day taper thread. You know where I was headed with that. My only reasoning for the really low speed vol. is that I find that it takes me forever to recover and feel fresh, and I need incredibly low volumes of work to get there.

But we’ll see, nothing is set in stone yet. Maybe I’ll increase the volume slightly on tuesday but keep the next days as is.

I wouldn’t make major changes, trust me you will be fresh but flat which is a bad thing. You want to make small drops in volume.

I am starting my comp season this week, since I got therapy today I’m gonna make a small change in my training this week by adding a neural session instead of a true second speed session. I’m doing this to see will it help loosen my hamstring before racing on Sat.

First week of comp:
Speed session 1:
3x30 sled last week of pulls.
2x60 30/30
pc
db jsq
bp (lighter on the bp, because I went up to 345 last Sat after my race)

Speed session 2:
5x20
throws 10-15x

Tempo 1:
6x100